Show Off Your Stuff

The top of your kitchen cabinets is a great place to show off antiques, souveniers, and other small items. Oops - my cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. Now what? I bought a 10" shelf and some brackets that can be mounted on top of the shelf (to act as bookends) and hung it over the pass-through window in my kitchen. A doorway or over a window works too. It created instant space to display my STUFF

Warning - Math Involved

Okay, it's not tomorrow, but it's close. Thought I would share one of my recent projects. I had a half wall with a funny little handrail on my stairs which I have always hated. This involved a little demolition. Karry couldn't wait for that part. I came home one night to find he had started to take the wall down before I could take a before picture, so this will have to do.

After cutting down the wall we started to assemble our new balistrade. To save money, we reused the board at the base of the old handrail as our base for the new balistrade. Because it was oak, I bought a newel, a half newel, handrail, and a shoe rail in oak and stained them to match. I also bought 11 primed balisters and painted them white to match the trim in the rest of the house. In all this came to about $150.in

The tricky part was figuring out the measurements and angles. I had to reach way back into my memory to the geometry class I had in 9th grade. Code requires that the balisters be no more than 4" apart, so I used that measurement and the length of the pre-cut balsisters to figure out the measurements for the handrail and newels.

The finished product? (drumroll please...) A traditional staircase which fits the traditional style of the house and makes the room feel larger and more open. Bonus: now I can see when the kids are on the stairs eavesdropping on our conversation :)

Bad, Bad Blogger!

I have been a very bad blogger. All my remodeling projects (some of them unplanned due to a little flooding) have kept me a little too busy. I promise to do better - starting tomorrow! (I'd start today but it's midnight and I'd have to turn back the clock to do it today.)

The Bed w/9 Lives

So this little scenario is how not to do things!  This bed was cheap in materials, but definitely not in time.

It all started 10 years ago when the neighbors threw this bed out to the curb.  It was painted white, and a little beat up, but I thought it had potential.  I grabbed it off the curb and hauled it into my garage where I promptly started stripping off the old paint.   That became quite a project as I stripped that paint out of all those little crevices.  I lost interest and considered putting it back on the curb, looking worse than ever.  

It sat in my garage for about three years, when I decided to get it back out and finish the job.  When I had finally stripped every last drip of paint, I realized that it was meant to be a white bed, because some of it was solid wood, some of it was plywood, and it was made of different kinds of wood.  I tried staining it, but that looked awful and discouraged again, it went into the attic for 4 more years. 

As I was painting and antiquing my bathroom cabinets, I decided to get it out again, and between coats on the cabinets, I used the same paint and painted the bed.  I then antiqued it using walnut stain, but more subtly than the cabinets.  Instead of staining the whole thing, I took a small brush and just swept some stain into the the crevices.   I think I will add finials to the posts, just to finish it off.  

What I learned from this:  evaluate a project thouroughly before I begin!  I could have easily sanded it and painted it 10 years ago and saved myself the headache! 

This project cost:

bed - free

stripper and steel wool - about $10

paint - leftover from bathroom

stain - leftover

time - way too much!!!

 

 

Fabulous Focal Point

Today I'm cleaning up the film of dust that has settled over everything in the house from my bathroom remodel.  So, I thought I'd show off my fireplace that we did when we first moved in last October.  The walls in this room were all white, and the fireplace was in the corner, the walls behind it coming to a 90 degree angle.  I talked hubby into making me a new wall which cut across the corner, giving me one wall over the fireplace.  I then painted the rest of the room a deep red and I painted just the fireplace wall in an ivory and framed it with molding to make it stand out.     I finished it off with some accessories I bought at Hobby Lobby 1/2 price, a flea market mantel clock, and a picture I already owned.  Now the fireplace, rather than the TV is the focal point in the room.

My New Bathroom for less than $250 (Before pictures are on an earlier post)

Here it is!  I still need to put up some crown molding I had laying around the garage and eventually put in a bronze faucet, but most of it's done and it looks like a new bathroom! 

This makeover cost me:

New cabinet hardware and towel racks - $60

Paint, stain, supplies- $45

Molding -$31

New shower curtain and rod - $42

New vanity light - $64

I already the rugs, towels and accessories. (Which were originally purchased on sale, of course.)  

Grand Total: $242

How I did it: 

 Cabinets - I bought a precut decorative wood molding and glued it to the front of the cabinet.  Then I used liquid sander on the cabinets and primed them.  Then I painted them with 2 coats of antique white paint.   Instead of buying the antiquing glaze, it was much more cost effective to buy the smallest can of Minwax water-based stain and wipe it on over the paint.  I did a small area at a time, because the stain dries fast.  I took a paintbrush and stained in the grooves and edges.  Over the whole thing I put a polycrylic clear coat to protect the paint.  I replaced the knobs and drawer pulls with bronze. 

Vanity Mirror - I didn't want to lose my three way mirror and cabinets, or spend a lot of money on a new one, so I took it down, and with a little help from hubby and his miter saw, chopped off the top where the lights were part of the cabinet so I could hang a separate light fixture, and reframed the mirrors with chair rail that I painted, followed by clear coat. 

Finally - I painted the walls in a light brown, hung up bronze towel racks, hung the new shower curtain, and washed my old rugs.  

  

Before Pictures

Here's my old boring bathroom.  The previous owners tiled the floor and the bathtub, and put in a cultured marble counter top/sink, so I had a good start.  The vanity and medicine cabinets needed a serious update, however.

From "Eighties" to "21st Century" for under $300

Have been remodelling my bathroom this week.  (Pictures to come!)  So far I have painted and antiqued my vanity and added some decorative molding (looks like a new vanity for $15 and a few hours of my time) and  I am currently working on the cabinet over the toilet. I have also modified my existing vanity mirror/cabinet for $28 (with a little help from Lowe's, hubby's mitre saw, some wood putty and stain.) Tomorrow I paint the walls and put up the new light fixture.  Details to follow...