Eating my words

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm trying to move on from the "Country" look. I guess old habits really do die hard. After I painted my armoire it was just screaming to be distressed. And I have to say, I went from hating this armoire (before painting), to just tolerating it, (after painting it black), to actually kind of loving it (after distressing). I didn't go too crazy with the sanding, I just did the corners a little and then went over it with some dark stain. I already had the sanding block and some left over stain, so this project didn't cost me a dime and it probably took less than an hour! (Well, the distressing part anyway. The spray painting was the longer, more tedious part of this project.)

Before:

After spray painting:

All finished:

Now my dilemma: The black handles are washed out, so I want to change them. Do I buy new hardware? Spray paint them? And if I paint them, what color? Brass? Silver? hmmmm. What should I do?

Oh yes, and we are going to be moving that thing so the chords don't show. I am still working on the whole arrangement of that room. I need an interior decorator to come over and help me out. Any volunteers?

Great inspiration for an afternoon project

My friend Stephanie let me know about a home decorating blog (thanks Steph!) and I copied this idea straight from one of the projects on here:

Before: A jewelry box that has been sitting in my closet.


Step 1:
All I did was get a sample-size bottle of white paint and slap on two coats. It dried super fast and I did this entire project while Emi was eating lunch.

Step 2: Distress. Now, I am not really into the distressed look (it is a little too "Country" for my current taste), but I loved how it looked on the Show & Tell blog so I went ahead and took the sand paper to it.

After:
I haven't found a permanent home for it yet, so until then it will have to sit on my bathroom sink.

Was it worth it?

Okay, so I have been posting my recent projects on our family blog, but since I have been working on many projects lately, I figured I better start posting on here again so I don't bore my family and friends who don't care how excited I get about what I did with a can of spray paint.

So here is the run-down on the table project:

It seriously took FOREVER! The first problem I encountered was the heat. It was above 100 and the paint would dry in clumps before I could even spread it. So I ended up painting the table inside. The second problem was that it took FOREVER to paint the chairs! (The table was a lot easier since I could use a roller.) First there were three coats of primer, then 3 coats of paint, then 3 coats of the epoxy sealant. Seriously, painting nine coats on 6 chairs took hundreds of hours! I am usually not a perfectionist but I wanted the table to look flawless. Now that it's done I am glad that I did it, but at the time I just kept thinking, "what did I get myself into?!?!"

Bit by the design bug again...

Well, after we sold our home and moved to Oklahoma, we have kind of been in "transition" so to speak. Which explains my long absence. We are getting ready to move into a new home and I am dying to redo a few of our pieces! I am starting with our kitchen table. (You can see my previous post for the "before" picture.) I am planning on painting it a charcoal black to go with the stainless steel appliances. Best part: I found the color that I wanted in the "oops" section at the Home Depot for $1.00!

I'm crossing my fingers that all goes well and that I don't ruin our dinning table! I will post "after" pics after I finish!

Cheap staging tips

As we are getting ready to put our house on the market, I thought I would share a couple inexpensive (or free!) ideas on staging that I used in my home:

Tip 1: Build around it!
Who says you have to have an exact idea of how you are going to stage an area of your home? Browse around, see what catches your eye, or, more importantly, what is on sale, and build on that! For example, I knew I wanted to stage our dinning room table, and I found these cute table mats for $1 a piece. I then picked out the dishes,centerpiece, and window curtain from there.

Tip 2: Don't purchase new wall accessories. Add art to the frames you already own!
If you are anything like me, you love to decorate your home with framed pictures of your children and family. Since staging rule #1 when you're selling your home is to "de-personalize" your home, you might feel that you need to take down all of your photos and buy all new wall accessories. To save $, use the frames that you already own and add your own art to it. This can be anything from photos of landscapes, flowers, the ocean, pretty much anything! I used these three frames which contained family photos, and for under $3 per 8 x 10 photo, I printed off some black and white pictures that I had taken of the Tetons.
Don't have fancy landscape photos for your frames? Try using old scrapbook paper! I am not much of a scrapbooker these days and my supply is pretty shabby, but I found some paper that matched my wall color, so even though the paper design isn't my favorite, I didn't have to spend any money so I went with it!

Happy staging!

Kid Bedrooms

This is pretty much what all three kids rooms looked like before:

After: (there are still things I would like to do, but there is a HUGE difference so far!)

Baby girl room:

Big boy room:


Big girl room:

Complete chandelier transformation

I have been shopping around for a cute, girly chandelier for Kali's room, but all of the ones that I like cost anywhere from $100 to $200. So I decided to check out craigslist. I found this chandelier for $35:

BEFORE:

And here is the transformation:

I think craigslist is the most ingenious idea ever. So thank you, thank you, Craig of craigslist, whoever, and wherever you are....