High Boy and Dresser

These pieces have been kind of a work in progress. They look so beautiful now.

**SOLD**

Thanks!

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Vanity Love

This was the other piece we plucked from the forgotten furniture yard.

He threw it and the bench and mirror into an already pretty sweet deal.

Asking $350

****SOLD****

Before

After

Blue Dresser... let's up our game

I have been trying to become more skilled in my work while maintaining efficiency. I found a great product called rub on polyurethane, which makes the final poly coat super fast and easy. I found a good cheap primer by Zinzer.

Now I am trying new techinques and am in awe of the world of furniture refinishing. Blocking, waxing, razor blading... Vaseline, spackle, crackle and POP. I thought I was pretty great with my sanding block and my angled Purdy. Now I see the world is a big place and its intimidating.

I painted this dresser (after many repairs by my handsome hubby) my coastal blue and then broke out my glaze. I have used it before but didn't like the thick, smeary way it turned out. It looked like mud. Also a quart of glaze is $10 and you go through a lot of it.

So I thought I would try to water it down. I added a lot of water and sure enough, the consistency was much better and easier to work with.

It went on easy and came off nicely too. The trick with glazing is to avoid making it look fake. I got one step closer to achieving that.

I hit it with my awesome Wipe on Poly, available at Home Depot and posted and sold it. Here's to self improvement.

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Awesome Aged Armoire

We bought this old Armoire from a nice customer, Michele, in Scottsdale who bought it and never used it. She had it delivered to her courtyard so that it could weather naturally and she was going to use it in her house somewhere.

She actually bought my blue dresser (post forthcoming) and I asked her if I could buy this solid wood piece that she pointed out as a "future project" that she hadn't quite gotten around to. She accepted my offer and we brought it back to the homestead. My husband fixed some of the moving pieces and now its perfect with so much lovely character I can barely stand it.

I didn't touch it with paint. I just sanded carefully and coated it with some serious polyurethane.

It's already sold, but I thought I would post it here.

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A Few Pieces of Furniture

Not much to say but before and after on these:

Pink dresser before and after, chippy nightstand, and black country bench. ALL SOLD

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Fun New Trick!

I often read a Blog/Website called The Lettered Cottage. Layla Palmer, the woman who writes the blog, often does a segment called "Pick my Presto." She takes a photograph that a follower sends her, and she digitally adds decorative elements, wall colors, furniture, and convincingly so. You can check out her website here. I have often wondered how she does it, knowing this this would be a powerful tool in deciding what direction I want to go in on my own home.

I have to make a confession. I am not, and never have been, a visionary. I have a hard time seeing the end result until... well... the end. I have instincts that USUALLY lead me in the right direction, but I am always surprised by the result. SO, with a whole house and yard to create, I find myself overwhelmed and intimidated.

I sat down today at my computer and opened my favorite photo editing software, Gimp 2, which happens to be freeware, and I highly recommend it, and started messing around.

Gimp 2 is like Photoshop, but free. You can download it here.

Be prepared, if you don't know Photoshop, this software is difficult to maneuver.  It's not terribly user friendly.  It's taken me several hours to even scratch the surface of what it's capable of.

I managed to finish my front lawn and one wall of my family room.

Here is the front lawn now, please keep in mind this is my first attempt and it's not perfect.

This is what I want it to look like eventually.

Red door, blue trim on the fascia, green grass, a few hydrangea shrubs, shutter and new windows and its literally my dream house.

Here is the west wall of the family room as it stands now.

And here it is in my imagination :)

If any of you are in a rut in a particular room, I would love to do this for you! Simply become a follower and make a comment on this post, I will choose a few of you, get a few photos, ask a few questions, and post the end result here on my blog.

Happy Imagining!

Not finished... but progress

First, cabinets.

So my other brother in law, Chris, as you can see we have a lot of family, works with his family in a kitchen/bath remodeling business. They are really awesome and have been in business for a long time. I highly recommend them. (You can check out their website here)

He called and said he was tearing out a kitchen and the home owner no longer wanted the old cabinets. He said we could have them for free if we could haul them off. We jumped on it!

My other brother in law, Brent, used his trailer and he went and picked them up and dropped them off on the front lawn.

So we tore out the ugly blue beasts in the kitchen, revealing all kinds of unsavory surprises (ie. a few "nests" of unknown origin), Simple Greened the walls, and began re-constructing the kitchen.

It was harder than I was expecting it to be. There was a lot of math involved. We tried piecing it together like a puzzle, but nailing down upper cabinets is HARD... and after putting them up and taking them down several times, I told Newell he needed to go to bed, and I spent the next two hours drawing the kitchen out according to the measurements I had and the cabinets we had.

It paid off. The next night we began work and it went together much easier, with a little problem solving in between.

So the cabinets went in, and they are not perfect, but the kitchen looks alot better.

So here is before, just as a reminder:

Here is a progress shot, before countertops:

I am going to paint the cabinets an aged white and the hardware ORB.

So since the cabinets, and eventually, the wood floors, will be quaint and country, I wanted a contrasting countertop, something sleek and industrial. I also have an aversion for all the "fake" granite out there. I used to have some, and I always got asked what it was, and I had to sheepishly admit that it was just laminate, with an etched finish and a bullnose edge, to LOOK like granite. And, for that matter, I rarely meet a granite that I like. There are a few variations that I would use, but for the most part, I just have never been too fond of it.

So i decided I either wanted a butcher block surface, or a laminate that says, "Heck yes I'm laminate, and not ashamed to admit it!"

We had a prior quote from a contractor to install laminate countertops for $500.

I browsed the Ikea website and feel deeply in love.

These people get it. They just do.

Every surface I saw there was unusual. I settled on a gray top with stainless steel edges, no bullnose, just straight up square.

We raced down to the Ikea in Tempe and got there 30 minutes before closing. Our total ended up being $195... what a deal.

Here is a sneak peak