My 20 hour coffee table redo...

Well...maybe it wasn't exactly 20 hours, but it sure wasn't ONE!!

I love the blog Dear Lillie....I hate to admit that I kind've stalk her.....not really, but

I do look forward to that RSS feed email telling me that she has posted something new!

When I saw her coffee table redo, it provided me with the inspiration to finally

make over my ugly coffee table!

 I wouldn't say that I am finished....I need to do some more distressing and

I'd like to cut a board to go under the table so that I can add cool looking

baskets to hide more JUNK!!!

But, for now, it's good enough!

And here's a fun little before....

and after...

Have you ever underestimated the time spent on a project??

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Laundry Room

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my laundry room makeover at Craft-o-manic.


What I didn't share was that the whole project started here.....

I was only going to "reorganize" this shelf...HA!  I added shelf paper and then 
I found about 1/3 a gallon of paint leftover from my kitchen makeover.....INSPIRATION!

Here are some "before" pictures of my laundry room....the color was called latte, but it reminded me of sitting inside a cup of lukewarm hot cocoa.....but it had been leftover (and free!), so I used it!

You can see white spots where I used to have wire shelving....I ran out of paint and wasn't able to touch up those spots when we added built-in shelving a couple of year ago....those spots drove me crazy!

So here's the reveal.....all that this makeover involved was leftover paint, one roll of beadboard wallpaper, and some foam chair rail and trim!

I love the response of my one son....he walks into the laundry room, turns around and says, "Did we get new lights in here??"  Uhm...no......did you miss the other changes??

My total cost was $30.00!

 Beadboard wallpaper:  $15.00 available at Lowe's 

Brushes and rollers: $5.00 

1 piece of foam chair rail:  $7.00 at Carter Lumber

1 piece of foam trim:  $3.00 at Carter Lumber

Wood shelf: FREE!  Wood just sitting around

Everything else:  FREE!  


I just shopped my house for the blue mason jars and

rustic key holder.

And because we all love before and after shots...

Truly...you are able to make BIG changes to your home for very little money!

Now....if I could just magically find a free can of paint that's the perfect
color for my dining room!  


Yes....I still haven't decided on a color yet and it's driving me crazy!!
 


Linking up to:  Beneath My Heart

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Old Farmhouse Room Redo

I have a friend, Lori, who lives in a beautiful old farmhouse...complete

with gorgeous wood trim, nostalgic charm, and crooked floors!

Lori has been battling breast cancer and her amazing life group from our church

came and did some renovations to her home.

As Lori has been recovering, she has gotten the itch to make more changes to her home.

One of the places that she has really wanted to change is her son's room.

Here are some of the "before" pictures.  I apologize because they were taken

on my camera phone so they are very blurry!

The room was covered in outdated wallpaper and just overall had a feeling of falling apart...

Lori asked me to stop by and give her some ideas of how to inexpensively 

bring changes and life to the room!

On a side note, Lori was planning on throwing away the dressers in the picture

above...I gasped and said, can I have one and give it a second chance?

This is what I did with it!

Since Lori had "new to her" furniture to put in the room that was blue,

I suggested a calm blue for the top of the walls and beadboard wallpaper for the bottom.

I also suggested painting all the trim in a bright white and adding 

painted chalkboards to the closet doors.

Here's what Lori did.....

Lori and her mom removed all the ugly old wallpaper and painted the walls a

beautiful soothing blue color.  They added the beadboard wallpaper to the 

bottom and painted everything a gorgeous crisp white.

She taped off rectangles on the closet doors and added chalkboards

with chalkboard paint.

I love how she added a black light and a map of hiking routes on

the Appalachian Trail!

 I suggested she accent with white frames, so she took frames that she already

owned and spray painted them white and added special photos and memorabilia.

Doesn't her "new to her" furniture look perfect!

Truly, it feels like a brand new room!  And mainly, the transformation was

the result of elbow grease and paint!

And because we all love a good before and after...

You don't even notice the beautiful original wood trim in the before pictures!
The paint and beadboard wallpaper just make it *pop*!

Great job, Lori!  This was the type of remodel that I love....I

get to be the idea generator and someone else does all the work!

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French-inspired Craig's list hutch. . . .

The dining room saga....was I even sane thinking that I could pull off a room flip a week and a half before Thanksgiving???  I'll be sharing with you later my paint disaster.....because I'm still somewhat in the middle of it!

I found this hutch for the dining room on Craig's list.......I've been stalking Craig's list for a couple of months.....

I sold a pair of these the same day, so it was basically an even swap.... 

Wanting to save time and money, I mixed my own chalk paint. I used the recipe from Kim at Too Much Time On My Hands.  This recipe works great!

1 1/2 cups of paint 
1/2 cup of Plaster of Paris
1/2 cup of water.

I mixed it all in a washed out applesauce jar....be sure to shake it well!

As I continue to work with chalk paint, I am beginning to understand it better. One thing that I am learning is that you don't necessarily want complete coverage...

I did add a second coat to this (and then a third, but I shouldn't have!).  I ended up sanding off most of the third coat....

Before I got to this point, I had moments of extreme panic.....it looked terrible!  I thought for sure that I had ruined this piece of furniture!

One of my favorite parts is hidden inside the hutch......beadboard wallpaper and thrift store glass!!

I had leftover beadboard wallpaper, so I lined the back and side with the wallpaper!

I bought the glass dishes (with the exception of my Grandma's cake stand!) at the Goodwill for 50 cents each! Some were even half-price!!

I love how the hutch turned out....the color on the walls.....still giving me fits.....

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Can it be done???

As you all know....we've been remodeling our basement since it was flooded in September.  I absolutely LOVE the way it looks.....so much that I decided to move our school room down there.


Until this point, we've been doing "school" in our former dining room.  When we committed to homeschooling our children, we decided that we needed a room that was devoted entirely to doing school.  I'm just not a grab the books and sit at the kitchen table kind of a person.  As a former teacher, I'm just too rigid for that....I like the idea of "desks!"


I just have to first say....I love my husband!  He puts up with my constant rearranging and re-thinking....so, when I suggested this latest move, he knew I wouldn't rest until I was "nested" in the basement!  

I came home Friday to find that he had moved ALL of our classroom!! (insert giddy squeal!)

Doesn't it look fabulous?? 

The other corner is starting to come along,too!

My other motivation for the change is that I am hosting Thanksgiving....I've not hosted Thanksgiving since.......well, since we started homeschooling because it's hard to host a dinner when you only have a table that seats 6!

So I am determined to turn this.....

....into a dining room by Thanksgiving and I only have a budget of....well, about $20 to do it!  

I have a plan....new wall color, new hutch, artwork....whew!

Can it be done??......watch and see!  I really don't know if it can! LOL

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Basement is almost done!

We are in the home stretch of our basement remodel.......if you'd like to follow the story you can go HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE!

This is a picture of the same window about 6 weeks ago....taken on the night of the flood....

After crying and grumbling and complaining and crying some more, I was convinced by my husband to see the "brighter" side......he reminded me that I never really did like the paint color so it was my opportunity to rethink the room....so I did!

I am now painting the baseboard......hopefully we will be able to reuse it.  We labeled it as we pulled it off and not too much of it was damaged.

By the time we pulled it off, it had started to mold, so I wiped it with a clorox-based cleaner and sprayed it with industrial strength Microban....

Now I just need to keep him from getting his little pawprints all over my freshly painted boards!

Because this remodel was completely unexpected (and unbudgeted!), we've been trying to be as cost-effective as possible!  


One way to trim costs was to use MDF.  MDF comes in 1/2 and 3/4 inch sheets.  We bought the 1/2 inch sheets and my husband then ripped the boards on the table saw to a width of 3 inches to make our trim.  So far, we've only used 1 full sheet!

We then had my dad run the MDF boards through his router to add the fancy trim.....he added the rounded edge to the bottom and the groove.....all it cost was his time and he works for cheap.....a Misto shake at Rita's paid him in full!

My hubby attached the trim boards with nails, but we also needed to add some liquid nails to attach them......the same stuff that I used on my bathroom mirror frame!

We still have a cap to add to the top of the trim......baseboards to attach and rugs to stretch and reattach, but the...end...is...in...sight!!

Now lest you think that the room is actually cleaned and organized, here's a photo just to keep it real!!

I used some creative cropping to keep all of the "floor shots" out of the other pictures!!

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