February Photo a Day Challenge

Like I don't have enough stuff that I'm doing right now, I've decided to participate in a photo-a-day challenge. I heard about it from The House of Smiths, and thought it looked like fun! Join me, if you feel like it! At the end of the month, she'll be hosting a link party so we can all see each others' months in pictures!

Here are the topics:



Looking forward to it! What with everything going on right now, it will be nice to have some sort of daily documentation of what's going on, even if I don't choose the topic.

I intend to post updates on the nursery furniture and other projects tomorrow! Hooray for updates!

New Template!

I couldn't help myself - got a new template from BTemplates - yay!

I'M BRILLIANT!!!

Do you remember this? It started off looking like this, and I had big plans for it.

When we lived in our last house, I was going to remove the drawers and cut out the supports (and I did). However, with the insanity of "staging" the house and moving, the poor little dresser was pushed to the wayside and...well, not truly forgotten...but definitely ignored.

Fast forward to present day. When I envisioned the future for our little dresser friend, I intended to:
- panel the inside where the drawers used to be with either MDF or particle board, with bead-board wallpaper affixed to it
- paint it black
- put two large storage baskets I have in the opening

Once that was complete, it was going to go into our foyer, and I was going to put our shoes in the baskets. Our new home doesn't have a foyer that will accommodate its size. When I realized that, I was extremely disappointed, because I was previously so excited by the vision I'd had for this project.

Earlier today, I was brainstorming on what to do with my amazingly clean master bathroom (hooray for chores accomplished!!!). We don't have a lot of storage, and I've been looking for a long iron piece of furniture to put in there and load up with towels. I've looked mostly at Hobby Lobby, and everything in the ballpark of what I'm looking for is upwards of $80 - and isn't exactly what I'm looking for :/

I saw a post on a blog today about bathroom organization, and was, for some reason, inspired to look on Target.com to see if they had any bathroom storage options that would work for us...and I saw this:


Sure, it's not the exact shape of the dresser I have, but it's close enough that I can imagine it functioning in a similar manner. I can still add the paneling in the back, and then insert a shelf in the middle, and, VOILA!!!! - a new storage piece for our bathroom that we already own!

I still intend to paint it black, and I'll keep the top two drawers, and acquire two more porcelain knobs like the kind I've just installed in our bathroom cabinetry!!!:
(the picture isn't mine, though the knobs are identical)



I think it will all tie together quite nicely! :D

Of course, currently, I don't have time to work on this project :(
Can you see why My Love gets so frustrated with me?

I have all these amazing ideas that usually appear that they'll take forever to finish, and then they take...FOREVER for me to finish them.

I'll probably post another blog later this evening with progress updates on the nursery and other projects.

Progress

I made some progress over the last couple of days. Not as much as I had hoped, but some is much better than none.

I filled the drawer holes in with wood filler the other night and let it dry for 24 hours. I then sanded down the wood filler...which, by the way, wasn't as easy or as smooth as I had hoped. I sanded them down one more time for good measure, hoping it would help. I wiped down all surfaces with TSP. Then, I primed all the drawers, the desk, and the dresser, using Rustoleum automobile primer. Yes, I'm aware that I wasn't painting an automobile...but I couldn't find the regular primer, and figured that the principle was the same.



Today, I painted all the drawers and the dresser with Rustoleum black lacquer.



Tomorrow, I intend to prime the hutch, and paint it and the dresser with the black lacquer. Something I'd forgotten was how unforgiving black paint was. Despite all of my wood filling, sanding, and priming, many imperfections are still visible. I've decided that it's not the end of the world, and that perfection is unattainable, so it's best not to fret about it ;)

I am still on the fence about the drawers, though. The old holes are still somewhat visible, and I guess I'll have to see how obvious it is once they're up in the nursery, but if I drill new holes for the Dr. Seuss drawer pulls, and am distracted by the remnants of the former pulls, I don't know how much it'll bother me. I'm hoping not too much.
Eventually, I want to insert some bright red contact paper (or a cheerful pattern, if I can find one I like) into the drawers of the dressers and the desk.

While the desk and hutch are drying, I intend to shampoo the carpet in the nursery, to get it ready for the freshly finished furniture to be brought in. I'm hoping, once it's dry, to sprinkle baby powder all over the carpet and vacuum it up, so the room will smell like a baby :D How unbelievably lame is that?!?!?

Tomorrow in general, there are a myriad of things I need and want to get done around the house, and I'm hoping to do the basic house keeping things in the morning, and move on to sorting through the stuff in the garage after my get together with my friend in the afternoon. With most of the furniture out of the way (the poor filing cabinets are being post-poned at least until the weekend), I'm (possibly naively) hoping that sifting through what's left in the garage will be a piece of cake...albeit a large piece of cake.

Between tomorrow and the day following, I'm hoping to get the garage ready to be more functional than any garage I've probably ever had. I have primer to paint the walls with, but I've got to get all the random crap out, all the stuff that belongs there organized, and then also get all the stuff out of the way. As much as I'd like to paint the garage, I'm not sure how realistic of an expectation/hope it is to have at this point.
I figure it's sort of pointless, but I'd really like to pressure wash the floor in there, get it all clean and shiny...but I don't know if you're really supposed to get the walls wet :/
Getting the garage organized by the end of Friday is a must because, on Saturday, we will get all of our stuff out of storage and not have to pay a monthly payment on that anymore! WOO-HOO!!!!

I do want to pressure wash the whole outside of the house/porch as well. That way, I can FINALLY return the pressure washer I borrowed, and get that out of my garage too!

But, I have high hopes and big plans for the next couple of days. It looks like the weather is going to comply :fingers crossed:
I'm definitely going to take a picture of the garage as is :shudder: and hopefully you won't recognize it when I can finally post the afters!

Should be several new blog posts coming with pictures and updates and everything!

Slowly but Surely (before pictures)

So, today was one of those days.
One of those days where the weather was perfect, I woke up on time, I had plenty of energy and a solid plan; and the universe conspired against me to render me unproductive.

I spent all morning. ALL. Morning. On the phone with our bank. When I got off the phone with them, my issue still wasn't resolved...but I had no more mental or emotional faculties with which to cope, so I waved the white flag of surrender for the day.

My Love had a half day from work, and kindly intended to whisk me away to take my mind off the insanity of my morning, to lunch and a movie.
This plan was great, but I messed it up by tacking on a few errands onto our time out...and threw in several emotional breakdowns and bouts of crying for good measure.
:sigh: The joys of pregnancy.

Once we got home, I ran back to Lowe's to return the drawer pulls I had purchased for WHF's room (because they didn't fit AND I have an evil but possibly brilliant plan), and pick up some wood filler.

I came home, took a cat-nap (attempting to reboot and attempt to salvage some part of the day), and chatted a bit with My Love.

Then, I got to work.

Here are our participants in the baby room re-purposing project:

This is the hutch/desk combination that was given to me by my grandparents when I was a kid. It's in really great shape, and I am really excited to give it a second chance at life, and pass it on to my Little Man.

As you can see, there are four drawers, four knobs, and two drawer pulls.
I point this out because I am filling all of the holes in the left three drawers with wood filler, and will be drilling a single hole in the center of the drawers and replacing all the knobs.


This is the dresser that matches the desk/hutch. I removed the top drawer pull initially to try to figure out the width of the pull...a task which became irrelevant when I opted to also fill in these holes and drill a hole in the center of each one.

This is the only almost decent shot I could get of the top of the dresser. It is water damaged pretty badly, so I'll have to sand it down a bit before painting it.

I'm currently waiting for my wood filler to dry, so I can sand it down.

Once I'm done with sanding down the wood filler, as well as the top of the dresser, I'm going to tape off the drawer part of the drawers, so the spray paint doesn't get inside the drawer. I only want the paint on the exterior of the drawer, and possibly on the back of the drawer, but not inside of the drawer. I'm also going to thoroughly clean all the furniture.

While I'm waiting for the wood filler to dry, I'm going to disassemble the glider and its ottoman. I'm not really looking forward to taking it apart, but it's necessary to make sure the paint job is smooth and even. I am also going to take the pads off of the glider. In the near future, I'm going to run them over to my mom's seamstress, and see how much she would charge me to make a replacement cover for it, as well as how much fabric I'd need. Once I have my answer for all that, I will do what I can to pick out fabric to match and hopefully get that finished ASAP!

Once ALL THAT is done (desk/hutch painted, dresser painted, glider painted), and they're put in the room (aiming for tomorrow, since a storm system is coming through tomorrow night), I need to measure the space where I intend to put the crib, and make sure this beauty will fit so I can add it to my wishlist! It's more retro than I was expecting to choose (I plan on taking the wheels off), but I think it will go great with the furniture I'm putting in there! Thoughts?

Okay, last thing - here are the knobs I'm hoping to acquire to put in the new drawer holes I will drill tonight :)
Aren't those just the cutest? Such a great way to add some color and characters to the nursery without being overkill :)

I'm hoping to post "after" pictures tomorrow!

Extension!!!!

I am so relieved -- we will not be moving everything out of the storage unit on this Saturday, but rather Saturday next. I'm just tickled to find that it was more convenient for the people planning on helping me, which gives me another week to get this done right! Woohoo!

To be clear, it's not because I've been twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing this week, because that is not the case. I got the cabinets organized in the kitchen, made some serious progress in the art room, and have gotten some miscellaneous thises and thats taken care of around the house. Tomorrow, I intend to make my first trip of many to the Goodwill to drop off what I've designated as donations! I'm about to make several trips out to the curb to drop off the trash I compiled...though I'm regretting not making more discernible piles as to what should be shredded and what could just be tossed...I might have to hold some until trash day next week...make sure I don't throw out anything foolishly. Grrr.

I'm going to have My Love drag down the dresser that I had painted and ready to go in the art room (I don't think I ever posted about that), and put it in our bedroom closet. It's not where I want it long-term, but we need more places to store our clothes! And, for now, using something we already have is infinitely more economical than buying something new...or even new to us.

I also recently acquired a small dresser (more like a night stand) for free from a friend that I'm going to use upstairs for storage in the art room (of course, the hubby will have to lug that upstairs too). I'm hoping to spruce that dresser up to give it a little something extra, but unfortunately that's WAYYYY far down on the to do list. For now, it will just be moved into its new home, filled with art supplies, and have to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the knowledge that it is useful, and not snazzy.


If you're interested, my plan for tomorrow is this (not all in this order) :

- get up and help (oversee) the hubby haul the desk/hutch, dresser, glider, and filing cabinets into the driveway

- wipe down all the furniture with cleaner

- grab some primer, and possibly drawer pulls from Lowe's (I have a gift card - I usually shop at Home Depot...nothing against Lowe's)

- prime all the furniture

- first coat of black paint on furniture (white on filing cabinets)

- second coat of paint on furniture

- clear coat on furniture, let it dry

- continue working on organizing the art room

- deep clean the bathrooms

- put clothes away in dresser

- dust

- vacuum

- clean kitchen

- mop

- have the hubby carry in all the furniture :)

- stop at IKEA to see if they have a door to go on top of the filing cabinets


But, I'm definitely going to have to go to bed so I can be well rested and get going on this list tomorrow! I'll take pictures and post them as I go...hoping to have some real progress to show :)

So Many Projects, So Little Time

So, I assume y'all remember these? I documented some of my progress (or lack thereof) here, along with some of my inspiration. I had been leaning heavily toward staining the filing cabinets with the Deep Ocean blue MinWax stain. I have the stain. I have the filing cabinets, stripped and ready to go. I have painted my art room. My art room, however, is not a light teal like I thought, but a grayish purple. I can't remember the name of the color, but I rather like it. It went perfectly along with my inspiration painting:



Despite the change of wall color, I still intended to stain the filing cabinets blue. And it would go great with the painting.

This week, I have to work on further organization of the art room, garage, and storage unit (the ultimate "organization" of the storage unit will result in its contents being transported into our garage this weekend...but I have to get it all ready to be moved).

I'm in a quandary, because, despite all the effort well documented in this blog that I put toward stripping the filing cabinets down to stain, I'm SORELY tempted to spray paint them a high gloss white (remember these Pottery Barn inspiration pics?), put on the hardware I purchased and painted, find a door at IKEA to use as a table between the two filing cabinets, and call the project complete! It would certainly help in getting them out of the garage and into their rightful place faster!

So, I don't know that I'm really asking permission, but I feel, since y'all have been aware of my intentions all this time and offered your input, that I should inform you that I think I'm going to take the coward's way out on this project, so I can move on to all my other projects.

Other projects I'm aiming to complete this week include sifting through the miscellaneous boxes in the garage, organizing the things that should remain in the garage, removing non-art items from my art room, organizing the things that should be in the art room so it's functional, finishing the filing cabinets so they can be moved out of the garage and into the art room, refinishing the dresser so it can be moved into the nursery, refinishing the desk/hutch so it can be moved into the nursery, identifying things in the storage unit that we can donate to Goodwill, organize my kitchen cabinets, apply contact paper to the glass panels I want to make translucent, and also my usual house keeping chores and organizational endeavors.
Oh my word. Getting started on a Wednesday, this list feels even more enormous than I originally thought...well, here goes nothing!

What'sHisFace's Room

I suppose to some people it will sound bizarre or cruel, but as we have not decided on a name for our unborn son, I've taken to calling him What'sHisFace. I rather like it, and my mother has even converted a smidge and refers to him in texts occasionally as WHF, hahahaha :)

The reason for this post, however, is that I have finally made some progress on the nursery! Here are the before pictures:

The colors on the wall were the test spots. Ironically, I initially chose the bottom color, but once it was around the outlets, it looked too much like a teenage girl's room instead of a baby's nursery, so I returned it to Home Depot (THANK GOODNESS for their policy to accept returned paint, they saved me a fortune, a heart attack, an angry husband, and an embarrassing emotional breakdown in the middle of a hardware store), and got the top one, which is a Disney BEHR color called "Pooh's Favorite Things" (the one I decided against was called "Atta Boy Blue").

Whether this was insanity or not, I had seen several photos of nurseries online with horizontal stripes that I sort of went ga-ga over. I had frequented Project Nursery and searched google images, and horizontal stripes just seemed to be in my future.

Before her daughter was born, I helped paint a friend's nursery, and we did vertical stripes on the top half of the room, and bead board wallpaper on the bottom half. I wish I had a picture of that, but I didn't take one, because I am lame like that. Maybe I can get one from her soon. However, because I had the experience painting stripes from that occasion, I had more than enough confidence that I could tackle this beast as well.

While I'm very pleased with the end result, painting this thing was a NIGHTMARE. Read it, NIGHT-MARE!!! First, I painted the entire room with an eggshell finish.

Then, the hard part started. I had to measure out nine 8.5" stripes around the room. I tried to do it the right way, with a tape measure, and a level, and once I finished the first wall, I realized that I had sloped down a full half an inch from where I started :insert hormonal meltdown here:

Once I regained my composure, I'm fairly certain I spent at least four hours attempting to tape off the next wall, and figure out how to make the lines straight and even. Sadly, it took me until I got to the last wall and a half before I came up with a very efficient way to tape off the wall. Like I said, nightmare.

Here's what part of it looked like while I was taping it off:

Once the stripes were taped off, I used paint the exact same color as the wall, but in a semi-gloss finish to paint them. The result is super subtle, but I love it.

Sometime in the midst of all the taping and measuring, I also painted the outlet covers Krylon Cherry Red in gloss. Normally, I'm a Rustoleum girl through and through, but the color just matched the bedding I've picked out perfectly. I used a dark gray auto primer, and it darkened the color, which I didn't expect, but it still works.

I also picked up two ceiling fan pulls (I don't know what their technical name is, or if they have one), and I love them! How cute are they?!?!?

And here's the rest of the room, striped and ready for the next phase:

As you can probably guess, the colors for the room are aqua and red. I intend for the furniture to be black, and the theme to be a tasteful Dr. Seuss (by that I mean not covered on all surfaces by Dr. Seuss characters -- just with some artwork I intend to make myself). I had considered doing a mural, but I didn't think I would ever be able to bring myself to paint over it.

Next week, I'll be refinishing a glider, a dresser, and a desk/hutch for the room!

Of course, I'll also be working on the garage and the storage unit...so we'll see how much I get done in regards to nursery furniture :)

I can't wait to get a crib, so I can put the bedding in!

This is what it looks like!

It's so bright, colorful, and I love it!
Well, whaddya think?