Happy Fourth!!!

Wow, where has the time gone? It has been over 1 year since I last blogged. Hope everyone had a happy 4th of July! We did not have anything planned so we spent the afternoon building a table.

A couple of years ago we replaced the front porch. I knew that the post would be good for something, they have been gathering dust out in the barn for over 2 years.

I convinced Nick to help me. He wasn't too thrilled with the idea but went along with it. I measured, he cut.



Here are all the boards cut. We didn't have a plan. We just knew we needed so many boards for each length. When we found two that were pretty close, we went with that measurement. I would have like for the table to be a little longer, but wanted to use what we had and not spend any $$$$.


Next we screwed the side boards to the post. I think it looks great!! Jeff helped us put it together, the screws were a little hard to get through the wood.
And here it is with the top on.

Here is the after! Took us 3 hours from start to finish and I have $0 in it, just a bunch of old wood my husband wanted to throw away. Once the table is painted it is going to look FANTASTIC!!!< I'm thinking maybe I want to paint it black, that would look great at our Halloween party. Or maybe white and crackle it with black showing through.

Once upon a time there was a plain beige bathroom

Thanks to Susan for hosting Metamorphosis Monday. Click the butterfly to the right and it will take you to Susan's site for a list of other great projects.



Before


This past week I have been very busy trying to take my sons' boring beige bathroom and turn it in to something they would love. Their rooms are upstairs and they share this bathroom. They hated it and would never use it, even in the middle of the night they would come downstairs, at 2 a.m., turn on all the lights and use the bathroom downstairs.

One day I was reading Nester's blog and she said something about, "it doesn't have to be perfect". Nester also had a post about how they fixed their kitchen up to sell the house and how she wished she had done it long ago so she could have enjoyed it. I decided I wasn't going to wait for a carpenter or someone to come do it for me, I was going to do it all by myself, it didn't have to be perfect. Thanks Nester!

This is what I started with, a boring beige bathroom

One week and $400.00 later, this is the after.

At first I was just going to paint the bathroom and buy some matching towels. Well, you know how one thing leads to another. One day while reading Karla's blog
It's the little things that make a house a home I came across this. (Hi Karla, hope you don't mind I stole your picture)
I knew this look would be perfect in the bathroom. Go check out her blog, she gives directions.

I called my friend, Cindy, told her to come over I had a project and this is how we spent the day. That is me in the photo.



By the end of the day, this is what we had accomplished. Is it perfect? No. Does it matter? No.




Next came the paint. I found several old looking sports pictures, I pulled the colors for the paint from those pictures. I love the red.


We started out with the cheap premade cabinets that you buy at Lowes or Home Depot. Even though this bathroom never was used, the cabinets looked pretty sad. I painted them black. So of course, they needed new handles and hinges. I can't believe what a difference the handles made, cost was around $30.00
Before
After

The nice new paint job on the cabinet made the big plain mirror look terrible. I bought trim, cut it to the length I needed and attached it to the mirror with Velcro. The trim for the mirror was $30-$40. The nice new trim around the mirror needed a new light, $100.00. I called the electrician to come hang it for me. He couldn't come until next week, so I did it myself. And Hey, it works!!
After
Before

Next came the accessories. I knew my kids would never fold towels neat and place them on towel bars, so I put up hooks. I think they were around $5- $6 each at Home Depot. I am loving these, I will probably put these hooks in all of my bathrooms.



To finish the bathroom I hung shelves, place hand towels in old locker baskets I got from our local grade school, added old tins that I bought years ago, placed soap and other bathroom items in jars that I found at Wal-Mart on clearance, added a light because that was one of the things you need in Nester's post on "Having a bathroom you love". And there you have it, hopefully a bathroom my kids will use. And I can not tell you how satisfying it is to be able to say that I did everything in there by myself (My friend, Cindy, did help me hang the boards).




Thanks for stopping by my blog. Keep scrolling down to read each day's progress and the "how to" on framing the mirror.

Closet--Met Monday

Today is Metamorphosis Monday, check out Susan's Between Naps on the Porch for a list of participants. Click on the butterfly to the right.

Today I am going to show you my closet. Our floor plan had a small room next to the master. This room was tiny, 8 1/2 ' x 9'. When we were framing the house, we decided to do away with the room and just extend the Master Bedroom. My thinking was to make it a sitting area.

It never worked out that way. Over time it turned into an area to store things. If we didn't know what to do with something, we put it in that end of the room. Before long that area of the bedroom was a huge storage area. I hated going to the bedroom because that area of the room stressed me out with all the stuff.

Our walk in closet that we had was tiny. It was full and wouldn't hold another thing. One day (took me almost 20 years to think of this) I decided to go ahead and put the wall up and make what was suppose to be the tiny room my closet, my husband could keep the closet we already had for himself. Just think, for the last 20 years I could have had my own closet, instead I had a place to store exercise equipment, furniture we didn't know what to do with, stacks of paper, etc. If you can think of something, it was probably stored there.

In this picture you can see how small the bedroom would have been. But it is perfect size for my very own closet.
And here we have the finished room. I have shelves on all 4 walls. This side of the room is for hanging my shirts and jackets. I also put shelves down the middle to display my purses.

I still need to buy my drawers, I am going to put drawers up to just over waist high. The top I want open shelving with baskets. I hang all of my jeans, Capris on the bottom, on top I hang all outdoor jackets and coats.

This wall is for things that need folded. I have my sweaters, pjs, etc. on this wall. I still need to get my baskets for the top shelves. The bottom wire basket is for dirty clothes. I need to buy one more wire basket.

Other things we did besides putting up the wall; scraped the popcorn ceiling, new trim and crown molding, paint (Latte- Sherwin Williams), new carpet. I absolutely love going in there to get dressed. I have enough space to be able to go in and see everything I own. Nothing is bunched up together and getting wrinkled. And the best part, I don't have to share!!

And just so no one gets confused which closet is theirs, I added "His" and "Hers" to the doors.

Thanks for stopping by and looking at my closet. I enjoyed showing it to you.

Hall Make-over Before and After

I have been working on my hall for the last couple of weeks. I'm glad to be able to post my before and after pictures today.
This is my after picture. We replaced our 1 tiny light with 2 new canned lights. We also added, bead board, trim, paint (walls- Hopsack, ceiling- Latte, bead board-white), crown molding, floor mat(I painted with left over wall paint) photos and accent pieces.

Down came the ugly popcorn ceiling. We replaced the Home Interior from the early 90's with snap shots I have taken over the years of my kids.

BEFORE

Here we have the before picture. As you can see we totally made over this room. .Click here to see all post from start to finish.

Nothing went untouched, from putting bead board on the walls and ceiling to a new mat on the floor.

The pictures added so much for little cost. I purchased the frames at Hobby Lobby for half price. I think at half off they were $8.00 for a 14" x 18" frame. The black and white pictures I had made at Wal-mart, they were $4.97 for a 8" x 10" picture. Each picture I have under $15.00.
Everything on this wall came from Hobby Lobby, also half priced, or I already had it. The things I already owned got a coat of black spray paint. The "C" for our last name was gold. It also got a coat of black paint. I love it now.

This is the new floor mat I made. I cut a piece of linoleum, bought at Home Depot for $20.00 for a 6' x8' square. I painted the back side with left over wall paint and as you can see, it matches my hall perfectly. I added a black border to tie in the black picture frames.

I hope you enjoyed my before and after pictures. Thanks for stopping by my blog and please leave a comment letting me know you were here.

Click on the butterfly to the right and it will take you to "Between Naps on the Porch" she is hosting Metamorphosis Monday and has a list of more before and after pictures