a tale of two beds

...well, it's really just a tale of one bed that went through a little transformation and now looks like a different bed. Here was my bed before:

That's the only before shot I took, if you can believe it, because at the time this photo was taken, I wasn't planning to makeover the bed. I was just planning to paint the walls. And tidy up a bit! But then, while painting the ceiling, we sort of broke the bed and had to disassemble it anyway. That's when I decided to do this:

My hubby shot this picture of me through the front window, unbeknownst to me. Or I would have worn a fancier face mask or something. Anyway, I'm using a small circular sander to rough up the finish of the headboard.

'Ello. I'm feelin' hot.

Note: my hubby helped a HUGE amount with this process, even though when he came home from work for the weekend, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. (He just thought he'd come home to our bedroom painted a different color.) He took turns sanding the bed with me and then carried the bed up and down the stairs multiple times.

Then, the best part - which I don't have photos of! - is when he took his Saws-All and cut down the footboard for me! It had slats just like the headboard, but the footboard really divided the room and made our very small, narrow room seem even smaller. So we cut down the whole thing. I used wood putty to fill in the holes...he sanded it again...and after a coat of paint, it looked like it was supposed to be that way! Here's a closeup of what's left of the footboard:

And now the whole thing looks like this:

Notice anything missing? The bulky footboard is history. YES!

And here's a closer look at the finish on the bed. I just painted it with one coat of creamy white in a satin finish. Then, I sanded it by hand to get the exact level of distressing that I wanted. And the process was somewhat distressing, too...thought my arms would fall off. But, I got a new bed in the end...for FREE...so all's well that end's well!

And while I'm at it, I'll tell you about the 30-minute dresser re-do that same weekend. Here it is before...why I didn't even bother to close the drawer, I have no idea. It just goes to show that I had gotten accustomed to a certain level of chaos in that room. Very sad.

One of the most unloved-looking dressers ever. It was missing a knob and no one even cared.

I have to give my hubby props on this one, too, because he knows me so well. I wasn't going to spend any time on this dresser at all, because I didn't feel it was very good quality and not worth the effort. He said, "You know how you are...the whole room will be white except for this dresser, and it will drive you crazy." So I determined that IF I were to do anything to it, it would be a quicky and easy job. So I only spent about a half an hour - if that - and did a dry-brush technique (where I just swiped the brush over it with not a lot of paint on the brush). It kind of a gave it a look of old wood, I think.

And then my favorite part of the dresser is the new, vintage-style glass knobs. I just ran down to Home Depot and picked up these puppies and I LOVE them.

So here it is in the room. Much better, I think!

Okay, the baby's crying so I've gotta run. Stay tuned for some redesign pics from a new client, coming soon!!

*Edited to add: This is Part 2 of two posts. Read Part 1 here!

before and after: the five dollar chandelier

Here's a little project I completed recently for my girls' bedroom. I bought this chandelier at our neighbor's yard sale a couple of years ago. I'd honestly forgotten about it until we were moving some stuff around in the basement and I stumbled onto it again. I paid a whole $5 for it, knowing that I wanted to give it a little makeover. Here's the "before":

 $5 chandelier BEFORE: Brass...ugly...needin' TLC.

 So, in the dead of last winter and preggo (of all the great times to choose to spray-paint, that's not one of them) I primed and painted this little gem. I bought new light bulbs and had a lot of fun shopping around on Ebay for just the right chandelier crystals to add to it. (One note of caution: if the crystals you want to buy on Ebay seem ridiculously cheap and too good to be true, they probably are too good to be true. If you read the fine print you'll discover that you are purchasing them from someone in a foreign country and the shipping is about ten times the cost of the crystals themselves. Be sure you actually read the fine print before hitting "purchase" or you will become fair game for your husband's sighs and rolling of the eyes. Not that I did this or anything. I'm just saying.)

Anyway, a few cheap chandelier crystals (and some expensive postage) later, and you can see the result! I haven't decided if I want little shades on it or not. I sort of like the naked look.

Read here if you'd like to see more before-and-afters!

a vintage modern nursery

So, while I sit here pondering the meaning of the universe - or something like that - here are a few pics of my little boy's nursery. I never got around to fully posting about it so I thought I'd take you on a little tour. Up until about 8 months ago, this was our little-used but oh-so-messy home office. The walls were light beige and it was full of office-y and miscellaneous junk. I had a box (full of greeting cards, of all things) whose color was exactly what I wanted for the walls. I took the box into Home Depot and not only did they custom match it, they were able to transform a gallon of paint I had previously purchased for my living room that was an Oops. You know the kind...where you don't take your own advice as a decorator and buy a whole gallon first rather than a quart. That kind of Oops.

 

So here's his crib. The pictures inside the crib don't live there. (Kinda seems like that would make me a bad mom.) Here's the deal: my hubby broke my drill (yes, we each have our own) and I am embarrassed to say that eight months later, these pics are still on the floor leaning against the wall. But they are intended for the wall above the crib. I got this Dwell Modern bedding at Target on clearance (discontinued, sorry). By the way, I love how these framed prints came out - last summer, I bought a children's book at an estate sale...it was dated 1914...I selected a few pages, put them in Ikea frames, and voila! one-of-a-kind artwork. The book only cost me $9.















Here's his mobile...from Etsy shop thewonderlandstudio . He LOVES staring at it! (What the heck, I catch myself staring at it too!)





















I received not one, but two prints from Etsy seller dazeychic as gifts. I have observant mothers - both my mom and mother-in-law took note of prints I had noted on my blog and got them for me at my baby shower. Yay! This one shows a baby boy dropping from heaven. (Awww!)


















So the month before our little guy was born, his sisters (both preschoolers) and I painted a little original artwork for the nursery. I actually had started a canvas years ago and never finished it. To save money, I painted over it with white paint and then let the girls have at it. I tried to limit their colors to the general color palette but otherwise they did their own thing. My only regret is I didn't have them sign and date it. I think I could still at least add the month and year somewhere on the bottom or the back.






I had several paper lanters that were all leftovers from various parties I've had in the past. I suspended them with fishing line over the dresser and he loves looking at those too. I picked up this old bedroom set of dresser, highboy dresser and two nightstands off Craigslist for $80 total!!! How happy was I?? They needed a little bit of cleaning but were just the right look for his room. The extra nightstand is now a sidetable in my living room.




















I still want to find a more colorful throw pillow for this chair. You can see the nightstand here as well as the red lamp and red rug from Ikea. Actually, there are two rugs in the room because it's sort of L-shaped and it was easier to afford two smaller rugs than one huge one. So I purposely chose to get two different rugs rather than two matching.










My huge metal "C" I got on clearance from Paper Zone. This was before we knew we were having a boy, but I was really hoping we would, so we could name him Caleb (as we've always wanted). This was a natural steel-look - I spray-painted it red.























Another print from Studio Mela (aka dazeychic). I love the vintage "Little People".

Those paper lanterns again. The polka-dot one was decor for my eldest daughter's FIRST birthday party...I totally forgot I even had it till I was organizing one day before my son was born. Perfect!

I love his little CD player that looks like a vintage radio. We bought it at Target about five years ago when our first daughter was born. It works great in Caleb's room now!

Thanks for coming along on this virtual tour! Coming soon: transforming a $5 chandelier!

going crazy with silver paint

Okay, so I've decided to share a few of my silver paint projects with you, even though they're not done, in order to ask for your help on a couple of them. But first, here was a spur-of-the-moment project. I had this fake orange pumpkin sitting around. (Don't we all?) Now that my walls are blue, instead of yellow, somehow the orange pumpkins just don't look quite right.

BEFORE...

AFTER... I already had the silver paint out, which I had been using on the projects below, and decided to see what a silver pumpkin would look like. It was craft paint, rather than spray paint, so a fair amount of orange still showed subtly through the silver. I can't decide if I like this look or not. But, when the paint was still wet, I also showered it with a liberal coating of clear glitter. Yep, that's the one and only thing I was able to accomplish with my new glitter before the glitter incident. So now I have a silvery, glittery pumpkin. Again, not so sure if I'm in love with this or not. But at least it's not orange anymore!

Here's the real reason for the purchase of the silver paint. Yep, recently I've been extremely expired by all the cherry blossom branches I've seen on walls in magazines recently. The latest issue of Elle Decor showed designer Cynthia Rowley's dining room on the cover, with wall paper (of her own design) depicting a modern-looking version of cherry blossoms.

Inside was another story of a young designer (can't remember his name off the top of my head) and his dining room also had cherry blossoms. These two examples looked vastly different from each other, but I still loved the idea. So, since I'm planning to repaint my bathroom sometime soon anyway, I thought I'd try out the idea on my bathroom walls. There is tile wainscoting up to about 3 1/2 or 4 feet off the ground, so I'm only planning to paint the area above the wainscoting.

These branches literally took about five minutes. They were so easy. The flowers - not so much. In fact, this is where I need your help! I want to find a stamp of a cherry blossom that I can use to quickly and easily put uniform cherry blossoms on these branches.
I found this one on Etsy that would be perfect, except that it's a typical rubber stamp, intended for use on smooth paper and fabrics. I have very textured walls, which will need a stamp made out of a sponge or something similar. But this one, by Etsy seller Corrabelle (who has adorable stamps, by the way!), is the right size (about 1 1/4 inches). Any ideas where I could find something like this, but appropriate for use on walls?

...and then things got a little crazy and I started painting my fireplace screen. So, could use a stamp for this too, because those little flowers are enough to drive you nuts! As you can see, neither the walls nor the screen are finished. Still waiting for that elusive stamp. Any ideas, my genius blogging friends??

it's painting day

just a quick note again, my friends...I have some fabulous things to post about this week, but for now I only have a moment to check in. My husband left Sunday for eight days out of town (gulp!) and I'm choosing to work on some major projects around the house as a way to cope with his absence. My wonderful mom is coming over first thing this morning and we will be painting the kitchen! (I've had the paint for months now, which is a little embarrassing.) Wish us luck! We'll be covering up some very dark colors with something much lighter...that's all I will say for now...and hope to bring you some before/after pics soon. In the meantime, I have another little redesign to show you, a review of a FAB book, and several other fun tidbits this week (including the answers to my mysterious crafting purchases...you guys are such good sports, taking guesses...and some very good ones!).

I am basically coping with my hubby's absence by staying as busy as is humanly possible - therefore am planning to paint the bathroom too. Too aggressive? Almost certainly! Overly optimistic? Absolutely. But hey, a woman's gotta have goals, you know. :-)

PS - Am definitely feeling like a Bad Blogger for not posting a photo with my prose TWO DAYS IN A ROW. Can you ever forgive me? How I wish that I could juggle all my balls in the air successfully all the time. >sigh<