Dining Room Update

Several months ago I posted a picture of an inspiration piece that I wanted to copy recreate for our dining room.  I had the pictures painted and the frames finished months ago, but it took me much longer to have someone hang them (we have plaster walls and I don't want the walls to crumble from my ignorance) and to photograph the finished shots.  
After doing this project and a few other art-related projects around the house, I found this is a passion of mine.  I love to be crafty and creative.  I like to use paints, papers, and any other art supplies I can get my hands on.  I love seeing the transformation and I love the sense of pride and accomplishment when I look at the finished product.  I've definitely learned I need to do more of it because it truly makes me happy.

For a refresher, here was the inspiration:

After I painted the prints, I had to apply gold leafing to the natural picture frames.  My fingers were gold for days!  I used a piece of cheesecloth to apply it.  

And now for the big reveal...

I painted a total of 4 different designs, 2 for each side of a window in my dining room.  

To show how the gold blends with the room, here's one of the other walls.

Now I just need to finish out that wall with some simple drapes and that room will be finished.  We've only lived in this house for a year and a half now!
Have you tackled any art projects lately?  

Living Room Update

Well it's nearly been 4 months since we moved into our new house and I'm finally ready to post an updated picture of our living room space! You may recall, I hired the talented, Abby of A Delightful Design, to assist me in this project. Being able to mark one thing off my list was such a nice treat! Abby was fantastic and even though I had some reservations on some of her suggestions, I knew she knew best and went with it.

I couldn't be happier with how the space is evolving. It's not finished yet but the progress thus far is exactly what I wanted. How did she know? We only talked on the phone for a few minutes, yet she somehow figured out my style in that short conversation. That's why she's so successful at what she does!

As a refresher, here's what our space looked like with our old furniture haphazardly placed in the room.

And here was Abby's mood board:

I loved the pops of color against an otherwise neutral palate.  I made a few minor tweaks and here's where we are now.

What do you think?  I still need to address the wall above the chaise part of the sofa but this half of the room is otherwise complete.  I love coming into this room because it's now so light and airy - I'm pretty sure those were the 2 words I used to describe how I wanted the room to feel.  Great job, Abby, you nailed it!

 

The Dresser Reveal

I apologize for making you wait so long for the big reveal!  I had no idea I was creating such suspense.  It was honestly because I hadn't taken a good enough picture yet!  So without further ado, here she is in all her glory.

And since everyone likes a good before and after, here's a refresher.

Before:

After:  

So what do you think?  I love the way it turned out, especially those feet!

A Dresser Transformed

One caveat of moving is that all of your furniture might not fit.  I had considered the spacing element, but what I failed to consider was the height limitations of our stairs.  Unfortunately, 2 of our bedroom pieces (along with our box spring) were not able to fit up our stairway.  Our closet is large enough to compensate for the missing pieces but we were left with an open space that needed to be filled and we were missing a place to house our tv.

I wasn't so sad about losing the pieces of furniture, I was sad because I'd have to sell them, knowing good and well I wouldn't get anywhere close to what I paid for them.  Luckily, my mom was able to use our dresser as a buffet/storage piece for her dining room, leaving us with only the armoire to sell.

So I wasn't real excited to throw down a big chunk of change on another piece of furniture.  I looked at IKEA but I wasn't impressed with the quality.  Sure it was inexpensive, but if I was going to spend $300, I would rather buy something nice.  I had in my head that I wanted a piece that I could paint.  I had seen so many inspiration pictures floating around of transformed pieces and I wanted one too!

Exhibit A:

Not really my style but you get the point.

Exhibit B:

 Only a mere $1350 on Joss & Main!  

So I began scouring Craigslist and various consignment shops around town.  I kept coming up with nothing.  I got frustrated because I saw so many awesome finds of fellow bloggers and wondered why my city didn't have more thrift-type stores.  Determined, I looked in the yellow pages online and discovered a thrift store minutes from my office.  

I remember pulling in, talking to my mom, telling her I was about to go in a thrift store but I wasn't going to tell her where it was because I knew she'd be nervous.  Somewhat reluctantly, I went in, totally expecting to find nothing but old, stained, smelly furniture.  Wrong!  I found this beauty.

What?  You don't think it's beautiful?  But look at the bones!  It looks identical to the black one above from Joss & Main but the difference?  It was $20!  And an added bonus, it's Bernhardt!

I had read a lot about Annie Sloan's paint and was enticed by the no sanding, no priming, just paint technique.  For someone who likes instant gratification and is otherwise very impatient, it seemed like it was meant to be.  With paint and wax in hand, I was ready to tackle the project.  

It wasn't long before I was cursing all the hardware on the dresser, the very same hardware that had attacted me to the piece in the first place!  I was determined to keep it in tact, so I removed the removable ones and painted around the corner pieces.

 

One thing I didn't like about the dresser from the beginning was the height.  I wanted it just a tad higher so the top was above the height of our bed, not below or even with it.  I got the idea of attaching some feet or legs to the bottom of.  Upon searching, I found that I would really escalate the price of my cheap find if I bought these legs I found online.  Dang it!  

I thought all hope was lost until I hired a handyman to do a few odd jobs around the house.  He also repairs furniture and didn't even blink an eye when I mentioned adding legs to the bottom of the dresser.  His only question was, "How high?"  

And just like that, the dresser had a whole new look.

Dying to see the finished result?  Tune in later this week for the big reveal!

A Little Update

Being the type-A personality that I am, it pains me to show you this work in progress.  In the same vain, I also can't stand to keep it from you anymore.

You may recall that we hired Abby, from a Delightful Design to help us tackle our decorating delimmas for our new living room space.  She has been a delight to work with and I can only assume she got her moniker for her carefree spirit!
 
Let's bring you up to speed.  Our original space had great bones.  After all, something had to attract us to this lovely home.  I assure you it wasn't the appeal of packing up, moving, and losing some favorite pieces of furniture due to size!  So here was our living room before we moved in.

Before:

This is the before of the bookshelves.  

The bookshelves cover the entire length of the longest wall and are the main focal point of our living room.  While beautiful and great for storage, they were a bit underwhelming on design.  

Abby proposed that we wallpaper the backs of the shelves with grasscloth.  Yikes!  I hate wallpaper and I've never used it (the primary reason I hate it).  It's so permanent, what if I don't like it, isn't grasscloth outdated?  These were the thoughts running through my little pea brain.  After going to a local shop and discovering it was very much back in vogue, I began to be able to breath a little easier.  Maybe she's not crazy.  Maybe she does know what she's talking about, I thought to myself.  Wes, who was also skeptical at first, began to turn the corner as well.  We finally bit the bullet and ordered it!

When it arrived, I was still so nervous about tackling the installation.  It haunted me on the kitchen counter for over a week before I finally opened the package.  I had read somewhere about using a hot glue gun to hang fabric in the back of kitchen cabinets, so I thought that might be a less permanent solution for me as well.  I began my internet search and found a blogger who used spray adhesive for the very same grasscloth project.  I scampered to the dredges of hell Walmart to buy my supplies.  Of course there couldn't just be 1 type, no there were 4.  I grabbed the one that said semi-permanent because of my aforementioned phobia.

Fast forward to my weekend project.  Silly me, I thought I could tackle this job alone.  I also thought I could knock it out while Sawyer took his 1 1/2 hour nap.  Wrong on both accounts.  Long story short, the spray adhesive did nothing.  Nothing!  Probably shouldn't have gotten the semi-permanent for such a heavy material.  1 lesson learned.  After yelling at Wes, spraying myself with adhesive, burning myself with the glue gun multiple times, running out of grasscloth and having to piece it, and taking 3 days to finish the installation, I present to you the final product (minus the shelves being styled, of course).

After:

 

 

And here's a before and after, side-by-side.  (Note:  Yes, that is the UK game on the tv!  Go Cats!)

What an amazing transformation!  We are beyond pleased with the way it turned out and feel it adds so much warmth to the room.  It really brings the shelves to life and now we're anxiously awaiting Abby's design touch so that we can style away!

And as an added bonus, here's a picture of our drapes that were finally hung a couple of weeks ago.  If I've learned one thing in the 2 months we've lived in this house, you don't mess with plaster unless you know what you're doing!  I'm happy to say we've found an expert and it's neither of us!

Stay tuned for more reveals!  Next up is the new sofa with fun pillows that tie the space together!

The New Norm

Most of the boxes have been unpacked, i.e. the entire kitchen!  I do have my priorities.  After all, the kitchen was a huge selling factor of the house, so clearly I was most excited to get in there first. 

After a few trials and tribulations with the double closings (our buyers had some issues with their bank that postponed their side for a bit), a few major pieces of furniture that wouldn't fit up the stairs, and a first night christening of vomit, the house is officially ours!  It already feels like home and we feel so blessed to call it our own.

I had to take some extra keys over to our old house and it was a very odd feeling walking in.  It had already become someone else's house to me and I felt like a visitor.  When we left it for the final time the night before, Wes was a little emotional and nostalgic.  Not me.  I never turned back.  I guess that's how you know you're making the right decision.

I had thoughtfully orchestrated where each piece of furniture was to go.  I had a place for almost everything and was able to sell the remaining pieces on Craigslist (where has that been all my life?!).  Well sometimes the best laid plans don't pan out the way you had envisioned.  Unfortunately, our master bedroom took the brunt end of the pain.  Our armoire, dresser, and box springs are sitting in our entryway, none of them able to make it up the stairs.  The ceilings were too low and the pieces too big to make them fit.  I'm still holding out hope that I can take the molding off the top of the armoire but without taking the banister off, the other pieces are no-gos. 

After an exciting and exhausting day, we were all ready for bed.  No one had any trouble going to sleep that night.  We were all sleeping peacefully until about 3:30am when we heard Colin crying loudly.  Wes jolted out of bed, only to find Colin had gotten sick all over his bed.  He left a trail all the way to the bathroom.  Wes and I just looked at each other and said, "Well the house is officially ours now!"

I have a new routine at night.  I used to put the kids to bed and then play night watchman from my bed as I watched tv and played on the internet.  Well our bedroom is too fancy for it's own good and our old box tv doesn't work in there with the fancy wiring.  So I have literally watched about 10 minutes of tv since Friday.  That has given me a chance to get more boxes unpacked, so I guess I'm not complaining.  Hopefully that will be remedied soon.  90210 comes on tonight and I surely can't miss that!

The floors creak, the gas smells, not everything is in it's place, but it's home and we love it.

Stay tuned for pictures but I'm too much of a perfectionist to post pictures of unfinished rooms.