Interior Changes Archives - Page 5 of 6

Extreme Furniture Makeover!

August 11, 2011 By Shannah 2 Comments

Ok, some of the makeovers in the works won’t necessarily be extreme but I like a little drama now and then.

Recently, we had the fortune/unfortune to inherit some furniture belonging to Mathlete’s uncle as he we was downsizing his home. A good bit of it is still sitting in our basement because I haven’t really considered what to do with it yet. I’ve already got plans for some of them though…want to see my treasures? (most of these pics were taken mid-move so apologies for the quality/backdrops!)

Neat coffee table!

This guy has a twin too!

…

Weekend Roundup

August 2, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

This weekend was an especially great one for several reasons.
1) It was a 3 day weekend for me! Yep, I am back to taking alternating Fridays off and it was pure bliss to have an extra day off.
2) My parents were visiting for the weekend. I don’t get to see them as often as I want because they live too far away. Hopefully, one day that will change.
3) We got to go out on Saturday night!

Friday
We did errands most of the day. We visited a potential new preschool for H and then hit up the regular places: Target, Costco, Babies R Us.
By the time we were all done with that, my parents were in town and it was time to pick up Baby E. His daycare was closing early that day so we scooped him up and took him home for some grammy time.
I also convinced Mathlete that it was high time we hung some of the random stuff sitting around our house waiting for nails and hammers to help them out.
I’m sure remember my bunny picture. It’s finally taken its rightful place in the playroom to watch over the kids while they play.

Also in the playroom, we created a new home for all of H’s princess and barbie dolls (yes, it is a canvas over the door shoe rack that we re-purposed).

From there, we hit the upstairs spaces like the guest room and H’s room.

You should go ahead and picture a second frame next to that one along the wall. We’re using them to display H’s artwork that she creates. Yep, my budding picasso painted the artwork you see in that frame. Not too shabby for almost 4 years old!
Once all of the manual labor was done, we settled in for some dinner and playing outside with the kids. The men headed out for a boys night after all the kiddos were in bed. Some of the attendees (ahem, Rock Boy) would suffer from their partying the next morning.

Saturday
Farmer’s market day! H was so excited to take my parents to the farmer’s market. I’ll apologize in advance for the lack of pictures but mom was the designated photographer for the day and I forgot to swipe her camera for a picture download before she left! Trust me though, it was fun!
From there, we introduced H to the wonders of Mongolian BBQ where she was very excited to watch them cook the food but then ate a quesadilla.
Not only were my parents in town for a visit, they were also there to help us out in a major way. We had tickets to go see Casablanca at Wolf Trap and they were going to watch our kiddos. Not only that, they were going to be the ultimate grandparents and watch the 2 kids next door too! Did I mention I was pretty lucky?
So, while the grandparents coralled the kids, we headed out in the beast to Wolf Trap. They were playing the movie with all of the music removed and the National Symphony Orchestra playing the music instead. It was so seamless that, if they hadn’t told us from the beginning, we would not have noticed at all!
Welcome to Wolf Trap (or for some Wasssup Wolf Trap)!

Sshhhh…the movie is starting!

Sunday
Many of us struggled to get up after the fun times the night before. After pulling it together, we headed to our Sunday morning meeting spot: the pool! Then, Rock Boy shared a groupon with us so we could all pig out on Pho (H’s fave).
After lunch came something harder than I expected…saying goodbye to my girl for a whole week! She is spending the week with my parents. She was so excited and I was fighting back tears. I know she is going to have a blast though so I am excited for her.

Plus, she has her traveling companion so I know she’s good.

We quickly went from hugs and waves goodbye to the culmination of the meal swap! Can you say “yay distraction?” The five other ladies from the swap arrived so we could get down to business (more on that later). Oh, and one brought

After devouring one (or three) of those, I settled in to work on the project for my Pinterest Challenge project.

Hope everyone had a great weekend too! I can’t wait to read/hear about them.

A chest: finished

July 28, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

I mentioned here that I was working on changing up a chest of drawers that I purchased on Craigslist. I had it primed and ready for paint.

Over the past week, I was able to get several coats of paint onto the frame and drawers.

Once I had 2 coats of paint on each piece, I added a coat of acrylic. I used Minwax Polycrylic in Semi-gloss.

I let it sitting in the garage for about 48 hours before taking it upstairs. It was pretty humid outside so I wanted to make sure the paint and acrylic really hardened before putting it in its home. Mathlete still insisted on keeping the cardboard underneath so we are doing it up super fancy in the guest room right now.

I had breifly thought about painting the hardware that came with the chest but then I saw the hardware you see in the pictures above on the clearance rack at Target. I just couldn’t resist.
Here is the before/after:

Challenge…Did someone say Challenge?

July 26, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

Remember in grade school (wait, I know people who still think this way) when someone would challenge you to do something and you did it…no matter how ridiculous it was. You know…the double dog dare! Sometimes those challenges work out great and you look really good…other times, they don’t.

[Save Potts Town]

Well, in my blog round-up today, I came across a challenge.

[Bower Power]

Of course, the ladies in this challenge aren’t double dog daring me but it is a challenge just the same. Who wouldn’t participate? (Mathlete, I hope this isn’t a random day you decide to read a post because I know you say I am already too “challenged”).

Want the deets so you can play too?

Develop an obsession with Pinterest. Seriously, one click over the site and you’ll have this completed in no time. I know I certainly did!
Choose a picture (of a home improvement idea) that inspires you to make a change in your home. No requirements on how major this project has to be! Want to build a bed? Go for it. Want to make a some art out of drycleaner hangers? That is cool too. The only requirement is that you have to complete the project in a week.
Next Tuesday (8/2) go to one (or all) of the participating blogs and share your project. Oh, didn’t I tell you the blog stars (you know…blog super stars) that started this whole deal? Here they are:

[Young House Love], [Bower Power], [Style By Emily Henderson], [Making a House a Home]

Why the challenge? Well, for me, I have what feels like a billion inspiration pics (some that I’ve actually managed to pin) but never actually motivate myself to move along with them. This is my motivation.

Join me?

Weekend in Review

July 25, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

We got a lot accomplished this weekend! Mathlete was busy working on my car to get the rear brakes replaced (he’s handy that way) while I (finally) got to spend some time on house projects. We also managed to mix in some fun family and friend time too!

Saturday: We started our day with the farmers market. Lots of fresh fruits and veggies. It was so hot though so we didn’t stay long. We did manage to squeeze in a balloon animal since they weren’t doing face painting because of the heat.

On the way out of the farmers market, we ran into some of H’s school friends and decided to join them for lunch at Red Robin. With 3 4-year olds (or 2 + 1 almost 4 year old), you can imagine the amount of giggles at the table. It was a great time for the moms to catch up too.
From Red Robin, I dragged H to Costco to stock on some supplies. She loves to the “cold room” so we spent some time in there trying to recover from the 100+ degree heat we’ve been experiencing over the past week. We also managed to fill our cart up witht he most heavy stuff I could imagine having to push all the way to the end of the parking lot!
We ended our day with pretty much the best thing for a summer night: ice cream. We all hopped into the car and headed over to Dairy Queen.

Baby E spent most of the time playing with the red spoons from the restaurant.

After we put the kiddos to bed, Mathlete went back out to finish up with my car while I started to put together the little storage unit I bought for our bedroom. We have a desk that is built with two filing cabinets. With all of our files though, it is full and so we have no place for the “accessories” like printer paper, printer ink, etc. I picked up a little shelving unit from Target that I figured I would put together over a glass of wine and the latest episode of the closer. Here are the pieces before their “treatment”

I screwed the small shelves into the two long side shelves. Until all of the shelves were added in, I made sure to leave all of the screws a little loose and then go back and tighten them once all the shelves were in.

Once the screws were tightened, I threw on the screw covers and I was all done. The Closer hadn’t even finished yet so it was a quick fix. I had purchased some little bins and a basket to put in the shelves but I apparently picked the wrong size. So, for now, it is bin-less.

Sunday: We’ve started some sort of informal tradition of going to the pool on Sunday mornings when they open. Usually, we all head there as a family but Baby E went down for his morning nap earlier than usual. So, H and I spent some time at the pool with one of her school friends and her mom (a friend of mine!).
We spent the afternoon at the mall searching for shoes for Baby E. He is attempting to walk so I figured it was probably time to get him some shoes.

I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting and wrapping water bottles for H’s upcoming birthday party.

What a nice chest

July 18, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

As I teased here, I’ve been working on painting. I’m not allowed to paint walls (yet!) because I haven’t demonstrated the painting prowess my perfectionist mathlete is searching for so I am starting small…with a chest of drawers.

I bought this baby on craigslist for $50. It’s solid wood and was once a changing table. The top actually folds down and out to magically transform into a changing table (definitely not sturdy enough my chunky monk but maybe a smaller kiddo). My first thing (after removing its drawers obviously) was to remove that folding shelf. I’m not using it a changing table and didn’t really feel I would use the folding shelf at all. Out came the screwdriver (and mathlete):

Once we removed all the screws, the shelf just popped right off the top and it was time to fill in the little holes left by the screws.

Meet Mr. Putty…hole filler extradonaire

You just press this stuff down into the holes and then scrape off the extra. I also wiped around the holes with a shop rag because I didn’t feel like the scraper got enough of the extra filler off of the non-hole parts.

With the holes all filled, it was time to start priming. I removed all of the hardware from the drawers and primed those first with my Kilz No-Voc primer. For the drawers, I did two coats with a regular sized foam brush (20 for $1 this week at Michaels!).

I had originally planned to sand everything but, when I was painting sample colors on it, I discovered that it didn’t really need sanding at all. It didn’t have a shiny finish or much of a sealant on it to start with. The primer went on very easily and smoothly. Once the drawers were done, I pulled out my foam roller and took it to the chest.

Those pictures are one coat of primer. It was getting late and my bed was definitely calling so I stopped my painting project there. It is about to get hot outside again though and I will want my garage back for my car so I expect to finish this whole painting thing up fast!

Adventures in Color – Part 1

July 16, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

My photographer has been on vacation (if you can call working 12 hour days + weekends at his “real” job a vacation!) so you will have to forgive me for the quality of the recent and forthcoming pictures you’ve seen here. I’ve got the link to the momtography class but I just haven’t ~~pulled the trigger~~ pressed the mouse button quite yet.

I set out on a mission to capture the paint colors in our house. It won’t mean much without the context of the entire room, I know, but I’m working up to that. It will require my entire family to move out of the house for a week, the maids to come and my house to magically transform itself for me to be able to take pictures of it without you being witness to its disarray and just general lack of designer focus. Hmm…maybe a home tour wouldn’t be such a bad addition here? It would be a constant photo reminder that I need to get my butt in gear!

Well, until my gluteus gets inspired, I hope you will settle for some pictures of my walls. What is it they say about watching paint dry…hope this isn’t that bad!

When I set out to pick paint colors for this house, I was really excited about the light we get. I felt that meant I could really take advantage and use some richer/deeper colors in there. Some days, I am so happy I did that and others…well, let’s just say that I am saving my pennies for the painters just in case that whim turns into a real “I hate this color” problem. I’m not scared to paint regular rooms but two of our spaces are two story and I’m not the most stable person on the planet (go ahead…make the joke). I will go ahead and note that all the paint is color matched to Behr Premium which has the primer built in. Oh, and if a color isn’t provided it because I have no idea what the real color was and my can just has a formula.

You’ve already seen the playroom but this is probably the best on camera depiction of the true wall color. It’s Christopher Robin’s Swing by Disney.

See, pictures of random walls and doors. Fun, right?

Our hallways (upstairs and down) are this great tan that looks sagey green sometimes depending on the light.

The living room was near impossible for me to capture for some reason. It’s Behr’s Dusty Olive.

The powder room is the same as it was in our townhouse because I loved the color so much that I had to use it somewhere in the house! It is Glidden Slate Green (but it looks very blue in real life)

Want a perfect depiction of how bad my camera skills are? Check out my dining room:

That room is most definitely not bright red. It is Behr’s Red Pepper which looks more like this:

The kitchen connects (via a little doorway) to the dining room. It’s a victim of my husband’s love of tan and is Martha Stewart Natural Twine.

From there, you can see the room that keeps me up at night: our family room. It is the room we went the darkest on because it has a lot of natural light and white trim. Most days, I love the choice. Some days, I wish it were a little lighter.

So, there is our entire lower level! I’ll try to schedule my photographer for the upstairs photos. Until then, I’ll give you a sneak peak of what H has been keeping busy with while mom is ~~bathing in primer~~ priming the guest room chest of drawers.

The (Dis)Organized Home

July 11, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

I’m big on organization. I despise clutter and feel at ease when everything is in its perfect place. Right now, you are probably thinking that having kids doesn’t mix with that type of mindset and you are 100% right. Actually, being married to Mathlete doesn’t exactly work with that whole “everything in its place” lifestyle either. I got over my need for “perfectly in its place” a long time ago but I still prefer to have the house pretty organized and clutter-less.
We have two major “clutter catchers”: the peninsula when you first come in the door from the garage and our (currently furniture-less) living room. The playroom stays a mess but that is an entirely different post!

When we first moved in, I went crazy buying a bunch of organizational “tools” from a type a personality’s dream store. Combined with the things I already owned, I was able to keep control of the mess for awhile. Then, baby E came along and all that went out of the window.
Today, Junior was headed to the Container Store for some organizational tools of her own. Hoping to get back to ~~mecca~~ a reasonable state of organization in our house, I had her pick me up a few things:

1) We get so many papers from Hailey’s school! I think they are the single biggest contributor to paper clutter in our house. I love the pink and green colors of these boxes so I got some in each size to hopefully create a place for me to put her papers each day.

2) The other biggest, child related, source of clutter are dolls. We have the princesses, the fairies and some other random type of doll. I was cruising around the website and came across the idea to use shoe bag to store the dolls. Genius! When I have some more time, I’ll probably try to stencil it or otherwise personalize it.

3) In the midst of all the paper and dolls, we have things like keys, sunglasses and other misc. items that come out of our pockets and onto the peninsula. Awhile back, I bought this charging station that has sections for all of those types of things. Now, I just have to get everyone back into really using it!

At the end of each day, I want our peninsula to look like this:

Our living room doesn’t get stuff put in it daily but it is a clutter problem in a different sense because everything gets dumped there: bags of stuff purchased at the mall, shoes, extra furniture…you get the idea. It has gotten so bad that some of items from the living room are migrating to the dining room making the mess stretch much farther than I like.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything at a store that can just magically make this stuff go to its rightful home. So, that something is going to have to be me! H is skeptical that we’ll be able to accomplish this task…

Do you have a clutter problem or do you find ways to keep your house clutter free? Are there any organization products you just can’t live without?

Light up my…breakfast table

July 8, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

Sorry for the cheesy title there but I just can’t help but thinking of the “you light up my life” song when I start to write about my lighting debate. You can blame it on hours of pouring over lighting source websites and catalogs (poor me, right?!).
As you can tell from the title, we are looking to replace the light fixture over our breakfast table and coordinating pendant lights that reside over the island. You can see the all of them in this (not so great) picture:

You can see that they aren’t bad but I am not in love with them either. The pendant actually need to be raised because they are too low and bang into your head when you are trying to cook. The globes are really dirty with the frost peeling away too. Yuck. I figure if I am going to shop for new pendants that I might as well go ahead and find a new fixture for over the breakfast table too.
We’re replacing the breakfast table for something a little larger and have chosen this one for its great price. After all, we still have another kid to go through and, if the damage to our current table from Hailey’s younger days is any indication, that poor table is in for a beating!

On to the light contenders…
1) I’m a big fan of the simplicity of this one. It even has pendants that pretty much look like mini replicas of the big light available.

Home Depot

2) This one is similar but with a square shade instead of a round one.

Home Depot

3) I love the idea of the exposed bulbs in both of these fixtures.

West Elm

4) I also really like the shape of this one. I can see it over the island and paired with a bell shaped larger fixture for over the table.

Shades of Light

5) Then, there is my all time favorite which I just can’t get my pocket book to agree to.

Acadian Lighting

What do you think? Like any of those? I’m still on the fence about which to choose but hope to make a selection soon. My poor forehead can only take so much more abuse from my pendants over the island!

Frame Painting…the hard way

July 5, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

I mentioned here that I had finally gotten around to purchasing a frame for the bunny picture I purchased over a year ago for our playroom. The painting project took a little longer than planned because I ran into a few obstacles along the way.
I had this great natural wood frame I scored for $7.50 that I planned to put white paint on:

I started with a coat of Kilz primer to make sure the paint went on really well. I chose the no-VOC version from Home Depot and was pretty happy with how it went on.

My plan was to pull the glass out of the frame to make it really easy to paint the frame itself. That’s when I met my first obstacle…I couldn’t get the glass out of the frame without potential damage to it. So, our came the painter’s tape. I tape around the edges and put on my first coat of primer.

As you can see, I needed a second coat of the primer. After the second coat of primer, I put on the white semi-gloss paint I had for the frame. It’s nothing fancy but does the trick. After I put the paint on (2 coats), I pulled the painters tape off and saw my second obstacle…the paint had bled a little under the tape.
The solution: I grabbed a razor blade and scraped off the extra paint from the glass. Then, we were ready for hanging (well, ready for hanging once the kids aren’t sleeping so we can actually bang on the walls!)

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