Kitchen Chandelier *Sneak Peak*

As a much needed break from reviewing journal articles and writing lesson plans (ah the joys of earning a bachelors degree) I am going to let you in on my current project!!!

 

You see that beauty? Okay, well maybe diamond in the rough would be a better term ;^) My mom had him just hanging out in her garage, and didn’t even tell me! Tisk tisk mom…

I am going to put him in my kitchen over my island! Want to see what he is replacing? Are you sure you can take it?

 

I know I know, it’s okay you can stop screaming now. It’s what I so lovingly refer to as our department store lighting ;^) lol. Hideous and although it is bright it gives everything a slightly yellow tint *gag* sorry, got a little choked up there.

Well if you can see that little flush mount ceiling light in the background of the above picture, I am painting this new chandelier that same color.

And guess what? Mom had this in her garage to… She’s been holding out on me! Normally I would have had this project done by now, but can you guess? RAIN RAIN RAIN… And spray painting in the house is not a good idea, yes I will admit to trying it once upon a time :^)…

 

QUESTION FOR YOU, take a look at the chandelier again in the first picture please, would you paint the white cylindrical things that go under the light bulb? The sleeves I guess you could call them? I don’t think I want them to be white? Help please :^) And hopefully in a couple days this beast will be a beauty! <3

Quick and Easy Headboard

A quick intro for you, my mind is bouncing all over the place lately filled with project ideas… But you remember, I am on a budget, $15.00 a week! And with landscaping devouring that $15.00 my projects will not be getting done this week :^( We are re-doing the flower beds, can I just say yuck! I hate digging beds, but I hate the way our yard looks in it’s present state more, so the bed digging wins… But just so you know, my soon to be projects include: refinishing an antique rocking horse for my daughters 2nd B-day, refinishing an old chandelier for my kitchen, turning a door into 3 tables (well an entrance table and two big shelves, you’ll see ;^) and of course an old window as wall art! SO hang in there if you are following! But to fill the time I will show you my house and projects that are already done!

 

In the master bedroom I have already shown my awesome $25.00 dresser. So next is the headboard!

For supplies there were not many, I headed to Home Depot and got a piece of half inch ply wood (cheap and sturdy) I also had them cut 3 pieces out of quarter inch ply. I picked up some decorative molding, this looks like the type that you frame a door with, but they have an entire section of decorative molding and for small projects it’s not very costly!

I first primed and painted the molding and the base piece of wood (in case any showed through). I did a black paint and rubbed on the silver, just like with my dresser).

The next step was to pick up some batting and fabric. Now many people put a bit of foam down and then batting, but myself being cheap thrifty, just doubled up the batting, (this actually saved a ton, foam is expensive) Found some fabric that was on clearance, and after stapling the batting did the same with the fabric, just wrap it tight like a present! I flipped it over here and there to check my progress.

The molding went on first with some wood glue and nails (fill the holes in with wood fill if they bother you, you can’t see them with this paint treatment though).

Then with screws and the help of my hubby, we screwed the three quarter inch upholstered boards into place from behind. And Viola’!

As you can see we added a vinyl wall decal above. (Please excuse the horrid picture, my hubby is asleep I didn’t get in there to snap a new pic quick enough).

This can be done with any fabric and any molding color to match your bedroom! And for an extra punch you could add covered buttons tufted in!

(If you have any questions about attaching it or if something isn’t clear let me know;^).

Office/Play Room Makeover Reveal!

 

Alright! It’s what I’ve been blogging about the most and it is finally done! Here are the final pictures of the office/play room/ scrap booking room extravaganza!

 

Remember learning how to paint the fun crazy accent wall?

(I think the futon needs some more funky pillows in the future)

 

 

How about making the $12.00 Window Treatments? You see that clean desk? All thanks to the Medicine Cabinet turned office storage

 

And the scrapbooking area is super functional with the upside down CD storage, and cute thanks to the curtain that hides the junk stuff.

Can’t forget our snazzy butterfly art work!

 

 

 

 

Housing all of the toys we made that storage furniture functional.

The adorable embroidery hoop art brings a big punch of color to this wall!

 

 

 

 

 

And lastly I wanted to show you a little picture collage. The biggest problem I see when people decorate is a big wall space with a tiny frame. The wall eats the frame. So make a collage! Here I have 2 10x13” frames I got on clearance at Target, and the words Family and Friends which I bought at Michael’s for next to nothing. The frames are proportionate to the wall space and therefore stand out more! (And look I could totally put more toy storage under those pics!!!).

Hope you enjoyed the transformation! <3 What was your favorite part?

$12.00 Window Treatments!

So here it is! One of the last projects in my office/play room/scrap booking room make over!

I had to cover the windows in here, but in every other room I normally do something with long sheers that touch the ground. Well knowing my daughter the bottom of those sheers would be filthy from her sitting on them with the dogs and pulling on them.

I originally wanted to do tie up shades, but the top part

always looks so boring to me? And unfinished. (Thank you Wal-Mart for letting my knock your shades ;^) But I love the idea of the tie up shades, they don’t cover up to much natural light, and also do not touch the floor!

So I was in one of my fav stores, Big Lots, when I came across a valence in a paisley pattern for 3 BUX!!! And they were beautiful thick fabric, and the bag said JC Penny on it! So you know these puppies originally were not cheap! I grabbed two because my windows are large.

And I also snagged up a sheer that had cool stripes embroidered throughout. I hung the first valence in the middle of the window, and then cut the second valence into 2 pieces, these two pieces I slid under the first valence, one on each side, and used the iron on tape to tack it down (see, still not sewing ;^)…

It still needed something, so I took out the sheer I found and cut it to the width of my window (I added 3” to each side so that when bunched it didn’t look to short).

I then pined it to the valence to see if I liked it, and did a mock tie-up shade with ribbon I had.

After falling in love, I made a pocket at the top for the rod (with the no sew tape).

 

I really LOVE the end result, LOVE the paisley fabric, and most of all I LOVE  the fact that it totaled $12.00!!!! Perfect Playroom/Office Window Treatment!

I am wondering though if the ribbon that is holding the sheer is to dinky looking? What do you guys think? Should I use thicker ribbon or perhaps fabric? Let me know, and thanks for reading <3

Medicine Cabinet Transformation!

Aha! It’s done! You guys remember the before right?

From cluttered…

To Fabulous! This old Medicine cabinet (see b4 in the previous post) was the perfect solution! It was supppper easy to re-finish, and now I am in love <3<3<3

Just did a light coat of spray paint primer, followed by a couple coats of white. I then sanded it to give it the distressed look. The Medicine Cabinet also had to be super functional so that everything stayed nice and pretty and off the desk!!!!!

I lined the inside with my new favorite fabric (JoAnn Quilting fabric quarters for $1.99) and made dividers to organize the junk supplies. There are two dividers that I covered with fabric. Our power tool supply is pretty meek at the moment so I needed something that I could cut with a utility knife. Enter foam board. You know that stuff you have done countless school projects on? And that you can find at the Dollar Store! SCORE! The fabric is just hot glued onto the foam board, and I cut the lengths exact so they didn’t even need to be glued down, just put into place! I opted to use 2 of the original glass shelves for storage as well.

I still needed somethingto function as a bulletin board for pictures and my calendar, once again foam board to the rescue!

Now I would recommend using cork tiles for this if you are going to be moving the pins around a lot. It will hold up better.

Here I ran into a problem, I was out of fabric and patience, I wanted this baby done! So I went hunting in my closet and dug up an old blue shirt :^) Not kidding ;^)…. The foam board was covered in blue shirt, I mean fabric, secured with hot glue, and for extra strength I used some decorative brads in the corners that I had left over from a previous project.

And voila’! What do you think? I am def in love <3

I will probably add some accessories to the top to finish it off a bit! But storage solution solved! And of course I can’t forget to mention this simple little pencil jar I made to match out of a mason jar/scrap booking paper/ and some berry garland!

I think the desk might need a few more of these babies!!!

Medicine Cabinet Redo!

I am SOOO excited to show you what I found tonight!!!! Well, I was craigs-listing my little heart out the other day (you like my new words? craigs-listing, wal-marting, etc ;^) and trying to solve my office storage problem... And I came across this little beauty!

What? You don't see the potential? Aww, give him a chance. I was so excited that I drove 45 minutes to pick it up!!! And $15.00 later it was alll mine! But I am not completely done yet!

Sooo, you just get a sneak peak!
You can't tell much from the picture, but it is fab!!! I should have it completely done by tomorrow!!!
And lastly a glance at the problem area

AHHHHHHH scream I know, what a MESS!!!! But won't be for long!!! See you all tomorrow to show you the finishing touches <3

Making "storage" Furniture Functional!

So one of the main components in this office/playroom extravaganza obviously had to be toy storage! I mean the point of this was to get away from staring at plastic eye sores (AKA toys) right? Well the popular thing in storage now are those modular furniture/storage units. So I started craigs-listing and wal-marting with no luck, (hey my fifteen dollar budget for this one wasn't taking me very far). So as I was chatting with my mom and telling her what I was looking for guess what! She was getting rid of hers! *tadahhh!* I was so excited that I rushed over and picked it up. But as I was loading it with toys I noticed some problems.
Look, I must be a bad mom because I HATE looking at movies with open shelving!!!! *gag* I also didn't want to shove them into bins because I knew if Veda couldn't see the movie she was looking for she would rip them all out! The second problem was all of the space that VCR was taking up, with tons of room on top of it? I know, this is where you say "Then buy that poor child a DVD player! They are smaller and do not look like electronic dinosaurs!" But all of those movies you see are from when I was little, and they are VHS... Plus I think she will survive this traumatic childhood loss ;^). The third problem was that the shelves were weird shaped. No matter how I moved them I always had a tall area. Who has toys to fill that?????

So I headed to Home Depot, where I picked up a laminate shelf and some brackets. The shelf was 7 dollars and some change, and the brackets ran 2 dollars and change for all of them (You see that, I am sticking to that $15.00 a week budget like glue!) Now I could have saved more money and used scrap wood. But because all of this furniture has a pre-finish on it, it would have looked out of place even if I had painted it. All you need to do is measure your spaces, and head over to the storage area. What I bought was a stock shelf, so it is not in the lumber department. They said they don't cut things with finishes there, but a couple eye-lash bats later and it was cut ;^)

This may not seem like a big project or a big deal, but look at all of that storage I created now!!!And you can see to solve the *staring at movies* problem, I took the left over fabric from the fabulous wall art and made a cover! Right now it is just up there with double sided tape, I need to get a small tension rod. That cover took me barely five minutes, and I did not sew, just got out the trusty iron and stitch witchery
.
And Tadah! I still need to get another of those storage thingys at the bottom. This tells you how cheap I am, I was ranting about the fact that those run $5.88. Eww! But oh well :^(... Those three storage bins on the mid shelf are from the Dollar Store so that makes up for it:^)

So the thing to remember is that although this new modular storage fad is convenient you can still make it even better by modifying it to fit their favorite toys!!! Happy Decorating <3