One Wall At A Time

So we moved into this house in July and I have been trying to do little things here and there as I have time.  The living room is almost done.  I am a total thrift store addict.  I absolutely hate buying stuff brand new - well most stuff.  I'm not talking like socks and underwear here...

I can see potential in all those ugly, unwanted end tables at the good will.  And I love a mix match mentality when it comes to decorating.  I don't know that I have a definite "style" - If I like it, I find a way to use it.  I guess you could say I'm sort of eclectic with a leaning towards country.  But not like a wood shelf with heart cut outs country.  More of country chic - is that even a style?  Well, it is now.  :)

I love when I can take something old and yucky and make it new and fabulous.

I've said before that I don't necessarily want this blog to just be about projects - but since projects and decorating are part of my everyday life - they are bound to creep up every now and again.  So I do want to share a wall in my living room that I just did.  In my head it looked different, but in the end I am really happy with what ended up appearing on my wall.  lol

Let me tell you a little secret about my projects process.
1.  I decide what I want to do
2.  I do it

Yup, that's it.  I'm not really a measure, tape, find the center kind of girl.  If it looks imperfect, all the better.  My husband was gasping during this whole project.  I finally let him measure the wall and find the center for me.  But then he had to take our girls trick or treating (I stayed home to hand out candy) so I banged out the rest of the wall while he was gone. *insert sinister laugh here*

Is it perfect, no - but I love it.  Once I add a few more things to the room, I will happily give you guys a living room tour.  But for now, this is all you get.

Would love to know what you think...

Bedroom Makeover Post #1

I have a feeling there is going to be like 100 posts by the time I am completely done with the master bedroom. :)
I spent the weekend painting and getting some stuff done while my husband was out of town.  I finally got the girls bathroom painted.  I put that off for way too long.  There is just a bit of trim touch up to do, but other than that I'm done!

Then I spent some time painting the wall behind our bed.  I really love how it came out.  I did make one teeny tiny mistake.  It's not really noticeable, which is good, because I really didn't want to re-do the whole wall.  I figured out where the stripes were going to be by making pencil marks on the wall so I could apply my tape line straight across.  I put the tape on and painted.  When it came time to take the tape off, I realized that I had put the tape on the inside of the pencil marks instead of the outside.  Whoopsie... who does that anyway?  ME - that's who.  I was so irritated that I did that.  But because of the colors, you can't really tell that the grey stripes are slightly larger than the blue stripes.  And if anyone does ever notice, I'll just tell them that's the look I was going for anyway.

The blue paint was also an oops paint that I found at Lowes.  It is Valspar and I got a gallon of it for $5!  Loving oops paint.  I mixed the blue with some grey, because it was really robin egg blue, and I felt like it was a little too bright.  The grey helped tone it down a little.

Did you know that if you put horizontal stripes on a wall in a small room it helps to make the room feel bigger?  I was not aware of that, but once I found out I knew I was going to do large horizontal stripes.  Because we do have a very small master bedroom.

Next on my list is the headboard.  I have finally figured out what I am going to do.  Stay tuned for bedroom makeover post #2...

There is no before picture of the wall, but it was just a plain white wall... nothing very exciting

Happy Weekend!


The picture is not great, I had to take it with my phone, but you get the idea - I hope

Bedroom Makeover

Ok everyone.. the time has come for me to officially start making over our sad, sad master bedroom.  It's only been 14 years in the making!  I'ts so easy for me to put off that room because I can just throw crap in there and close the door.  No one sees it - except for me, and I've finally had enough.  So I will be re-doing the whole thing.  And I'm going to do it super cheap. *i hope* 

I will be using stuff I've already got, but will be re-purposing.  I've got alot of different knick knacky items stored in the garage.  So this will be a great project to pull out some of that stuff.  I am going to be thrifting, garage saling and flea marketing it up.  :)

I will hopefully be revealing bits and pieces as I do them, until the one final reveal!  I don't really have a deadline for getting it all finished.  It's gonna be a work on it here and there when I get time kind of project.  But if it turns out how it looks in my head, it's gonna be fantastic!  LOL

In the meantime, here are some pics from pinterest that are my inspiration...
Enjoy

wood pallets for headboard

End of bed benches

yellow frames

love the whole thing

art

yellow dresser, so pretty

what a cute headboard

pretty white bedding

framed you and me - love it

In case you can't tell, the color scheme I've decided to go with will be greys, yellows, corals, and some turquoise...

HELP!

Ok ya'll be patient, this is kind of a long post, but I really need some help.  Some of you will remember my kitchen table makeover see table here.  I am in love with the table, but I am completely stuck on the chairs.  My original plan was to paint them red, because I really like the whole blue/red thing.  But I've tried 2 diff. reds and I am not a fan of either one.  The first one was a fire engine red.  Then the second one was more of a berry color. Which I like better, but it's still not right.  You can see the berry chair below...

So now I'm thinking maybe I don't want to go with red after all.  I just re-did a thrift store chair see thrift store chair here and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that yellow (golden maize from valspar).  AND I really love turquoise and yellow together AND I have this buffet/cabinet thingy in the same room that I want to paint that yellow.  So now I'm thinking that they maybe need to be yellow to help tie everything together.  It's a pretty small room, doubles as my dining room and my office, so I'm afraid it will look weird with too many colors floating around.  So I think I'm kind of sold on the yellow for the chairs - what do you guys think??

So another issue I'm having with the chairs is that I cannot figure out what else to do with them... I feel like they NEED something, but WHAT?  It's driving me crazy.  Maybe it's the chairs - I like the idea of having 4 mismatched chairs all the same color - I've also played around with this idea.

So you can see where I need ya'll's help.  I would love any input - ideas, pictures, suggestions, I'm open to almost anything at this point.  I've googled and blog searched and I think the problem is there are just too many options.

Help a girl out - would love to hear what you would do with the chairs.  The table is staying that color blue - that's the only thing that is not changing in this scenario.  :)

Thanks for the help everyone!

What I Did On Sunday

So as I was blog browsing this weekend I came across this lovely blog and project: http://prissthis.blogspot.com/2011/09/diy-painted-birch-tree-wall-forest.html

I loved how this mural looked and I have been dying to do a birch tree mural.  I was going to put one in our master bedroom and use an overhead projector but decided to follow her tutorial and basically freehand it (with the help of some painters tape) on a wall in our dining room instead.

Now, my dining room doubles as the office area as well... So technically this wall is right behind my desk.  For my very first mural, and my very first basically freehand attempt I think it turned out pretty darn good.  There are a few fix up spots I need to get to, but overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Yay me!

Take a look and let me know what you think!  You can visit my link party page to see where I'll be linking this doozy up this week!

Happy Monday everyone

Dresser Reveal

Ok, here it is... I am loving the way this turned out.  It is a completely different dresser!  I sanded and cleaned the whole thing.  Then I applied a dark walnut stain to the top only.  I love a dark top with a contrasting lighter bottom.  Looks so sleek and elegant to me.  Anyway, then I painted the dresser and drawers a light grey - 3 coats.  After it was dry I sanded just the drawers to distress them a little.  Then I applied a light coat of the dark walnut stain to the whole thing in small sections so I could brush and wipe, brush and wipe.  And of course, new drawer knobs.

So here are the before pics again, and afters below them.  It is for sale, so if you are local to east texas or in the vicinity and need a new dresser feel free to email me.

Whoever the new owner is of this piece needs to own a smoking jacket.  It just seems like a piece that a person who wears a smoking jacket would own.  :)

Cleaned and Sanded

Now for the afters...

I will be linking this up with http://www.theshabbychiccottage.net/
http://www.houseofhepworths.com/
http://sassysites.blogspot.com/
http://itsahodgepodgelife.blogspot.com/
http://www.mysimplehomelife.com/2011/05/features-simply-creations-link-party-8.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20SimpleHomeLife%20(Simple%20Home%20Life)
http://www.pollywantacrafter.com/

Little Of This And A Little Of That

It's been a few days since I've posted and I feel like I have so much to do.  I have multiple projects in the works that I'm not entirely sure when I will have time to actually get them finished.  LOL... oops.  The most pressing are my dining room chairs.  I started those with every intention of having them done by now.  But chairs are a pain to paint, so I keep putting them off.  I really only have one more to do.  Maybe today..

And I have a fabulous cabinet in my dining room that I am painting as well.  I plan on having both done in the next week or so.  So check back for before and after pics.

I also have a dresser that I will be re-doing.  It's been in our garage for the last 9 months.  It was in a guest room previously, but since we don't have a guest room anymore, I am going to fix it up and sell it.  (i think)

I know what I want to do to it, it's just a matter of digging it out of my garage and getting it done.  That project will have to wait however until my chairs and cabinet are finished.  I tend to start multiple projects all at once, and then procrastinate on getting any one of them completely finished.  My husband will attest to this.  

So with that being said, I hope you have a fun, relaxing Sunday afternoon.  We are headed to the pool in a little while for some down time before Monday hits.  

See you all next week!  But until then here is a peak at one of my chairs.  It's not finished yet, it still needs some glaze and a clear coat... but you get the idea.  :)