Part 2 of the Vanity Face lift! (another no cost redo)

So I had a day off today and my original plans was to paint my new living room... however I do not have my new living room yet due to some kind of error. We were suppose to close yesterday morning but there was a hiccup. The house is a short sale so its been a long process. We are holding on to our patience the best that we can. Anyways back to the purpose of this post. Since I had all of this free time today I decided to tackle Aideen's (my daughter) vanity. I did the stool already and you can see the post here.

This is the before of the vanity... silly me took the mirror off before I took the picture. So it is sitting on the love seat behind it. Dont mind the clutter there was small children running rampant. :) In order to make Aideen's room look similar to Coraline's we need white furniture. I do not really want to go out and buy new furniture if I dont have to, so instead I am painting all of her furniture to be more cohesive. With the stool having the black and white damask print seat I wanted to add some pretty texture to the table top of the vanity. I had an old lace curtain that I had laying around. Remember... I am a craft supply hoarder. I have quite a collection of random things. Anyhow I had this lace curtain and decided to modpodge it to the top. I just brushed the modpodge on and spread the lace on it. After it dried I cut the excess lace off. Then I painted the entire vanity white. 

 So this is what the top looked like all finished up. After painting it white I used Polyacrylic over it to seal it in and make it shine some. I used Polyacrylic over Polyurethane so it would not yellow. On the base of the vanity I used the antiquing glaze to well... antique it. I did not antique the top because I wanted it to replicate the bright white of the vanity stool. 

So here it is... all beauitful, elegant and fresh. The next project for her room will be her bed! Cant wait. 

All materials used for this project was materials that I have used from previous projects such as the living room table transformation. 

No Sew Chair Upholstery

Hi All!

This is a project that I did a couple of months ago. I had bought this chair at a thrift store for $15 and it set around my house forever. I always wanted to fancy it up. The cushion on it was lumpy, the spring was falling out of the bottom. The fabric was dingy. So I first had to fix the bottom. I screwed the spring back in making sure I re-enforced it and then I spray painted the legs a flat black. I used one of the pieces of fabric that I use to use as a backdrop for photographing newborns. I broke out my moms air staple gun and got to work. (I do not know how to sew and honestly a sewing machine scares the heck out of me). I started with the back piece. I measured out how much I needed. tried to center the fabric the best that I could... It is not perfect but not completely noticeable either. I stapled it around all of the edges pulling it as tight as I could. I did the same with the seat but before finishing it up I left one side not stapled and stuff the lacking part of the seat with pillow stuffing that I had laying around from a previous project. I am such a hoarder when it comes to craft supplies. I stuffed it and smoothed until it was full and fluffy. Then I finished up the stapling. On the sides of the back of the chair the staples were exposed and I needed to find a way to hide them. I found a perfect ribbon at Walmart that was like rolled fabric flowers. I bought two spools for $3 a piece. I stapled it to the chair making sure to place the staples inside the flowers where they would be all covered up.The chair was then finished. So for a total of $21 (using materials that I already had) I now have a fancy new chair. This is the same fabric that I used on my daughter's vanity stool. After seeing the chair she asked if we could put it in her room and I honestly could not think of a better place for it.  

A peek at an upcoming furniture face lifting!

It has been a little while! We are still waiting to hear on the final closing date on our new house. The appraisal company is putting a kink in things. Anyhow in the mean time I am still working on projects so that there will be less to do once we move in! My daughter has decided she wants a Coraline inspired bedroom. Yes like the movie. She likes the room of  Coraline's in the other mother's world. Aideen (my daughter) already has a white bed we will just need to jazz it up a bit. She also has a vanity but it had a wood grain look and the cushion cover had seen better days. We started with the vanity stool and that is what I am sharing in today's blog. 

As you can see on the left that the yellowish wood would not fit into the look of the Coraline bedroom. I had leftover white paint from the living room furniture face lift so I used that to paint the legs of the stool. 

 I also used the antiquing glaze from the living room furniture project to distress it up a bit. As I was wiping it off a little bit of the white paint was rubbing off in places. It helped to add to the distressed look. (this stool is not made of real wood) 

 Being a photographer I have collected various fabrics to use as backdrops and such for newborns. I have decided that I will no longer be doing newborn sessions and that I can re-purpose the fabric for other uses. I have already used some of this black and white damask print for a chair that will go in Aideen's room so I decided to use what was left over to repeat it on the stool to tie it all in together. I simply removed the top by   unscrewing the seat from the legs and then using a staple gun staple the fabric to the seat. 

So for basically no additional costs because I reused materials from other projects this fancy smancy stool face lift was ... free. Soon I will post how the vanity itself turned out.  

Thanks for stopping in! 

Leslie

Living room furniture transformation- good bye man cave tables!

So when Andrew moved in we had to decide which furniture to keep, his or mine... well I let mine go. :) His furniture was nice, but very masculine. Black leather couches, big dark heavy coffee tables and end tables. I learned to be content with them. Over the past 3 years the poor tables have been banged up, nail polish spilled on them... oh and just to let you know if you have never had it happen, the oil from the air freshener plug ins will totally strip the finish right off of wood. Anyhow they were looking pretty rough. We are planning for the new house and I would love to just have new furniture but it is not in the budget at the moment and honestly aside from the damage done to the surface of the tables there was really not a thing wrong with them. I decided it was time to give them a face lift.

These are the materials that I bought for the project (well I already had the poly acrylic on hand)

I started with the stripper, this stuff was pretty amazing. I just sprayed it on and waited and scraped it off. A couple of tips- make sure to spray it on pretty heavily you will get more off on the first try. Each table I did a better job on removing the old layers of stain and poly products. Also... I highly recommend not getting it anywhere on you, it burns like fire! 

This is what the table looked like after I stripped the top down. I totally forgot to take a complete before picture but basically the table was all that brown color. (excuse the mess of my work area- I collect things for projects, such as wine bottles)

After doing the prep work I used the PolyShades on the right on the flat surfaces on the top and bottom. The PolyShade is pretty cool it mixes the stain and polyurethane together! It took me two coats to get it to look the way I wanted it to. The interior flat on the left was a snow white used for the legs and base of the table. I used flat because I used antiquing glaze over it. 

This was during the staining process. I really should have taken more pictures but I was just excited to work on it!

After staining the top and bottom I painted the legs and base with the white flat paint then after it dried I glazed it. You pretty much paint it on the wipe it off. It fills in the gaps and grain and gives it that antique look. I then used polycrylic to seal it, I decided on that over the polyurethane because it does not turn yellow. (my cat photo bombed the picture!)

Whoohoo! It is finished! I like it so much better. It looks less heavy and less dark and will look awesome with my living groom design!

Fireplace Decor- Eggs!

Since we are getting close to closing on our new house my brain is running rampant with ideas. One of the things that I am most excited about the house is the fireplace! I do not have one now and the opportunity to have a whole new element to decorate... is wonderful! I pretty much have the color palette for the living room picked out and I will go into that once we move in and I get to post the after pictures! Anyhow I wanted interesting art to go above the fireplace. I wanted it to go along with the color scheme as well as represent the farm atmosphere of the house. I looked online and at first I was just going to buy something but I could not find something that was quite right. I did find inspiration though!

I found this on allposters.com

I loved the advertisement feel to it but I wasn't really into the chicken and  I wanted more blue. So while I was at Michaels shopping (one of my favorite stores!) I bought a set of 2 canvases for 9.99 and some craft paint! I got home and went to work!

The fireplace is red brick and at first I wasn't sure that I liked it but after visualizing my future finished living room I love it. So I used the blue that I wanted and threw in the red to bring in the red of the fire place. I had left over burlap that I modpodged to the canvas to add texture. When I think farm I think potato sacks so I felt the burlap was a great fit. Over all I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. I have some ideas for other decorations for the fireplace. I will post those as I finish them! 

Hall Bathroom $30 remodel!

So after 5 years it was time for Winnie the Pooh to go. His playful preschool existence served its purpose in the hall bathroom but it was time for a mature sophisticated presence to take place. It was also Ashley's first change to make this home her new home. The entire project costed less than $30 (well right at $30 if you include the light bulbs). I save all of my old paint from previous projects through out the house so we were able to use all left over paint. I think it all went real well together. We had a palette of a blue-grey, creamy off white and oil rubbed bronze (and some chalk board paint). We found a light cover for the vanity light at the Habitat for Humanity store for $8.00! At first we had a panic moment because it didn't fit, but Andrew came to our rescue and just pushed the lights together... we didn't know they did that! The beautiful elegant shower curtain was $6.99 and the liner was $3.99 at Ross. The tree pictures were actually photos I had taken while on vacation in Pennsylvania. I had already had them printed for another purpose but they worked so well for the bathroom. I got a set of 2 frames at Michaels for $11.21 (I had a Michaels' coupon in my email!) We stayed up all night Friday night painting while the kids slept and finished up on Saturday morning. For a little bit of money and some great sister bonding we have a totally transformed bathroom! Now we grown ups can use the bathroom in a grown up atmosphere.