48 Hour Sunroom Makeover!

Hi Dolls! Our latest project was a little bit of a crazy idea. On Friday, we decided we wanted to completely revamp our sunroom... by the end of the weekend. Yes, really. We had been thinking about redoing the sunroom for awhile, but to do it all in 48 hours was a lot to bite off. Somehow, we pretty much completed what we set out to do in that time, with some minor exceptions. This was the room before the makeover... read on for the reveal photos at the end of this post!

 Here's our crazy to-do list:

1. Empty the room (completed Friday night)
2. Move the sunroom couches (which we love) to the living room, sell the current living room sectional on Craigslist (completed Friday night)
3. Tape and paint the room light grey (the color we chose is Glidden Silver Reflection) (a much needed change in our house full of earth tones) (mostly completed Friday night, but we ran out of paint when we were 95% done - ugh! - so we finished Saturday morning)
4. Find a new white couch (completed Saturday & for a great price... AND we found one with zip on cushion covers, so it's washable!)
5. Find new chairs (completed Saturday afternoon - got two for HALF OFF from At Home)
6. Build a very large rustic coffee table (Ross completed Sunday morning - it took him 4 hours and only $60 worth of wood & looks almost exactly like the Restoration Hardware table he modeled it after!)
7. Stain/distress the new coffee table (I stained/distressed Sunday night, Ross spray painted then installed hardware we picked out to make it look more rustic. Distressing wood is my new jam! I'm obsessed!)
8. Paint the existing black end-table cream (I completed Sunday morning while Ross was building the coffee table - it took less than an hour and I used paint we had on hand)
9. Buy new decor/source unused on-theme decor from other rooms in the house (I completed Saturday afternoon - surprisingly I had a ton of pieces that worked already)
10. Buy, cut and stain 3 large wood beams for the ceiling (still not done - the wood place Ross likes to use doesn't have weekend hours)
11. String and add crystals to the existing chandelier to soften it up (I completed Sunday and boy was it tedious! I love the crystals, which I bought at an antique shop in Lake Placid, NY in early July. I added smaller crystals I already had to make them dangle. Lots of stringing!)
12. Buy a new rug (completed Saturday - bought it at At Home, its so plush and comfy!)
13. Sell old rug (completed Sunday)

Drumroll.... here are some photos of the finished package! We're so happy with how it turned out! It's just so calm and serene now and a welcome diversion from all of the browns, tans and golds we have throughout the house.

 

If you're thinking we're crazy - I agree with you. Somehow though, we finished all but item 10 in just 48 hours. In the weirdest string of events I'd ever seen, we had EIGHTEEN responses to our craigslist ad for our brown sectional Friday night alone... what the whattt? We ended up selling it to a sweet couple from Clayton for full price (a price that was clearly too low based on the # of responses we received, but more than we paid for all of the supplies, the new couch, chairs and decor to redo the room combined).

If you're thinking 'haven't they redecorated this room before?' - you're right again. This room has fallen victim to redecorating attempts more than its fair share of times, probably due to the fact that we've always kind of piecemealed it and never really started from scratch to achieve a cohesive look for it. But all of that is in the past because we've now got it exactly how we want it & couldn't be happier. Point of the story: if you think a room in your house needs a revamp, this weekend is as good a time as any, don't be afraid to cram a lot of work into a short window and if you sell your unwanted items on Craigslist, it might pay for the whole makeover!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Painted Porch, Under Cabinet Lights and a MASSIVE Bean Bag

Hey dolls!

Hubby and I have worked on a couple odds and ends this spring, including painting our porch, which has needed to be covered for more than two years (eek!). We finally got around to it with the help of my family, using two different shades of a paint/stain specially formulated for porches and outdoor wood (Olympic Elite, available at Lowes). We went with taupe and cream to match the house. We also replaced the purple flowers on our outdoor fireplace and added a new natural area with stepping stones. It was time consuming, but we sure are happy with the final product and can rest easy now that our porch wood is protected!

Can you believe it was this ugly before?!

He also installed lights under our kitchen cabinets, which I'm infatuated with! I've always felt that nontraditional lighting sources can add so much to a room and these hidden lights really help illustrate that. This project was a lot heavier of a lift than we thought, with hubby having to drill countless holes in the cabinets and run electricity through some crazy places, but we love the finished project. Best of all, they're LED and use almost no electricity, so we don't have to worry about harming the planet (by the way, check out this really short, but really alarming video I recently came across on global climate - scary stuff!). These photos are horrible - please forgive me!

Last but not least, we're absolutely OBSESSED with our latest and by far ugliest ever purchase: a 7 foot FufSack bean bag.  We'd seen the designer versions of these for over $1000 and were so impressed with how comfy they looked but not ready to spend that much on a bean bag, but after coming across much much cheaper versions online from FufSack, we went for it, and are so glad we did. It very comfortably fits two adults and three dogs and is our new favorite chill spot. When company comes over it will definitely go to hide in the media room, but until then, this ugly thing is the best thing that's ever happened to us!

Thanks dolls!

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DIY Wall of Built-Ins Made From Cheap Bookshelves!

Hey dolls!

I've been meaning to share one of our recent projects with you for weeks, but due to it being my busy season at work just haven't found time. Hubby and I (lets be real, mostly hubby) completed this project in February in less than a day! We wanted something to jazz up our big, bland and empty master sitting room, but didn't want to spend a fortune since we don't really anticipate using the space much. I asked hubby to do a big built-in wall unit when we moved in, but the size of that project is I think what ultimately put it on the back burner for 2 years. On a whim, we decided to use a time and money saving hack instead and I'm so glad we did! Ultimately, I think we have less than $170 and 8 hours in this project, which is minimal compared to the labor and cost of having custom built-in cabinets installed.

Pinterest is literally bubbling over with posts on "Ikea built-in hacks" or "DIY Ikea Cabinets" where folks buy several sets of inexpensive white Ikea cabinets, mount them to the wall, then add frame pieces or crown molding on top and quickly and inexpensively have something that looks like custom built-in cabinets.  It's genius! Our idea was really similar, but we didn't want white, don't have an Ikea anywhere nearby and wanted to add face frames to ensure all of the cabinets looked like one unit.

Since our bedroom is decorated in black, tan and gold, we decided to go with black cabinets. We went to our local Big Lots, where we bought 4 black bookshelf kits for $30 each, which I assume even outcheaps Ikea.  I've seen them at Walmart too, so you definitely don't have to live in an Ikea town to make this work. After bringing them home, hubby assembled them, which didn't take long. To add height and make them look more custom, he built a base in the footprint we decided on out of 2x4s, attaching the base to the wall for stability. We decided to position the middle two bookshelves further out to make it more dynamic.

After situating the bookshelves in place, he attached each of them to the wall. The last carpentry steps were to cut then nail base molding and crown molding to the top and bottom (covering the base and sitting above the top) then, and I felt strongly that this was the most important step, added face frames to each and every board out of inexpensive 1 inch by 1.5 inch pine strips. This made the unit look like one piece as opposed to what it really is, 4 cheap bookshelves placed side by side. It also gives the illusion that the cheap, thin boards are two or three times as thick as they really are. One thing I've found in all of our DIY'ing and home design adventures is that the thickness of your boards goes as far as anything else aesthetically. Thin wood almost always looks inexpensive, and unfortunately, $30 pre-fab bookshelves are made of very thin wood.

We then painted all of the molding and face frames black to match the shelves, paying close attention to match the gloss level of our pre-fab cabinets, again for the sake of cohesion. After everything dried came the fun part - decorating! Leaving the bottom row open for utility/storage, I decorated the top rows in black, gold and white, mostly with things I already had.

True story: I have so many picture frames (I can't ever find the backbone to demote a photo from frame to album, so in our house, once in a frame, always in frame - I'm such a softy) that I literally have them stockpiled without enough surface area to display them all (fortunately there were several in black and gold). My formal living room was a little over decorated, so I pulled several gold items from there. As always, I love to decorate with books, and one of my favorites, The History of Mathematics, was a perfect fit with its rich black spine.

I had two black mini candelabras that I picked up at an antique mall for $2 each that I decided to spray paint gold for more pop. I added the fake white orchid to the table (which was brown, but we painted to match the new unit) for color, which I picked up for 90% off ($2) at Michael's after Christmas. For some reason, the glitter on it made it part of the Christmas collection, which made it more, not less desirable to me, but I gladly accepted the discount. I also added some fake crystals (I keep a stockpile of them in my craft room) to the chandelier for more pizzazz. Stringing the crystals was by far the most time consuming part of my work on this project, mostly because I have no motor skills and huge fingers.

If you're looking for an easy, inexpensive way to fill up a wall and improve your home, I highly recommend this one! Unlike many of our projects, I feel like this one could be easily modified to suit any skill level. Thanks for reading dolls!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Scroll Iron Baluster Staircase Upgrade!

Hey dolls!

Happy Spring! For my birthday I asked hubby and my parents to go in together to buy me scroll iron baluster pieces so that we could upgrade our staircase balusters from white wooden ones. To our surprise, the balusters came in in less than 3 days (stair nation was awesome!) and it only took hubby a couple hours to install them!

Because our staircase is spiral, there was a lot of variation in baluster height, so my husband had to individually cut each one down using an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel attachment (no clue what that is, but I know it lives in our garage). Then he just popped them into place and installed the shoes. Helpful hint - if you're planning an iron baluster project, don't forget to budget for the shoes. They're $1.25 each at a minimum and you'll need more than 100 of them for a normal sized staircase.

We've wanted these since we bought the house (our builder didn't have the scroll option, only basket balusters), so it's amazing to finally have them installed! Our next project for the foyer is probably to add 14ft taupe wainscoting to break up the really tall walls.

BEFORE

 AFTER!

To keep everything matching, we also added them to our upstairs hallway arches that we love so much. These photos from during and after installation were taken from the living room.

Check back soon for our new built-ins in our master sitting room... an entire wall of custom built-ins for only $160 in materials! The project is done, I just need to find time to upload pics.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad