$30.00 Dresser Before and After

Happy Happy Monday. Oh how I dread thee Mondays.... well at least for the first few hours. I'm thinking I have to leave the house a few mins. early today because... Kids go back to school which for me [and everyone else on the road] = more traffic which = fun headache.

Anyways

You remember this $30.00 dresser I snagged at Goodwill? Well I fell in loooove with it's lines and curves and structure and hello - real wood. Need I say more?

It was already pretty decent looking given it's age, with the minor exception of some areas. The top drawer was also missing the handle but that sure isn't enough to deter me away from snatching this baby up.

My plan however was not to paint it. With as much furniture that's painted out there, and don't get me wrong, I love me some painted furniture, the colors are endless. There are just those times when you buy a piece and paint just isn't going to cut it. Paint isn't going to work. I mean technically it could but when I looked at this dresser paint wasn't happening. I don't even think it popped up into my head.

It craved a fresh coat of stain.

{humidity + my camera = not a good combo}

And stain is just what I did. A nice dark walnut. I wanted something darker then what it already was and to flow with the other pieces of wood in the room it was going into.

I did two good coats of stain before I was happy with the shade of walnut it was drying into.

A few hours later she was ready to be put into her new 'home'. I'm not sure what my constant need to refer to furniture as 'she', oh well. I even refer to my car and my motorcycle as 'she' too... Maybe because I have a house full of boys, so inanimate objects fill my void, ha.

If you were wondering where I put the dresser and if you guessed that I had put it in the dining room you guessed right. Here is the space before^

And now after, with the dresser. It's my 'new' buffet table, granted it's a dresser but pffft, still holds all of my paper plates, napkins, utensils, sushi set, small appliances [waffle maker, George Foreman, chopper....etc] and placemats. Does the job pretty good and I still have a few drawers left over with extra space for other things.

Don't mind the lamp. That's the next thing to be 're-done'. I snagged that up for $7.00 when I bought the dresser. I actually kind of like the gold finish to it but... eh, we'll see. As for the shade, it didn't come with one, so for the time being I took the shade from the lamp that was in there previously and just put it on this one. It's all just visual for me right now, trying to decide what color [if any] I will be doing the lamp over in.

Before

 

After

All in all I am so happy with it. I'm glad I went with stain. No way I could cover up all that wood grain. You might have also noticed I kept the same hardware. I loved the handles, they were so detailed and vintage looking that after a good cleaning they went right back on. I'm still not sure what im going to do for the drawer with the missing handle. I ended up moving it to the bottom [the middle section] so it didn't look as noticeable that the drawer was, in fact, missing a handle.

When you buy furniture to refinish, how do you decide on whether to stain it or paint it? Is it one of those things you just know immediately upon seeing it, or after a few test sessions, do you then figure out what direction you will be taking with it?

And don't forget! All week is Blogoversary week here at Little Brick House!!

Wine and Dine {Dining Room}

Not much has changed about the Dining room since the last time I posted about it. I took down a photo and hung up two white Target frames [which have to see some photos or some sort of art in them.... I know, im bad]. I took the photos and art that were on the shelf I made and replaced them with some more white frames. At least these have photos in them.

Still kind of bland I think, but definitely room for potential. As you can see I put 4 white frames [with photos] on the little wall shelf. I might upgrade to some bigger frames, about the size of the two you see hanging up on the adjacent wall.

....and a new lamp. I don't like that one anymore. At least not for the Dining room anyways.

The 'wineglass' wall is also pretty down with the blah right now. I'm thinking of making some bigger, chunkier shelves to hang there instead of those two measly craptastic ones I currently have. That way I can add picture frames and other accessories instead of just wine glasses.

I have yet to finish the panty to match the rest of the dining room. I know the last time I posted a few of you mentioned putting up some wallpaper which I LOVE that idea.

A nice bold [or soft] pattern? However, our walls are textured so im not sure how well wallpaper would look or how easily it would be to put up. Thoughts? Ideas?

Raise the Curtain

Another weekend is coming to a close here at our house and I am so excited to show you what I worked on these past two days. Yesterday we were in Destin because I was on a mission to find my next lens I am currently wanting [AF-S DX 35mm] sadly... Best Buy only carries it online so I will have to order it and pick it up at the store, but thankfully we made that trip out there yesterday because right before we stopped to eat some lunch we headed to Old Time Pottery and lately they have started to sell fabric which I am totally giddy about.

So after we walked around the massive warehouse of a store, I stopped by the table where they have all their fabrics and immediately found the one.

The one as in new curtains for the dining room! Hello!

It's made by Dwell Studio for their 2009 line. After some research I found this fabric in blue, on Amazon, selling for close to $16.00 a yard. Old Time Pottery sells their fabric for $4.99 a yard... all of it. Shapes, colors, sizes, textures.. you name it, it's all $4.99 a yard.

The bunch that I bought came in 5yrds and I paid $24.95 for it... So can I tell you how even more giddy I am?!

Before I had some makeshift white bed sheet turned curtain, hanging in the window. I love me some white curtains however that's what is currently hanging in the living room so I knew for sure I wanted something different for the dining room.

I just love the color and the pattern. This was the only QTY that Old Time Pottery had on their Fabric table so I knew it was my lucky day!

After some much needed time spent with my sewing machine, I finished with full length curtain panels for the dining room.

And because I ran out of white thread and don't currently have any yellow, I sewed them using a light blue thread and oddly enough it's almost an exact match to the wall color.

I really like how they turned out and love even more how well they go in the dining room.

I never would have thought I was going to make some new curtains for the dining room this weekend. I knew it was one of the things on the list for the [dining room] but it was one of those 'i'll get to it when I get to it' type deals. I for sure thought I was going to get a new area rug for this room before curtains but hey... I'm not complainin'.

I love how spontaneous life is. You try and follow a plan and every now and than things just pop out at you when you least expect it and the rest just all falls into place!

Mirror Mirror off the wall

I have had my eye on those little wall shelves.. ya know... the kind that you can place frames on? What are those called? Im not sure. Im going to call them frame shelves [I like being self-explainatory]. Anyways this weekend I decided I wanted to make one. We have quite a bit of scrap wood in the 'garage' so all I needed was a drill, screws, wood filler, sand-paper and some paint.

I would have even cut the wood myself but at that moment, once I measured the boards out, I was wearing a tank top and seeing how Josh already had the table saw out I figured he mine as well do it [I have this thing in my head that if im wearing something along the lines of a long sleeve than I am nothing short of invinsible].

So once my boards were cut, I pre-drilled some holes, put some screws in, followed by some wood filler...

Like so peeps... like so. Doesn't that just look so simple?? ...Well it was!

I also want to note that this shelf is far from perfect. As you can see I have 3 different types of wood. One of those being plywood [lol!].. but it was free, recycled and it works.

So here is the wall with the large mirror in our dining room before. I liked it but at the same time it was a little to formal for me. Almost like it's expected... Ya know what I mean?

So with the mirror off the wall, I measured some painters tape to the length of my newly painted [white] frame shelf and centered it on that long wall.

Using my trusty [p.o.s] stud finder... I marked where the studs were, on the painters tape.

Once I had my markings for the studs on the painters tape, I transferred the tape to the back of my frame shelf. As you can see from the photo I used hooks to hang the frame shelf instead of drilling holes through the wood and into the stud.

-I also scored these hooks for free. By taking them off the back of the mirror. [Not to worry, I can still hang the mirror up!].

Lastly... frame shelf successfully hung and assembled with some various pieces of art, fabric and photos.

I think it was just the character this wall needed.

The orange paintings I made this weekend, which you can read more about here. The frame with the flowers is some of my colorful fabric that I had bought at Joanns a few months back and to the far right is a simple light green palm leaf print and one of my bird prints.

So... any ideas where or what I should do with the mirror that used to be on this wall?

*******************************

Don't forget to enter my giveaway going on at Spunky Junky for a chance to win a Free print from my shop [any print of your choosing]. Contest ends on Sunday by 4PM [central time].

Dining Room Reveal - Round 1

I am back with my after, er... um... well kind of after, of the dining room. I say 'kind of' because all I have really done is paint the walls, added a few more accessories and painted the lamp over. There is still more to do with this room but I absolutely love the color and how it turned out that there was no way I could make y'all wait on seeing some paintage.

Here is the Dining room before. Nice and bright, right? But honestly... it's a little 'to bright'. Not in the sense of light but in these sense that everything just seems to white and than there you have this brown table plopped in the middle of the room.

Another shot... view of the 'Panty' [laugh out loud people, laugh out loud].

Ta-da! Doesn't it make the room just seem more vibrant? More filled with life?

As you can see my orange frame from TJMaxx that started it all...

And my fat green flower pot... which I do have a nice plant to put inside of it, waiting right out on the back patio. It will than be placed in the center of the table :)

The pantry is still the same as it was before. I am still undecided on what color to paint it. Whether im going to go with the same color as the walls or something different.

I have some plans for the wine rack and also some more ideas for art and pictures for the walls.

Some of the Azaleas I cut from our massive collection of blooming Azalea bushes in the side yard. Love these flowers and how bright they are!

So there you have the first part of the After[s] of our dining room. Other plans for this space include, [possibly] a new area rug, new fabric for the seat cushions, wall art and possibly some more fun fabric to add to the white curtain panels that are now FINALLY on the windows. You might have noticed in the before shots that there was a random curtain rod above the curtain rod that was already on the window... I put that one there months ago in the attempt to finally hang up two panels I made out of a large white Queen-sized bed sheet. I guess it only took me painting an entire room to finally make them!

To re-cap, visit this post to see the details about what paint color we chose!

Stay tuned for Round 2!

Fit for a King

The other day you might remember when I posted about Dining room inspiration and how I had gone on a quick lunch break trip to TJMaxx and bought a large green-orange pot and a quatrefoil orange print frame. Well this weekend after some spring cleaning I started to think more and more about the dining room. Right now the paint that is up on the walls is Valspar's Montpelier White, which is a really like color with a very tad hint of blue in it... but in the end, if you look real fast, it looks like plain white. I knew it wouldn't be a permanent color but because when we bought the house every single room was painted the same exact color and it was a rich yellow-y beige [yuck]. I guess I was over the yellow tinge and was bursting at the seems for something that was a bit cooler.

Now that we have been here for a little over a year now, I am really starting to focus more on color and today while Josh was working on the shower [weeeee], I was thinking about wall color for the dining room.

You might also remember in that inspiration post, I posted this color. Well I saw the sample today at Lowes and it looks more green than blue in person. Since I was focusing on something more blue-y than Green, I checked out the other colors near by.

And found this beauty. Kingston Aqua. It's a very nice soft blue and I grabbed a few orange and green swatches to kind of pair it against the blue and they match wonderfully.

Doesn't it just makes you want to eat a large bowl of fruit salad?! That will be great for my 'diet' ha!

So here is the dining room before.

There is the Panty... which I also plan to paint the inside with the Kingston Aqua also. [after reading this sentence... this is why it's important to carefully read over your blog posts. However this is comical and so im leaving it as is ;) ]

And my Kingston Aqua ready to go!

Now I just need to get Josh to go out to the Shed and get me the paint rollers... It's being over-run with Carpenters bee's right now and im scared to death of them things!

Stay tuned for the Afters!!

Inspiration for $13.98

I think because it's been terribly to long, I should give you an update about the Master Bathroom progress. Well... as it stands right now, there is still a lot of work to be done. Since both of us only really have time to work on it on the weekends [all the while spending time with our J-Man] it's been hard trying to get this shower finished. That and a few other things have set it back on the agenda. One being the pool. The first day of good warm weather and it was like the gathering of the algae's. The pool was green over night. SO... after some money spend on chemicals, a new brush and a few other pool supplies, we can now focus on the Shower with the main priority of getting it finished. Luckily Josh already bought what he needed for the plumbing and has gotten the first part of the floor done. Next up is finish off the plumbing, put in the rubber mat, top layer of thin set, concrete board, tile and capital D - Done..... for at least the shower anyways.

But in the mean time my mind has been wandering off to other pretty things.One being the Dining room. Today on my lunch break I decided to take a trip to TJ Maxx and check out their Spring goods. I was head over heels for all of the pretty colors but two items in particular kept my eye craving more.

This large-fat flower pot was the perfect shade of green. It has these white flowers all around it with orange centers.

Which paired perfectly with this 4x6 quatrefoil frame.

The pot was $7.99 which I plan to use as a center piece for the dining table [with some nice flowers inside] and the frame [$5.99] is the start of some much needed color in the dining room [along with some more fun frames and pictures].

These two items are the start of something fun in the Dining room, and for the walls I was thinking some sort of blue. Not a harsh or dark blue... but something blue.

Something along the lines of Pitter Patter from Olympic. Overall im going with something fun, a little modern and 'friendly' for the dining room. I want a space that's just, well, fun to hang out in without feeling to 'traditional'. 

Source

Source

Source

Yum. I'm really diggin' this color thing lately. Don't get me wrong. There will be white within the room, but the pops of color? Yes please!