Moving

So, after waking up this morning to find that because my gmail account was hacked my blog had been removed I went and started a new blog on WordPress.  It's actually turned out to be a good thing, I can upload the content from this blog to that one and it's prettier with far more options in terms of organizing my posts and I think it will be an overall better experience for everyone.  I'm way too uncomfortable having my blog attached to my email and risking that this sort of stupidity will occur again.  I have a few more steps to get it to where I want it to be, but the site is up and running at The Art of Roping Flies and I hope you'll join me in my move.

Brazil Painting

Wow, I'm really irritated with Blogger right now, the draft of this post that it published was one that I had from days ago, but I spent about an hour fixing it last night, including putting brighter photos in, grrrr.  I also had a better description of how I went about this project and the draft that was posted was really meant for more of a placeholder for me to remember to post about this, sorry about that.  Hopefully I will get better about navigating this as time goes on, but anyway, in the meantime, this painting means a lot to Jim and me and that's why I took the time to frame it and hang it despite the huge crack in it.

The frame is made out of crown moulding that I bought at Homie's, I spray painted it blue and then glazed it.  I'm debating taking photos of the back of it to show how I got it to all go together, but I really don't want to offend anyone who would actually know how to stretch a canvas and make a frame.  Big thanks to my brother for the mitre cuts.

Happy weekend!

After: Hunt board

It's been a few days since I posted the before pics of my hunt board so if you missed it, check it out here "Before" .

This is what I wound up with:  

Do you like?  If you don't, don't say anything, I'm still on the fence about it, I'm really sad about the glazing outcome, I probably should have played with a few brands first and I definitely should not have done it in direct sunlight, it dries really fast and I couldn't get enough of it wiped off before it dried.  But, it's okay for now.

Here's how I did it, after sanding and priming the whole thing I sprayed it with Rustoleum red spray paint and then painted the inside of the cabinets and drawers with a high gloss black, that part I really love.  It took two coats of black for the interior and about three coats with the red for the exterior.  Sorry, I didn't take "during" shots.   I let the paint dry for 24 hours before starting the glazing process, which I should have taken detailed pictures of but I didn't, oops!  Anyway, I started the glazing with a bronze-ish metallic glaze from Martha Stewart's line at Home Depot, then let it dry another 24 hours and then I did a black glaze, Lowe's/Valspar has a faux finish black that I used, as I said, it's a touch too dark, but oh well, I can always revisit this piece someday.  Quick little word about glazing, if you are unfamiliar with it, it's a lot like staining furniture, you brush it on, paying close attention to getting it concentrated in the nooks and crannies and then you wipe it off with a rag, easy, but do it in small batches because it dries fast and the warmer it is outside the faster it dries and the darker it will be.  After I finished all of the painting, etc. I switched out the pulls with some glass knobs from Homie's and there you have it.  Quick and easy and I actually do really like the color against my blue walls.

Like my gallery wall?  The frames will someday all hold pictures, but for now, I thought they looked better hanging empty than just having the hooks there without anything on them.

Lighting Updates

I'm on a mission to in some way, shape or form update all of the lighting in our home without spending more than $500 total!  Think I can do it?  I'm pretty sure that I can, it's on!  My first attempt was in our downstairs bathroom, I didn't take before pictures, but I assure you they were ick.  I have a picture of the one in our master bathroom though and it is almost identical, however, I already disposed of the shades that were on them so you'll have to use your imagination.

This is what I currently look at every morning in my bathroom:

Imagine this with smaller bulbs and an ugly tulip shade on it...

But don't cry for me yet, this week that is about to change, I'm hopefully going to have a big reveal of my "new" master bathroom by the end of this week!!!

This is what I did to the one in my down stairs bathroom:  

And all I had to do was spray paint it with a little brushed nickel finish spray paint by Rustoleum, switch out the bulbs for bigger ones and voila!  I can see keeping these guys for a few more years, or at least until we get to do an overhaul on the bathrooms.

Spray paint:  about $7

Lightbulbs:  yikes, I can't remember, let's just say $5 for a four pack of vanity bulbs?

Total cost: approx. $11

My favorite, though, is what I did to my kitchen light, this is what used to be hanging above my kitchen table:

And this is what is there now:

I totally stole this from a "House Proud" that I saw featured on Nate Berkus and I couldn't be happier with it!  I bought a mini pendant light kit from Home Depot and had my brilliant husband install it, which should have been super easy and straight forward but we had some difficulty lining up the holes to attach the base to the ceiling, but once we both muscled it together it was pretty straight forward.  The hard part was figuring out how to attach the lanterns, I used fishing line and I just played with it for about two days.  If a strong wind blows through my kitchen I will be very sad to have to reposition them but I think it should be able to withstand a nice breeze.  I will warn you that you should avoid letting the lightbulb touch the sides of the lanterns, it will burn through!

Pendant light kit: $14.99

9 Japanese lanterns:  approx. $35 including shipping and handling 

(note: I did not use all 9 lanterns)

Lightbulb:  had one lying around

Total cost of this light "fixture":  $49.99

A bit more than I wanted to spend but I had to pay shipping and handling twice because I didn't order enough lanterns the first time around.  What did I do with the old light?  Just you wait, I've decided to try and figure out a way to make it cute, stay tuned.

So, let's recap, two light fixtures done, $60.99 used of my $500 overall lighting budget.

After: Cedar Chest (and a few others...)

Happy St. Patty's Day!!!  Before getting started, let me first ask that no one judge my dirty, cluttered house, once all of my projects are done I will focus on housekeeping, so never will I focus on housekeeping, right?!  Second, I revised my last post twice because I was sure I had misused the word "ado" after reading someone else's blog who used "adieu" when saying "without further ado," well, after changing my post at midnight to say "adieu" I realized I was right the first time.  So, what I'm saying is, I so stress out about punctuation, grammar, etc. and it is pathetic!  "Is 'patheti-sad' a word?"  So, also, please don't judge me for screwing up in that department either, it's been a long time since I've written for an audience and proofreading is extremely difficult with a 13 month old who is currently running a toy car along my freshly painted walls as I type this, he is doing it quite vigorously I might add.

Let's get to it then, shall we?  This was one of my first real refinishing attempts, it hardly seems worthy of an individual post so I'm going to lump it together with a few others that don't need to have their own posts.  The chest had a veneer on it that was chipping off, I was not very careful about scraping it off so there were a few chunks that I took out of it, oops!  I also couldn't really be bothered to sand it all that well after I got the veneer off so the chunks are still quite visible.  This is not my best work but I'll chalk it up to inexperience and call it a day.  I had an entire gallon of semigloss leftover after I painted the kitchen (really wish I had used eggshell, I hate my shiny kitchen walls, live and learn) so I used some of that to paint it.  I used blue painter's tape for the lines and voila, that's it, that's all.

Remember that one dining chair?  Well, all I did for that was sand it down and spray paint it, boring, but perfect, and finished in about 20 minutes...

One more project picture for the day, I have no before photos, but trust me, it was in need of a little paint.  I bought this chest of drawers at Salvation Army for $30 (!) and it was salmon pink with broken pulls, it's not that sturdy of a piece but it's for Sam's nursery, and at that price if it doesn't make it to his big boy room in a year or two I'm okay with it.

That's all for today, saving my big reveals for their own posts, those chairs took far too long to just give up the goods that quickly!  Slainte all you Irish folks!!!

Before

My husband is the photographer in our family and I'm usually quite happy to leave that to him so that I can just enjoy whatever it is we are doing, in the moment.  However, now that I'm doing this, I need to be able to take shots of my pieces before, during and after so no judging my terrible attempts at snapping photos, I am far too over-equipped for my own good thanks to the hubs being so generous with his old camera and I have no clue what I'm doing, it's been since high school art class!

First I'm going to post the before shots of some things that I took with my phone, unfortunately, when I started many of my projects I had no intention of ever sharing them so I didn't put much emphasis on the befores or the durings, I apologize for this and I will not make that mistake again!  Without further ado, I give you the before!

An old chest my husband had somehow acquired:

Dining chairs from Good Will:

Another dining chair from Good Will:

Hunt board generously donated to us by a good friend in the midst of a move:

Children's table and chairs generously donated by another good friend:

I'm thinking I will also attempt to tally up the cost of my projects each time, too, but that may prove too daunting since I tend to be very disorganized and I will make SEVERAL trips to Homie's for just one project...

Welcome!

Welcome to my new and not so much improved but perhaps adjusted (?) blog.  What's so different?  Certainly not the title, I'm not that creative, as you will soon find out, but my focus has shifted a little since my last post 5 years ago.  Of course, I would still like to someday write a book, albeit, not a great one, but something to leave a mark, even if it's just a tiny little knick in someone's varnish, somewhere.  For now, I blog, hopefully I will stick with it this time, third time's the charm right?  Bear with me as I embark on my journey into the world of home decor/design, I'm terrible at it and have never really been interested in it until this past Fall.  I don't really know why it all of the sudden clicked for me, but I have to think I owe part of it to Nate Berkus, as I'm sure many DIY/design bloggers do.  I'm hoping that I will be able to use this site as an outlet for my creativity, a place to organize my thoughts, share what's new and exciting to me and perhaps get some feedback, if anyone should ever decide to actually read this and follow along.  If not, at least I'll have a place to get it all out of my system instead of boring my friends and family with it nonstop!  Over the next few days I'm going to try to get some shots posted of my attempts at refinishing furniture.  I've painted just about every room in my house but I'm holding off on showing off my handiwork until I get closer to a finished product in the actually rooms, which could take a while.

A little background on me and my home:

My husband and I moved into our home 2 1/2 years ago and, as I said, I had zero interest in home design, had never even watched HGTV or DIY Network until about 6 months ago.  The first thing I did was paint three of my downstairs rooms (family room, hallway and office) using the "two-tone technique" having no clue what I wanted to ultimately see in these rooms, let's just say I painted the hallway for the fourth time a few months ago and the office is now one tone of gray, thankfully, and the family room is soon to follow (what was I thinking, right?).  All of the trim and chair rails were stained wood and the whole house had a very country theme, right down to the wallpapered boarder with roosters and hens that encompassed my kitchen.  Oh and even the pull on the ceiling fan had a rooster hanging from it.  I do live out in the country a little, we are surrounded by farms, but come on!?  We chose this house though because we could see that it had "good bones," it's a colonial style home and the only real thing wrong with it was that the previous owner had very different taste when it came to the interior design aspect.  So, about four gallons of white semi-gloss paint later, I only have one more room to paint the trim in, our bedroom, the next house I will not be using the words "we can paint that honey!"  My house is nowhere near the finished product and our budget for such things is extremely limited since I quit my job to stay home with our 13 month old son, so if you've stumbled upon this site hoping to see a "House Proud" posting, you're probably about two to three years early for that and let's face it, I'll never be completely satisfied since the dining room chairs I just spent a month refinishing I've decided need to be done over again.

Buckle up, 'cause here we go!