Out of the Closet!

Aww, my old childhood bedroom. The room once housed my Barbie collection and a stable of My Little Ponies. When I moved out, my dad sold the barbies and the ponies at a garage sale and mom started to move more and more of her excess junk into my old room. Mom was considerate enough to leave a bed in there so I had a place (among her junk) to sleep during weekend visits.

Flash forward twelve years and the prodigal daughter has returned home. Mom and Dad have since retired up north and have left me the childhood home. Fortunately, I don't have to sleep among junk in my old childhood room but I was still facing a dilemma: What the heck should I do with this room?

I will be the first one to admit that I have a TON of stuff. I've got purses, shoes, jeans, coats, dresses. You name it, I've got it. My history of small bedrooms, apartments and my husband's and my first adult home purchase, a townhouse, have always left me with a lack of storage and wanting more. I decided that I would fulfill an adult dream of having a huge walk in closet in my childhood bedroom.

After work, I purchased a few closet rods, brackets and a total of ten 96" long shelves. I painted the walls a turquoise blue to offset all the white. I made sure to arrange the rods in various heights to accomodate pants, shirts, dresses and coats. The shelves now house all my shoes and purses. Everything has a place and everything is easy to find.



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All Hands on Deck

Springtime is here! And that means it’s time to get that yard in tip-top party shape! Some yards just need a quick pruning or power wash to get spring ready. Unfortunately, I don’t have one of those yards.

We’re lucky to have a big backyard. Actually, we have a HUGE yard.  The yard is so darn big that neighbors can probably abandon unwanted pets and dead bodies back there and we probably wouldn’t notice. We’re pretty overwhelmed in deciding what to do, as there is no real landscaping, moss covered concrete and a ratty deck.

So…rather than stress over the yard in it’s sad, messy entirety, I decided to work through it in steps:

Step 1) I’d spruce up the deck

Step 2) I’d get around to hiring a gardener to work on the overgrown grass, trees and weeds. And maybe for a few extra bucks, he’d collect the dead bodies (har-har. That is a joke. I don’t have any dead bodies in the back…that I am aware of)

Step 3) Eventually, I’d borrow my cousin’s pressure washer and clean the concrete

On to Step 1. For three straight nights, I worked on cleaning the deck. This consisted of sweeping any loose debris off with a dry brush, scraping as much paint as possible off the deck, sweeping again and then washing the deck down with mold-off bleach (most online sites recommend using a deck cleaner but this deck had A LOT of mold). After washing the deck down, I let it dry overnight.

By the time the weekend rolled around, I was ready to prime and paint. I used two gallons of primer and two gallons of “Slate Gray” porch paint from Home Depot on the deck. For the railings, I was lucky to find a gray spray paint (ooh, spray paint) in “Granite” that was a very close match to “Slate Gray”.  

By Sunday, I had a nice clean deck.



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It's Island Time

My personal life motto is "If you keep waiting for someone to help you, nothing will ever get done." I apply this saying in all aspects of my life: work, fitness, and of course, household projects.

I love my kitchen. I've been fortunate enough to move into a home where the kitchen is fairly new and even luckier that the kitchen (cabinetry, finishes, appliances) is my style.  Despite this, something about the kitchen has always seemed "off". When we moved into the home, the kitchen housed a full-sized dining table that could sit six people with room to spare. There are a ton of cabinets but the pantry is sparse, which means that I had to utilize space that should have solely been for dishes and pots with food items. If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then my heart was seriously lacking something. What could it be?

An island of course!

I've always been a big fan of kitchen islands. I love the utility of it. You can use the island to prep food, eat your food, serve your food and you can build storage in your island to house kitchen appliances and pantry items. The Veruca Salt in me kicked in and I started the island project just like every other household project I start: whining to my husband, "Honey! I WANT A KITCHEN ISLAND! AND I WANT A KITCHEN ISLAND NOW!"

I love my husband but I will tell you two things about him: 1) He won't buy me a kitchen island because those things are expensive. For the kitchen island I wanted (storage space, breakfast bar overhang and at least 8 feet long), the cost would be at least $3,500 2) My husband (bless him!) will not build me a kitchen island. My husband is a man of many talents but home improvement is not one of them. My husband can bench press over 300 pounds, work out 15 people at the same time and move a couch by himself but build an island he cannot.

So, what's a girl on a budget to do? She builds an island all by her girly self.

Here was the plan:

• I scheduled three days (one Friday off from work and all of my weekend) to complete the project
•  I bought two 36x24" and one 24x24" pre-made oak cabinets (pre-made translates into easier since I didn't have to order expensive custom cabinets and I didn't have to do any assembly) from Home Depot totaling $440 (Home Depot was having a 30% cabinetry sale that weekend, lucky me)
• Two 24x96" butcher block countertops from Ikea totalling $100 (great deal!). I originally wanted a granite countertop but due to cost of and time of fabrication (around $1200 with a three week turnaround), I opted for another material
• 6 cabinet panels totaling $36. These would be placed over the unfinished sides of the cabinetry.
• 1 gallon of black flat paint and 1 can of polyurethane around $40

Home Depot dropped off the pre-made cabinetry at 7am.

 

I admit I was freaked out and overwhelmed for around 15 minutes. These cabinets did not reassemble an island at all. I sucked it up and quickly got to work assembling the configuration I wanted and leveling the cabinets with shims. I bolted the cabinets together and then painted the cabinetry black.



By Saturday morning, I was finished joining the cabinets together and had also finished painting. I was ready to move onto the finishes. Using some leftover crown molding I found in the garage (thanks Dad!), I worked on the finishes for the cabinet. The crown molding would add unique detailing to the island but would also hide any gaps and imperfections in the assembly (such as gaps between the wood panels on the back of the island).



I then placed the countertops on the island. I chose an inexpensive butcher block style from Ikea. Because I wanted to have a breakfast bar overhang, I opted for 2 counters and joined them together. I finished the counter edge with some extra molding and used three coats of glossy polyurethane.

Three days and $600 later, I had a new kitchen island!



Disclaimer: My pug, Cans, and I are just posing for a picture. No pugs were harmed in the creation of this island.

Spray Paint: It Paints the Ugly Away

If you read my last blog post, you will know that I am a true spray paint junkie. I love the smell. I love the hiss. I love the smooth effect it has on the item that you are spray painting. I am just amazed at how a small can of paint, in the right color and finish, can transform the ugliest item into the most interesting piece in the room. Spray paint is magic!

This weekend, I worked on finishing up my guest room project (which was 75% done). I am really happy with the guest room results but I still felt that the room needed a few more accessories, like an art piece on the wall opposite the bed and a chair for guests to throw their junk on. After my usual treasure hunt in the garage, I found the most hideous, atrocious and tackiest lamp (thanks Dad!).



If I wasn't such an optimist when it comes to salvaging household items, this lamp would have ended up in the dumpster. The lamp consisted of iron green vines that led up to faded red roses and was covered in at least three layers of dust, dirt and grime. After a serious cleaning with a damp cloth, I tried to decide what to type of life this new lamp would lead. I went to Home Depot and tried to decide on a spray paint (yum, spray paint) color. Here were the options:

White high gloss - I love the effect of high gloss and I think this lamp would look awesome in white. However, white combined with the vine and flower detailing of the lamp just screamed shabby chic. Don't get me wrong. I am not a shabby chic snob and am actually a fan of this style but shabby chic doesn't have a place in the new guest room; and the lamp would definitely look out of place.

Slate Blue satin - Slate Blue satin is one of my favorite spray paint colors (most of the pieces in the new guest room are painted in this shade of blue). Honestly, part of me wanted to color the lamp in Slate Blue because I had two cans leftover from a prior project and well, I am cheap. I even gave the lamp a once-over in Slate Blue. As much as tried, I couldn't bring myself to love the lamp in Slate Blue. Instead of giving new life to the lamp, it just seemed to dull down the vines and the flowers and made it look drab.

Candy Apple Red high gloss - Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner! I previously used this red on some other accessories in the room and loved the effect. This is a big bold color and I wasn't sure how it would show on such a big piece like the lamp. I was afraid it would look gaudy. After giving a once over on the lamp, I loved the result. The lamp not only looked cleaner but more vibrant and alive. The lamp would have a new life in the guest room as a gorgeous red art piece.



The best part about this project is that it only cost me $3.74 (I only needed one can of spray paint). Not too shabby (and I don't mean shabby chic), huh?

Here are some other pieces that I've used spray paint on in the past:

Old dining chair from Pier 1 (weird, I still have the dining chair in the garage but the rest of the set is MIA) spray painted in Slate Blue, to blend in with the rest of the room.

Crusty musty dining chair (another great flea market find) made over in white high gloss spray paint and a new chair pad in a classic marimekko pattern. Ironically, this project cost around $14 to complete (around $6 for a can of primer and a can of white high gloss and $8.00 for two yards of the fabric at a discount store). I later sold this chair for $25 at a garage sale. I felt like such an entrepreneur!

Spray paint: Painting the ugly away!

Blue is the new neutral

I've been talking about fixing our guest room for months. Actually, I wouldn't call this room a "guest room" just yet. Does it count as a guest room if the guest bed is on it's side and unassembled? This room was in a sad state and filled not only with the designated guest bed (on it's side and unusable) but spare pictures, office supplies, and old lonely furniture.

It wasn't until our drunk friend Carlos decided to take a nap in my mom's bedroom that I actually got motivated. After washing Mom's beer-smelling sheets, I headed down to Home Depot and picked up a quart of red paint, white paint and a gallon of Newport Blue. Because I'm on a budget and my husband will kill me if I spend anymore money on home products, I did a treasure hunt in my house and found some really ugly nightstands that my dad picked up at a flea market years ago and a headboard that would have looked great in the tropics but didn't really fit in with my guest room plans.

So like the seven dwarfs (minus six of them), off to work I go! I started by clearing out the room and the cobwebs. I should have fixed the guest room sooner. The room didn't just resemble a storage junk room but a haunted storage junk room with all the cobwebs. Once the furniture was cleared I painted the walls Newport blue. Fortunately, the room is pretty small (10x10) so I was able to finish the paint job in around 1 hour.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I decided to work on the furniture (because I'm way too cool to watch paint dry, haha). I took the ugly nightstands and the ugly headboard into the backyard. Every guest room deserves a matching furniture set but not everyone can afford a matching set. And that, my friends, is where spray paint comes in handy. With 4 cans of primer and 4 cans of Slate Blue spray paint, I had a matching bedroom set in less than an hour. I love spray painting! I know I sound like a total weirdo but there is something so calming and effortless about spray painting. I love the hiss from the can and I love seeing how the item in front me just transforms before my eyes in seconds. I would redecorate a room and buy crap furniture I don't need just to have a chance to spray paint. I thnk I need to go to spray painter's anonymous.

I noticed that I didn't have any lamps for the guest room. I could get away with being lampless because the room had canned lighting but I couldn't get away with naked nightstands. The other day I found a great lantern in red at Marshalls for $9.99, which took care of one nightstand. But what about the other nightstand. I thought about the options I had in my house. I could a picture of me but that might scare of guests from ever visting me again. I could place a stack of books that someone would never read. How about a plate? I thought. I could place a cute random plate on the nightstand as a clever spot for guests to place their jewelry and glasses before going to sleep. But knowing my friends I might end up with actual food on that plate or a half empty beer can (ahem, Carlos).

Rummaging through the garage, I found a crusty mustard-colored bird cage. There's no mustard in my guest room. There is a ton of blue, lots of red acccents and some white but no mustard. So what's a girl on a budget to do? I found a can of glossy spray paint (ooh, spray paint) in Red Apple and gave the bird cage two coats. Ta-dah! A cheap skate's alternative to a lamp!

After the furniture and accessories were complete, I went back upstairs and started stenciling the wall. I decided to do the wall that the headboard would be on (I think it would give the room more "oomph"). I then assembled my once sad guest bed and placed some fresh red linens on it. I brought the nightstands and accessories upstairs. My once sad haunted storage room is now a real guest room.