Closet Progress

Sooooo...... remember how terrifying my master closet looked on move-in day? Let me remind you:
That is scary stuff. And while our entire closet has been outta commission for the past month, Kevin and I had been using this (small!) hanging rack in our room, with dirty clothes piled in the corner. Not pretty:

There is a leak in our roof right above our closet, so we are only finishing half of it for now because the other half is slightly damp and stained (that's for a whole other freaking post!). Once it stops leaking, we can prime right over the water stains in the drywall and finish it up. Plus, we can drape tarps over the carpet and our clothes to keep them safe.

To get to this point was NOT fun. In fact, it was so not fun that I definitely did a half-ass job. There are still visible seams, you can still see some unsanded compound, and we just painted right over some wallpaper that was in there and that made it ripple. Whatever man, it's a closet and it doesn't need to be spectacular. So, after sanding all the damn joint compound, I had to prime and paint, but I finally got one half DONE:

Despite the hole that's still up in this corner, I like this part:

One more reminder of the "before" of the part where our clothes are currently hanging:

Wwe tore off as much of the dot wallpaper as we could but you can still see it's bumpy here:

And yay! We can now hang our clothes outta the way, behind closed doors!!
Once the roof gets fixed (we're working on it!), I'll finish the other half. Man oh man, I am dying for this to just be done!

Table Redo and Entryway Reveal

Check out this lovely $19.99 table (buffet?) I procured from my local Salvation Army:
You, sir, are in need of a makeover.

I am glad to help: sand, prime, spray spray spray spray black, POLY:
Even your hardware gets a facelift, thanks to some brushed nickel spray paint:


And just where is this guy going?

My finished entryway!

Remember how ugly and boring it was (left side, below)? And how I wanted to turn it into a place to hang an art collage (right side, above)? Well, it turns out hammering nails into plaster walls causes lots of cracks and gouges, so instead of doing numerous little frames, I opted for less bigger ones, see?

I am very anti-prefab art, so I'm trying to fill all the frames with my own random drawings and such. Obviously I have a few to fill still. And don't you like my small little milk glass bud vase collection?

Okay so when you walk in the house, you see this straight ahead. It's a coat closet and three more of my strange drawings:
And this fabulous little rug I scored from Overstock.com:
It just goes to show that my orange living room is pretty much ruining everything. Clashes with the dining room and now the entry way. Gotta fix that, and hopefully soon. But I seriously have so many projects it's not even funny.... how to prioritize?

I personally think the new entry is way more exciting and much more our style. :)

And in case anyone is interested in the cost breakdown for this room:
$10 - Paint (most of which I already owned)
$28 - Rug
$20 - Table
And I went "shopping" around my house for the accessories on the table, so nothing new there.

For just under $60, this small room got a total overhaul. High fives.

50-cent Painting

If you saw a goup of canvases like these at a yard sale, would you even give them a second thought?

Well, for fifty cents each, I picked up four a few weeks ago, knowing I could transform them into something way cooler. These suckers are each a substantial size, about 3ft by 3ft. How much would that cost at a craft store? Anywhere between $30 and $80, depending on the quality. For $.50, I knew I could snatch these up and transform them with the paint I already own to make some very inexpensive art.

So, I started first with this guy:

I set it up in my studio and gave it a quick layer of cheap off-white acrylic to even out the base color:
Unfortunately, because the person who painted that awful original neon gridded design used tape to get perfectly straight lines, it left a LOT of raised edges that remained when they pulled up the tape:

As you will see, this messes with the finished product, but we'll get to that.

On top of my off-white, I painted black using acrylic and threw in some water-soluble oil white to make areas of grey as my true background:Once my background dried, I used a tiny brush and white water-soluble oil paint to make big circles, really sketch-like and quick, nothing precise. Oops, I forgot to get the sides of my canvas with black, but I can go back in and get those later:


It's still pretty wet, but you can get an idea. Once it dries, I will be hanging this in my newly-painted dining room above my buffet:
The problem? You can STILL see those damn raised tape edges if you examine the canvas closely:

Oh well. For less than a buck, I seriously can't complain.

This just proves that you can transform anything, no matter how ugly it appears at first sight. So, just because you see an ugly picture or painting the next time you're thrift shopping, imagine the possibilities. :)

Oh yea, plus I'm linking up to Kimba's DIY Day:

Blue Dining Room (hey, it's better than orange)

You have no idea how eager I was to paint our dining room a different color, so I got to it this weekend.


First,check out the orange in the before. This color is lovely, but it just doesn't fit in with anything else in the house and it's not really our taste.

If you breeze through this post looking at the pics, I ask you to STOP and read this tip because it's awesome and will save you:
a) time
b) money
c) heartache


If you ever need to paint over a bold color such as orange, get a HIGH HIDING PRIMER and GET IT TINTED WITH YOUR WALL COLOR. Got that? High hide, tinted. Genius.


I went to Lowe's and got the Valspar High Hiding primer and the nice paint lady tinted it with my wall color, Valspar's "Gone Fishing." This is the room with one coat of the primer:

As you can see in this pic, I've painted the "Gone Fishing" next to the blue tape. It's certainly not exactly the same color as the tinted primer all over the walls, but pretty close:

So after just one coat of the primer, all I had to do was one coat of paint and I was DONE:
(Sorry for this dark ,bad pic... I just could not get the light right with my crappy P&S.)


So, just one coat of primer and one coat of paint to cover the orange. A big, big improvement if you ask me!
The only problem now is that our adjoining sitting room is still painted the same orange, and it REALLY clashes with the blue, so we really need to finish the sitting room. This means finding furniture so we can then choose a good wall color to complement our dining room walls.

But hey, it's not like I mind the excuse :) I'm happy to have any reason to redecorate!

Silver Side Table

Months ago, I came upon this decor inspiration pic and filed it away because I thought the idea of painting a wooden piece of furniture metallic was interesting and unique.
Recently I saw this adorable revamp on Craftynest and knew I wanted to give it a try at some point:
This past weekend I hit up some garage sales and snagged this little side table with sliding doors for a whole $2.00. Yes, two measly bones:
I had no idea what I was going to do with this guy until I brought him home and eyed my Valspar Brushed Nickel spray paint in the basement. Then I knew I had to go for it. Afterall, if it turned out awful, it was just $2 down the tubes...

So I took off the doors sanded out the scratches on top, then I got to priming and eventually sprayed it with two coats of the Valspar.


Meanwhile, I decided that I didn't want it to be ALL silver. So I sprayed the doors a glossy black:It was pure coincidence that I then glanced across my basement and saw two picture frame matting rectangles and thought.... what if I painted those silver and stuck them to the black doors using spray adhesive? So, that is what I did. :)

And if you ask me, I think it turned out pretty snazzy: I don't think I'll keep this table in our master bedroom forever, because it probably suits the guest bedroom best, but I'll leave it next to my side of the bed for now because I sure do like it!

Plus I'm linkin' up to A Soft Place to Land's DIY Day....

And Mustard Seed Creations' Furniture Feature Friday!

Dining Chair Reupholstery... and a Gold "Discovery"

Here is my retro dining room furniture that I lo-o-o-ve:
What I don't love are the orange walls and the purple/black plaid fabric that came on the chairs:

That's an easy fix with the right supplies:
1) Fabric - I went with Michael Miller's Garden Trellis in black and white. It arrived via USPS so fast from fabricparadice.com, so I would absolutely recommend the site.
2) STAPLE GUN.
3) Fabric scissors or, even better, rolling fabric cutter.
4) Fabric-cutting mat and clear plastic ruler.
5) A drill/screwdriver.

I got going by flipping the chair over and found that the seats were fastened to the frame with just 4 screws in the corners (step 2). Using my drill I undid those and pried the seat loose. Step 3 involved popping up the staples that were keeping the purple/black plaid down. As you can see, there is a goldish layer under that.... it was T.E.R.R.I.F.Y.I.N.G. Step 4 is lay the cushion on the upside-down fabric, stretch it and start staplin!

I know, this next picture is awful, horrific, ghastly... but I include it to show that you never know what an upholstery job is hiding. In my case, the plaid was masking this stained gold ugliness. Seriously, I shudder:

Why couldn't the seats have been lined with dollar bills, instead of that heinous crap?

After a little recovery time from seeing that seat, I pulled my trellis fabric tight and stapled around the entire perimeter under the seat until it looked really secure and concealed the gold. I put the seat back on the frame and screwed the 4 screws back in and VOILA:

My only concern about the fabric is that it can look a tad dizzying from afar. If you stand over the chair and look down, the trellis pattern is lovely. But standing across the room makes it seem pretty busy, and that was not something I considered.
Last night I only did one chair... so this weekend I plan to tackle the rest (pictures coming), PLUS I am going to finish the art/frame collage in my entry way, and I'll include photos of that, too, so stay tuned!

And don't worry, Kevin and I plan to paint the dining room sometime soon..... we just aren't diggin' the orange walls. We're thinkin a turquoise blue, so now it's just a matter of finding the right shade.

Have a great weekend, everyone! And even though it's Friday, I'm going to link up to "Transformation Thursday" since I technically started this project on a Thursday. :)