Fun with color

 

We really didn't do much in January because it's just been so cold. We've had quite a bit of winter weather in the last couple of weeks so we've just been spending a lot of time at home. This means I’ve had a lot of time for Chris to do craft projects and redecorate the house. For the past several months we've been buying painted antique frames from our favorite antique store, The Cellar Door. Chris has been saying that our living room needs more color. He wanted to paint the living room but I decided we could do a colorful photo wall gallery of pictures of places that we've traveled to.

We finally had enough picture frames to complete the wall. We first started with tracing out the outlines on newspaper and placing them on the wall for placement. I left them up on the wall for a week that way If I needed to move them I could before they were hung. After that Chris hung them on the wall.  I love how it turned out and it's just the right amount of color. 

We also found a bright red sofa table at one of the local shops here downtown. I think with the added pops of color from the photo gallery and the sofa table we now have plenty of color in the living room. 

We've been searching every where for photo books to store our pictures and we finally found them at Garden Ridge in Tulsa.  You can't see the middle one but it's for New York City.

Spa like

We've been in our house for several years now and we haven't changed our master bedroom since then.  I've wanted our bedroom to feel more spa like and relaxing.  So I used some of my Christmas money and bought a new bedding set.  Once I bought that I realized that nothing really went together anymore.  I was going to paint the room grey but decided that would be way to much work.  We found some curtains that hopefully go with the paint color.

Before the curtains.

After Chris hung the curtains the bedroom still didn't look right.  I've wanted to do a monogram above our bed for a while now and when I found the perfect antique wooden picture frame from the Cellar Door, I knew I had to have it.  We went to Hobby Lobby and found some metal letters to put on it.  We thought we could just glue them onto cardboard with scrapbook paper but the paper wasn't heavy enough.  So we ended up going back and getting fabric.  I blame Pinterest for all of these wonderful projects that we have been doing.  I really love how it turned it and I think that it completes the room.  The next project for the bedroom will be to get hardwood floors but that is long ways away.

The completed look.

Coffee table tray

After we moved the coffee table back into the living room I told Chris that we needed to find a coffee table tray to put on it.  A lot of the reasons the table got scuffed up was because we would just toss the remote controls and iPads on the table.  Finding a coffee table tray that worked wasn't that easy though.  We looked all over and we finally decided that we would probably have to make one or find one at an antique store or flea market.  We went to Mena this Saturday to check out Chris family's new consignment shop, which if you're ever there is called The Allure Consignment make sure and check it out.  While we were there we wandered around downtown Mena and we found a coffee table tray at one of the antique stores.  It wasn't for sale but the guy sold it to us anyways.  We liked the shape but I didn't like the wicker part of it.  So we decided to spray paint it red, give it a little distressing to match the coffee table and add some fabric to cover up the wicker.  I think that it turned out pretty chic looking for something that we found at an antique store!

A photo I took wandering around Mena.

Here's what it looked like before we started.

The completed project!

Coffee table in distress

Chris and I love to go antique and flea markets.  It's also a very bad place to get ideas for our house.  Lately I've been seeing a lot of furniture being painted different colors and then people give it a distressed look.  Well our coffee table has seen better days.  The top had a ton of scratches and water marks on it.  I kept telling Chris that I was going to paint the coffee table black.  So one day when I was at work Chris sent me a picture of the coffee table half sanded.  After it was sanded we primed it and then painted it red.  I forgot to take some pictures of the red phase of the project but we painted it red so once we distressed it you could see some of it.  Once that was done we painted it several coats of black paint and started to distress it.  I'm not a 100% happy with the way that it turned out.  I've painted a lot of furniture now and for some reason this one didn't turn out the exact way that I wanted it.  It looks a whole lot better than what it did, so I'll take that!

You have to wear proper face gear to sand! :)

This is the only photo I took while we were still painting.  You can see some of the red underneath.

Finished painting!

I like that you can see the red and the white after we finished distressing it.

Completed and moved back into the house!

Adios Carpet

One of the first things that we did after coming back from our trip was go and look at hardwood floors.  We've always wanted them but we never seemed to have the funds to afford them.  Thankfully we came back with just enough money to finally get them done.  It's a good thing to because while we were gone the dogs got sick a lot on the carpets.  We didn't have enough funds to do the whole house but hopefully in the near future we'll be able to go the rest of the house done.  Now that we have hardwood floors we'll never go back to carpet again!!  The only thing that I can say that I don't like about them so far is that I'm not allowed to walk on them wearing high heels.  Other than that I love them!!!! I absolutely love the color of them and the hand scraped finish!  I want to say thanks to Greg who helped with the floors and finding a great guy to get them installed.  I also want to thank Kathleen, Vaden, and Greg for helping move all of our furniture back in too!!

Newton loved not having any furniture in the house.  He could run around as fast as he wanted.

Morgan had been secretly peeing in the dining room.

Goodbye carpet!!!

I took some photos while the guys were out at lunch.

It looks like our house was always meant to have hardwood floors!

Stripping, Sanding, and Staining

I got the bright idea that I wanted to stain the end tables in my spare bedroom a darker color.  They belonged to Chris's grandmother and I felt bad about painting them.  I figured it couldn't be that hard to refinish them.  I knew that there was a lot of lacquer on them because anything that I put on them was stuck to the tables!  So off to Lowe's I went for some supplies to do my project.  The guy at Lowe's didn't offer me much help other than showing me where all the stuff was.  But I get most everything I needed and headed home to start stripping the end tables.

Chris's grandmother put something on the bottom and it was still attached to the end tables from all the lacquer!

I had no clue how disgusting stripping wood would be!  It also burns really bad if it touches your skin.  Thankfully the guy at Lowe's at least told me to wear gloves.  I think I had to apply the stripper on four times to get the majority of the lacquer and stain off.  After I got most of that off it was on to sanding.  If I thought stripping was bad sanding by hand isn't any fun at all!  I hand sanded one end table for five hours and then Chris decided it was time to buy a hand sander.

This is what it looked like after two coats of stripper.

After four coats of stripper and the beginning stage of sanding.

This is what it looked like after I got finished hand sanding for five hours.

Thankfully Chris did the rest of the work which included finishing sanding and staining them.  Once they finished drying he just had to put the polyurethane on.  I now know that I never want to work in the woodworking business!  I thought this project would take a week but it ended up taking almost two weeks to complete but I do love how they turned out.

Finally getting to stain them!!

The first coat of stain.  I think Chris put two coats on them.

Waiting for the polyurethane to dry.

The finished product looks great!

I think that they look great in the room.

Chris also learned NEVER to put anything in the washing machine that has stain on it.  I was sick and Chris was asking me if I had anything that needed to be bleached.  I told him that I didn't and wondered what he was doing.  I walked past the laundry room and noticed that it smelled like paint.  I went to bed and the next thing I hear is Chris saying oh my gosh how do I clean the washing machine???  I asked why and he said that he had put the rags that he used to stain the end tables into the washing machine because the guy at Lowe's told him they were washable.  He told me NOT to look at the washing machine until he got it cleaned.  Thankfully he got it clean with paint thinner and washing several loads of bleach through it.

Chris told me not to look at the washing machine.  I freaked out when I eventually saw it!  I'm just glad that he get it all off and that it still works.

Embellished Blue

Last June I posted a blog post called Dreaming talking about my big plans for our spare bedroom.  Well I finally got a huge leap on the room by finally painting it Embellished Blue.  I was really worried that it was going to be to bright but I absolutely LOVE how it all turned out.

I love how the color turned out!

I also decided to paint the bed in there black since I really don't like light colored furniture.  I know some people are going to be really upset that I painted wood instead of staining it but I wanted a black bed and it was cheaper for me to paint it.  Now the end tables that were in the room will eventually be stained.  But I've got to save up some money to do that, recover my childhood chest, get my dream light fixture and to buy new curtains.  All of that will have to wait until after we get back from Europe.

The finished product!!

Highs and lows

When we bought our house several years ago we thought that it was a little odd that the previous owner had installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen.  We said that we were going to eventually take it down.  But it came in handy when we have tons of people over or when Chris is making big meals.  It really keeps the kitchen cool when you're baking or cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving.  We leave all of the ceiling fans running all day and night during the summer to keep the house cool. 

Well on Saturday the ceiling fan in the kitchen finally burnt up.  The light still worked but the fan itself was dead and it started to smell.  So we headed down to our favorite neighborhood Home Depot to look for a new one.  I now know more than I ever wanted to know about ceiling fans!  We started off buying one that I really loved but it didn't produce enough air so we had to return it.  I found several that I wanted that either didn't provide enough air or enough light.  After several hours of looking we finally decided on one.  Let's hope that nothing else decides to break in the kitchen.  I've already had to replace the dishwasher this year!

The old ceiling fan, don't look to closely it's dusty!

The box claimed it would take 5 minutes to put up.  It took us an hour and a half!

The finished product looks pretty close to the old one but it puts out more light.