Garden Bench

I have had this garden bench for about 6 or 7 years and I have loved going outside and sitting on it on a warm summer's evening.  However, it was in a dire need of an makeover.

The poor thing had just been in the sun for far too long.

 I went to my local Ace Hardware and found me a can of deep purple spray paint.  I was wanting to go with the Royal look and I think I was successful.  I gave it a couple coats and it is like a whole new woman! (er, uh, bench).

The scroll work is much more visible now

Child Arbor Bench

I love love love Ana White's Website .  There are so many fun ideas and plans that are easy to follow and fun to create.  I saw this Child's Arbor Bench on Pinterest and knew that I HAD to have it.  So, that is what I told the Husb I wanted for my birthday.  He agreed, but usually that means he will do it sometime in the far far far future.  So, while he was at work, I went to Magnuson's (our local hardware store) and picked up the lumber.  Then I headed over to my Mom's house (she is the MASTER wood worker) and had her help me cut the wood to the lengths I needed them in her wood shop.  Then I got to work!

I had a SUPER bad virus at the time.  We are talking body aches, sore throat, cough, all that fun stuff; but I wanted it SO bad, that I just pushed through it.  I had my little makeshift work bench out in the sunshine and later on I read on the medicine the Dr. prescribed that I was supposed to avoid exposure to the sun while taking it.  Whoops.

I got to a point where I needed more than my two hands to assemble the bench, so I had to wait until the Husb got home to finish it.  He was super excited (sarcasm).  He actually wasn't too bad, just a little worried that I had been doing it while I was sick.

Here I am painting away.  Please notice the crumbling house in the background, now you see why my blog is named what it is.

Because I don't think things through, I don't have any pics of the building process, but if you follow the plans it is super easy. Here are some of pics of the finished project.

This was before I found the spot that I wanted to showcase it in the yard. Isn't just wonderful?

After wandering the yard for a while I found the perfect spot to put it! 

I found these flower pots on the way home from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy (long story, not fun).

Isn't it just adorable?  I am quite proud of it.  I am still in awe of myself and the Husb for creating such a masterpiece.  The icing on the cake is when the boys sit on it every time they have a ice cream treat.  It is seriously the cutest thing. Need proof?

Adorable, right?

Talent Auction

Every year our Relief Society sister's get together and we have a talent auction.  We all bring things that we have created from our talents and auction them off with fake money.  It is always a blast and we can usually score some good finds! This year I decided instead of going with my usual crochet creations, I would use my Silhouette Cameo to create some decor.  This is what I came up with.

I have always loved this quote from President Benson.  The first time I read it, it gave me cold chills.  I have one similar to this that sits on my piano, but I think I like this one better!

What do you think? Which one is better?

Walmart Bookshelf Makeover

Since I have been able to move my books upstairs into my new library (yay!), I had the old bookshelves that they were on previously and wasn't quite sure what to do with them.  After some rearranging in the living room, I decided that I could use them to help store all the toys. I moved them to the opposite corner of the room and thought the functionality of the shelves was great! However, the look? Not so much.

See how the color of the "wood" doesn't match the rest of the room? *shudder* I cannot handle that.

 I immediately knew that I needed to paint them, but I wasn't sure on the color scheme.  I remembered that I still had some of the brown left from the trim that I put up in the living room.  You can see a picture of the brown trim in my post about the DIY Roman Shades.  I thought the brown might look good with a blue painted in the back of the shelves to match the drawer shelves that I have hanging on the wall (by the way, those are the drawers out of my old kitchen.  I just painted them and screwed them to the wall!).  I called my sister, because I always consult with her before starting a project.  Having a second opinion ALWAYS helps.  She liked the color scheme and suggested doing stencils on the back with the blue.  Brilliant! I couldn't decide on a stencil that I liked though.  So then I thought, "Hey! Why don't I cut some vinyl with my super awesome Silhouette Cameo?" And that, my friends, is what I did.




I found these adorable silhouettes in the design library and knew that this is what I needed to cut out!

I put a length of base moulding along the bottom to make the two shelves look like one.  Then I (the husband) screwed the two shelves together at the top to make it more sturdy.

 

I was so happy that there was enough variety to have a different cut out on each shelf.  If you have a Silhouette cutter and are wondering where I found these designs the artist is Hero Arts and there are so many more designs by this artist that I love. 

Now, back to the colors.  Don't they look great?  I almost didn't want to put the toys back on the shelves because I liked it just the way it was!

I used the Bullseye 1-2-3 Primer.  When I bought it, I had the hardware store tint it to a grey color.  This is good for when you are painting with darker colors, because then you don't have to do as many coats to cover up the gleaming white :).  I did rough up the shelves with some sandpaper first to help the paint stick and it seems to have worked.

Next I did a few coats of the brown and then did some polyurethane over the top of it to make it more durable and less likely to scratch and peel.  My boys aren't exactly soft when they are getting their toys down and putting them away, so this was a necessary step.  I also kind of like the way it makes the shelves shine and reflect the pictures.

 

 

How much better is this?!

This is the final product.  Doesn't it match the room so much better? I no longer cringe when I look at that area of the room.  The kids have easy access to the toys and they love looking at the pictures hidden behind them.  Ahh..... I love pretty things.

 

 

Boys Bathroom

It is finally done! I am so excited to share this project.  I love, love, love the finished result.  Seriously.  I love it. So, I don't know if I ever mentioned that when we moved into this house, the upstairs had two rooms that were just the frame of the house, no walls, no nothing.  These are the rooms that we decided to tackle first (when we got to the upstairs, that is).  One of these rooms is now the Bathroom/Library (pics of the library to come later).  The fact that I am mentioning the unfinished rooms is because the house is over 100 years old, so I find it rather odd that it was still "under construction". 

We only had one bathroom and we knew that at some point that was no longer going to fly, especially when the babies started coming.  So, the idea of building one upstairs came to pass.  I had many, many ideas on how I wanted it to be and after a few arguments with the Husb and me changing my mind 50+ times, we finally got it figured out.  So, without further ado . . . . Here we go!

 

 These are some of the pictures after we got the sheetrock up and mudded.  Not too exciting, but necessary, nonetheless. 

After we got the wall and ceiling painted white, we did the stripes.  How cute are they?

I learned how to do these crisp stripes from this website http://theinspiredroom.net/2012/01/05/painting-stripes/  via Pinterest.

Not sure if you noticed, but the window was added after the painting was done.  It took me a while to convince the Husb that it was needed.  You would think for a Volunteer Firefighter, he would not have fought me so much on the safety issue alone.  I am pretty sure he just didn't want to do it, so he came up with as many reasons not to as he could.  I am quite persuasive though . . . and I can throw a serious fit! ;) Joking, of course.

I got the shower curtain from Target. 
It was EXACTLY the color scheme I was searching for, so
 I was super excited.

The picture doesn't capture the whole thing, but I
got the little bench from IKEA. I love the shelf
underneath for extra storage.

 

The vanity and mirror are from Home Depot, as
well as the lighting.  The toothbrush holder and
rug are part of the same collection as the shower
curtain.

I scored the tub off of our local online Classifieds (KSL) for $100.  How awesome is that?!

I got these cheap frames from Family Dollar.  I thought the style was cute, the color . . . not so much. So I painted them.

This is the frames after I painted them and added the prints that I got from Gus and Lula , an adorable print shop on Etsy. 

This print is also from Gus and Lula and the frame is another cheap one from Family Dollar that I painted.

 Well, what do you think?  Do you love it as much as I do?

Kitchen Remodel with Giani Countertops

Well here we go.  I have been putting off this post for a while now due to the large amount of pictures I will have to filter through in order to pick the best ones for the job.  I don't know why it has taken me so long, really.  I LOVE my new kitchen.  The old one was absolutely hands down the most dis functional excuse for a kitchen I had ever had the pleasure of trying to cook in.  The new one is, in a word, AMAZING.  I suppose I will go ahead and let the pictures speak for themselves.

These are before the Remodel:

Are you sufficiently horrified yet?  Seriously looking at these pictures makes me want to run away from home.  It was so bad.  I lived like this for nearly 4 years! UGH *shudder*.  The only thing the kitchen had going for it was the cute curve in the cabinetry above the sink.  I didn't get a very good picture of it before the Husb tore out the cabinets, but you can kind of see it in this picture.

I know that one hole sinks are all the rage these days, but I am telling you; NEVER again.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life, trying to do the dishes in that sink with no dishwasher.  I had to keep the water running the whole time in order to rinse the dishes and then if I came upon something that was full of liquid (such as a sippy cup full of old juice), I had no where to dump it, as the sink was taken.  Seriously, it sucked.  Big time.  Also, the lady that had built the kitchen must have been under 5ft because the counter tops were so low.  I am quite short at my 5'3", but it hurt my back to work at those counter tops.  It is a wonder I ever made dinner or cookies at all.

Now on to the good part.  The "After" pictures.  That is why you are all here, right? Well, here we go.  First off, I will tell you where I got the cabinets and the experience that I had there.  One day the Husb and I were playing around on the IKEA website designing our dream kitchen.  When we finished, we realized that this may actually be attainable.  It was a great feeling, I can assure you.  So, we had to make a trip "Up North" as we refer to it.  We live 3 hours away from the nearest IKEA (how do I survive?).  Lucky for us, we were going up there anyway to see some family and take the kids to the Zoo. 

We went to IKEA and beelined for the Kitchen department.  The very unfriendly staff pulled up our design on the computer and began telling me how my design was "a little tight".  Seriously? I was going to cram all of the cabinet and counter top space in there I could! If she had any idea what I was currently living with, she may have been smart enough to keep her mouth shut.  Well, I quickly assured her that the design was fine and to proceed (did she want to make a sale here or not?).  Well, she then asked me what style of cabinets I wanted.  Of Course the ones that I loved were going out of stock, which she repeatedly told me as she tried to talk me out of them.  When I finally had her convinced that it was what I wanted, we added them to the order.  After some more picking of different necessary items (drawer pulls and the like) we were ready to go.  Except for the counter top.  I just couldn't find one that I loved enough to shell out the cash for.  This is a different tale that I will come back to after I show you some pictures.

Because none of the walls in our house are square and because they are all 15 inch adobe brick, the Husb had to do some framing to make the project a little easier in the long run.  My little brother came over and helped (he is the one with the awesome white man afro).  I also added some pictures of our smallest helper.  How cute is he?

Next up came the building of the cabinets. If you have ever bought anything from IKEA, you know that it all comes in flat boxes and you put it together when you get it home.  Great idea when you are at the store and need to get it home, not so great when you are putting a whole kitchen together.  It took us ALL day to assemble them.  I am sure that our little helpers didn't prolong the process at all.

 Next up came the Counter tops.  I am probably the cheapest person on the planet and I just couldn't bring myself to pay over $1000 for Counter tops.  So, we made some.  The Husb cut them out of plywood (do you think we are crazy yet?).

We found this product called Giani Granite Countertop Paint.



 The website said you could paint over your existing countertop or even over plywood, so we thought; why not? Let's try it.
The first step was to Prime the wood. We used a wood primer first and then the primer that came with the kit.

Then we followed the steps and created our "Granite" Countertop

Doesn't it look great?  The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it still looks pretty good.  Here are some pictures of the finished kitchen along with a side by side comparison of the old and the new.  I love being in the kitchen now.  It is amazing what a little remodel will do.
 

 

 

 

 

Well, what do you think?