The Bench

The bench is finished! 

The bench is completely painted.

Oh poo, the bench is in the house....

Ok, so FINALLY this weekend I called the bench "done" enough to bring it in the house and start using it. 

I started this project back in January.  

I went out and purchased the lumber.  It sat there.  For WEEKS.

Then, one free weekend my husband gave me a crash course on the table saw and we got a LOT of it done.

It actually seemed to be coming together!

Then I primed it.

Then I went out and got the black paint and I got sick.

Time seemed to stand still on this project.  I couldn't bring myself to clean the house, much less go into the garage and paint this bench.

But, I kept plugging on at it and finally I'm done.

Well kind of.

I still have to sand the plywood backing, paint it, poly it and nail it on.

I have to get the foam and sew the cushion cover on the top.

But really, it's nearly there.

Oh, and I still need baskets.  

 I've gone to about a hundred stores looking for baskets to fit the holes and my budget and it's been no luck.  My husband warned me I should have got baskets first, then modified the plan to fit the baskets.  I laughed at him.  Silly man.  Ross has about a million baskets I told him.

Yeah, Ross has been OUT of baskets the past month.  Like there is some sort of basket shortage there or something.  I found some at Target that will work, but I don't feel like forking over $15 per basket.  UGH!

Have I said before he is a smart man and I should listen to him more?

I guess I'll never learn.

DIY Snowflake Napkin Rings

I wanted some really cute silver snowflake napkin rings for my table setting Christmas day, so I started searching the web.

I found some that I absolutely LOVED. They were perfect, except for the $95 price tag that came along with them.

Img found at MyCorporateGifts.com

Anyhow, I wasn't willing to shell out that kind of money so I thought MAYBE there was a way that I could come up with something cute and similar for MUCH less cash.

And I did.

I started searching at Hobby Lobby and found in packs of six snowflake shaped wooden pieces. They were $0.99 a pack. I needed twelve so I purchased two packs. 

There was a problem though.  I got REALLY busy before Christmas and didn't finish them.

Fast forward to Christmas day.  It's 12:15pm.  Turkey is in the oven cooking, mashed potatoes boiling on the stove, rolls are rising and we are prepping to eat a 2pm dinner.  Suddenly I decide to make my napkin ring holders.

I tell you only I could be this nuts.

So I went and grabbed those Hobby Lobby snowflakes I bought and ripped them open.  Silly me forgot to get a photo BEFORE I ripped open the packet of my snowflakes.

Then I grabbed a BIG leftover wrapping paper roll.  Anything would work though, toilet paper roll, paper towel roll. 

I measured and made marks at 1 inch wide (enough to make twelve of them) and just went along and cut them.

Next I grabbed some of my Krylon brushed nickel spray paint that I had left over from my hinges in my bathroom renovation.

I spray painted the little bad boys and let them dry in the garage for about an hour.  1:45 pm and I'm in my kitchen hot gluing the snowflakes to the round rings while my company starts to arrive.  It's all ok though, they are family and they understand my nuttiness and love me in spite of it.

I must say though, crazy as I am.  They turned out really cute.  Not bad for about two bucks!  If I wouldn't of had the spray paint, it still would have only cost me about $5 to make them all.  Not too shabby I say!

I'm pretty proud of how these bad boys turned out.  I ended up getting this post featured on Knock off Decor, and you can see that post here!  Also I'm submitting this to Beneath My Heart for the Best DIY projects December Linky Party, so check that out as well!  Both of these blogs are among some of my favorites and I HIGHLY recommend them!

The Dining Room

I've known for a while that I wanted to re-paint my dining room, but it was pretty low on the priority list, but I decided to move it up because of company coming in for Thanksgiving.

I've gone back and forth the past few weeks, do I do it or not. I wasn't sure I wanted to undertake ANOTHER project right before the Holidays, but every time I walked into the room and saw my girls "artwork" on the walls and the scuffed up oak trim I would just cringe. It just looked DIRTY.

Finally I talked with my husband, who was totally in for it and I went for it. (his side will say that I MAY have caught him over IM while he was in the middle of a server crash at work, and used that to my advantage).

It has taken me over a week. Scuffing up the oak trim (to give it tooth), oil primer (because of the oil poly on the current trim), then paint. When we first moved into this house I LOVED all the trim work and crown molding it had, I just didn't care for the color of the stain. It was this orangey oak. If it was darker it would have been fine, but I just didn't like the color. I prefer white trim. I love the contrast of white trim on a colored wall, it just looks bright and clean and crisp.  Also with kids CONSTANTLY scuffing it up, I can just keep a can of trim paint on hand and touch up when needed.

After we moved in, I looked at my husband and said "I want to switch all the trim in the house to white."

He looked at me like I was nuts. He said kindly "That is a LOT of work."

I said "It won't be THAT bad."

Famous last words of a fool.

I have like THOUSANDS of feet of dark trim in this house. It's going to take me forever.

It's totally worth it in the long run though.  I LOVE the white trim, even though my arms are STILL aching from working on that crown molding.

Anyhow, the dining room is done, and hopefully after the Holidays we will move to the living room, do the built in/mantel on the fireplace and get that room next!

Here are the before and afters! Enjoy!

This was our OLD dining table, about three years ago (its the best before shot I have).

Here is our new table, but we hadn't got the chairs yet.  Still a pretty old photo.

Here is a more current photo of the room, after the furniture is moved out.

The before photos really do NOT show how bad the walls and trim really looked.  The walls were drawn on by my kiddos, and I tried magic eraser, but that left spots on the wall, it was pretty bad.  Here is the after with all my Thanksgiving decor!

This is at night, before I added my chairs back to the room.  We decided to leave the blinds off the windows, it looks so much better that way!

Daytime photo

My thanksgiving decor on the table!  Repainted the mirror white.  I'm glad I finally found a spot for the white shelves I had!

My homemade napkin rings (made from toilet paper rolls) and placards

My 90% off decor from Hobby Lobby and dollar store candle holders!  Waiting till the last minute pays off.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I was worried I wouldn't get it finished and I was painting up until Tuesday before Thanksgiving!  I'm glad we decided to go ahead and do it, and I'm glad I went with the bold color!  I love it, love it, love it!

*UPDATE*

I love it so much I'm submitting it to a few blogs to try and get featured, right now I have about UM, 5 readers that actually read my blog (I kid, I kid....) but seriously I'd love to get some traffic to my site.

I'm hoping to get featured in Beneath My Heart "best DIY Projects of November".  I LOVE this gal.  Every morning when I open up my Google reader I'm anxious to see what she has posted, and you guys have GOT to read her whole kitchen renovation story!  It's great!  I can SO relate!

*UPDATE* 04/16/2012
 Linking up with TDC:

Decisions...Decisions

Yet another blog post that mentions my hero Thrifty Decor Chick. Seriously, this gal is my hero. Ever since I saw her post on her staircase I was all like "hey, I could TOTALLY do that".

Here is my vision:

From Thrifty Decor Chick's blog, her staircase

Here is my reality:

My carpet is just gross

Anyhow, the railing is worn from 20 years of wear and tear (and one suicidal dog but that is another story) and it is in need of some desperate TLC.  The problem is the wooden boards underneath my banisters are HIGHER than the wood underneath the carpet.  Therefore I would not have that nice brown stained uniform look all the way across.  There would be this "drop off".  Therefore I axed the idea of actually having the wooden stairs of my dreams and decided I'd just do the railing and leave the stairs carpeted.  Also because of having little ones, the carpeted stairs were a better plan.

See, the carpet is "level" with the wood on the side (those are my dogs marks there you see)

But if you know me, that's just not good enough.  Once I have a vision in my head, I need to find a way to complete it.  So I started doing some research.  I ran across one blog where the girls stairs were the biggest mess underneath.  Her trim on the side was not level with her treads either and she made it work.  I thought that maybe I could just keep ALL the trim-work white, and add molding to the inside next to the stairs, then do the treads only dark (either painted or stained depending on what type of wood I'm working with.)

See white trim higher than black stairs (mine would be brown)

The carpet NEEDS to go, but that just isn't in the budget right now.  I COULD do the rails and give the carpets a GOOD cleaning, but to do the stairs properly the carpet REALLY needs to be removed to make sure all the trim-work gets covered properly in the paint/stain.

My crazy thought is lets just rip up the carpet and I'll do it and make it look decent.  If we hate it, well we re-carpet it later down the road.

My poor husband.  I don't know HOW he puts up with me.

So, I started pulling back the carpet to see what I was dealing with. 

My wooden stairs do not nearly look like the mess she had.  In fact, they looked pretty decent to me.

This is not my BEST visual.  Please don't mind my UGLY tile.  I can't do anything about that now.

My husband is like 190% sure that we have builders pine underneath there (and I'm pretty sure he is right because he usually right like 99.9 percent of the time - he is a REALLY smart man), which pine doesn't stain the greatest.  It's not the best wood to be working with.  Still, crazy stubborn me thinks I can somehow pull a rabbit out of my hat and make it work.

I want to get this done, but I want to do it right.  But I want to get this done, like NOW.  The war rages inside of me, and in the meantime I can't think of anything else but THIS PROJECT.  Can you say OCD?  It's maddening I tell you, just maddening!

Painting My Cabinets

I never really intended for this to turn into a decorating blog, this is just what I've been up to lately. Creating makes me happy. I've felt SO alive and fulfilled these past few weeks doing these projects I can't even explain it.

Anyhow, I had planned for a LONG time to paint my built in cabinets around my fireplace in my den white, but every time I thought about doing it I just lost motivation. After I finished the bathroom I decided since I had just conquered those cabinets that I would tackle the ones in the den. After all, I'm not staining them.

Easy peasy.

Um. Did I mention my husband and oldest kids were out of town that weekend I decided to do it?

Did I mention that I had my four year old and two year old alone in the house with me?

Yeah, I wasn't thinking clearly. Obviously I'm pretty delusional about the amount of work that this was going to take.

Here is where I started. The bookcases were a mess. Not only were they ugly, they were COVERED in polyurethane and they were cluttered.

My messy bookcases filled with UGLY paperbacks.

My mantel

The whole room.  The fan has GOT to go, but that's another project for another day.

My vision for the room is to get rid of the overstuffed furniture, put a desk on the right wall, remove the DVD cases, add two wing-back chairs (currently in need of reupholstering- but I'm too freaked to start that project) under the windows.  But alas, this was JUST getting the built ins done.

So I moved all the books, games and everything out of the cabinets.  I moved the sofa, and covered it a bit because I knew some dust would kick up.  My plan was to give enough "tooth" to scuff up the poly and let the primer do the rest.  I should have just sanded by hand everything, but I decided to grab the power sander.

I was delusional on just HOW MUCH dust this was going to kick up.  I quickly grew weary of sanding.  I was NOT as diligent as I should have been about the sanding process.  Yes, this would haunt me later.

You can almost still see the dust in the air. 

See that shiny poly on the back cabinet.  Yeah, I didn't.  Tsk.  Tsk. Bad Julie.

My goal was to prime that night, but after all the sanding I was pretty worn out and decided to wait till the morning to prime it.  I started reading some forums about what was the best primer, and come to find out with stain and poly since it is oil based you need to use an oil based primer.

I went to the garage to check my primer.  Latex.  Drats.

I loaded up my two little ones and went to Home Depot.  My 4 year old was running a slight fever, so I parked near the carts, and put both girls in the cart, and ran in.  It was my fastest trip in and out of Home Depot ever!  I got my primer and came home and started priming.

I've never used oil based paints or primers before, and oh GAWD it's the worst smelling stuff ever.  I mean it's bad people.  I figured I'd do a quick coat of primer and be done.  It took me THREE HOURS to prime these things because of all the nooks and crannies that I didn't sand.  The primer just was wiping off the corners of the cabinets and wouldn't stick.  Finally I had this foam brush and I was dabbing it into the corners and that seemed to work at last.

My mantel, primed.

My cabinet primed.  See those corners.  Arrgh.  They were the death of me I tell you.

And no, I did NOT paint the inside of the cabinets.  I had originally planned to but gave up on that pretty quickly.  I was regretting this project, my 4 year old wasn't feeling well, but I was too far into this to not finish.

Anyhoo, the next day I woke up after a horrible night with my four year old and decided I needed to take her to urgent care.  Turned out she had strep again.  I got her her medicine, brought her home and got the girls down for a nap and I started my painting.  The first coat took forever, but the second and third went much faster.

I let the paint cure for a few days before I started putting things back on the shelf, in the meantime I did the doors of the cabinets outside during the girls nap time and the rest of the project was really relaxed and I had a lot of fun.  I'd take a few hours a day and put things back on the shelf slowly, getting them all to look good.  My biggest problem was the paperbacks.  I found a few small baskets that held SOME but I had a TON left.  I had no place to put them and I didn't want them back on the shelf.  I was at Michaels the other day and ran across this gem for only $6:

Its a decorative box!  Held a TON of paperbacks and looks pretty on the shelf!

I still had a TON of paperbacks left even after purging a lot of them, so I got this at Ross for $12

It held ALL the rest of the paperbacks and it was pretty!  YAY!

 So, painting cabinets was NOT easy.  Staining cabinets is NOT easy.  These projects are NOT for the faint of heart, but I'm pleased as can be with how it turned out.  Here is the FULL reveal:

I can't BELIEVE how much brighter the room is.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

No more cluttered books.  I streamlined.

Seriously a MILLION times better.

My mantel with my bird painting.

Bathroom Reveal

So, I just glued together my DIY mason jar soap dispenser, and decided to call the bathroom "done" enough to post photos.

We still need to nail down the baseboards and I have some other art I'm working on for the wall, but I was ready to wrap up this portion of my blog on my bathroom.

I had a LOT of fun with this project, and some frustration as well, but I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out.

So (drumroll) here it is:

Before:  Yellow walls, dingy cabinets, creme switches, brown trim.

After!  I am SO pleased with my dark cabinets, neutral walls and white trim!

Painting behind the toilet was NOT fun.

I went back to home depot and had them darken the color.  The first time I brought it home it was too "purple".  It's still a slight bit too pinky for my taste, but since my accent towels are purple, it actually works pretty well.  I also painted all the trim white in the room and I will eventually switch it out for a paneled white door when I get the funds.  Baseboards are all white now and I'm LOVING the contrast of the colors.  The dark trim was just SO not me.

I used my old flowers but made a new trough to put them in on the back of the toilet.  An idea I got here from my hero Thrifty Decor Chick.

I love how it turned out and it was super easy to make.  Just used scrap wood I had in the garage, wood glue and some nails and stain and voila.

Isn't it pretty?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

I'm so into this rustic meets modern look.  Farmhouse meets modern decor.  LOVE it.  Another Pinterest find was the mason jar soap dispenser.  I decided to make one too, and I love how it looks in there.  I just followed the easy instructions.  The hardest part was getting the pump to stick on.  Hot glue did NOT work, and I had no plumbers adhesive, so I used good old superglue and it worked just fine.

My mason jar soap dispenser.

The vase I had in the attic for like...um, forever and I forgot about it.  Added some branches and voila!

I had a lot of fun on this project, but I'm glad it's over!  Seriously though the photos do not do justice to HOW MUCH better it looks, really.  Now I'm working on my den cabinets.  They are painted and I'm working on adding the decor to the shelves, that blog is coming soon!