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?

Junior Varsity Quilt

I was trying to decide on a quilt for my little boy's room.  As I was browsing through the Pottery Barn Kids Catalog (which I do quite frequently) I found the Junior Varsity Bedroom and fell in love.



 However, love does not always equal attainability and I knew there was no way I would ever be able to shell out that much money for a quilt.  Therefore, I had to recreate it.  I had never made a quilt before, so it was quite a daunting task I had ahead of me.  I had my mom help me decide what size it needed to be and then I set out to find all of the different types of fabric I would need.  This is a lot easier said than done.  I would have thought that with Plaid being all the rage it would have been a breeze to find different colors and types.  Boy, was I wrong.  After shopping online for what seemed like months, I finally found all of the patterns I was looking for.

Now the hard part.  Cutting it out and putting it all together! I am not going to lie and say it was easy.  It was NOT! It also took me FOREVER.  Luckily, we hadn't moved him into his new room yet, so I had some time to get it done.  Also, I can't even begin to tell you the pride I feel when I look at his cute custom quilt.  I hope someday he appreciates it as much as I think he should!

The great thing about making it myself is that I got to personalize it a bit.  On one of the squares I did the numbers 668 which are the dates of his Birthday June 6, 2008.  I also did his initials JJC.  The number 89 was my brothers football number at the time, so I put that on there as well.

 

I really really really love it.  The only trouble is, now I have to make one for his little brother and I just don't know if I am up to it!

Painted Growth Chart

My sister and I tried to make some growth charts with paint rather than stain and I think they turned out so cute! We were playing around and decided to put a cute picture on one of them and this is how it turned out:

Isn't the owl so cute? And it matches my dining room perfectly! Too bad I already have one.  Hopefully someone wants this one, because it needs a good home.


To view a tutorial on the growth charts click here

DIY Roman Shades

Again I have been inspired by Pinterest. I saw a picture of some DIY roman shades and knew that is exactly what i wanted to do in my living room.  I followed the link to the site 365 Days to Simplicityand realized that it would be SO easy to make them.  I was then on the search for fabric.  I live no where near a fabric store that carries home decorating fabric so i did much browsing online, with no luck.  I had to go to the Dr. in the "city", so I went to a Joann while I was there.  Again, no luck! I was getting a little frustrated! On my way home, I stopped at Walmart and decided that i might as well check there.  Can you believe they had the PERFECT fabric?! I was seriously AMAZED.  Not only did they have the perfect one for my shades, but they also had the one for my pillows!

But, back to the shades.  I pretty much followed the directions that 365 Days gives, however, I added a grommet to put the pull string through so i didn't have to reach around behind the shade each time I wanted to put them up or down.  I hope you can see that in the picture at the top of the string.

The best part was I didn't even have to lug my sewing machine out to make them.  All it took was a little "Heat n Bond" and fabric glue.  AMAZING, right? I know!  Here are some more pics to give you the full effect.

Aren't they awesome?  I seriously love them.  I often catch myself just looking at them and taking great pride in my gluing skills . . . .