Flower Power

I found this beauty at Goodwill for a $1.

I love it, minus the color. It screams 1920s to me but maybe that is just me.
So I rubbed her down with some steal wool because brass is a tricky thing to paint and after a few coats of primer and then white gloss spray paint she was looking like this:

Love it. Kinda reminds me of some things I have seen at west elm or crate & barrel
Total cost of project: $1. All the materials (paint & wool) I had.

I love a good deal.
Any ideas on what I should put in it?

Glesav or Smurf Blue

So I did something a little out of the strange. I know you are thinking what you? Never! I painted our hall closets. Lucky for me James was on board. It was probably because I have finally broken his spirit and turn him into a yes man, irregardless he was super romantic about it and went to the Home Depot to pick up for me! We even bought the Martha Stewart brand when usually we find a color we like and switch it to Behr Ultra. My vote on Martha; not bad. I was painting over white so it was easy enough to cover.

After holding up each sample to our walls in every room and under natural light and overhead light we finally decided on Martha Stewart’s “Gleasv”
Loved it! Bought it and broke out the brush and began. Did I mention that James was away on while I did this? Yup I take on projects while he is on business trips. He is the definition of a perfectionist and he makes me nervous doing DIY so I do things when he is not around.

A before example:

Ugly old antique white.

After:

I even did the coat closet.

And once it was done I realized it kinda looked the color of smurfs but I love it anyway. So that people is how I spend my evenings when I am alone. Did you see my bathroom makeover? I did that while Jamie was on a business trip too.

So does this inspire any of y’all to break hop in the closet and give it a makeover? Or am I the only werido who thinks about painting a closet?

P.S. Thanks to Lindsay for helping me paint the shelves! =)

Bathroom Makeover: On The Cheap Side

I hope everyone had a Happy Labor Day! Perhaps even accomplished a few projects? We did not. We did make a trip to IKEA, later on that this week. However I did finally get around to writing this post about an old project I accomplished with a tiny weeny bit of help from James; Our Master Bathroom. Here is a shot of before:

I know not exciting at all! Here are some snapshots of the process:

So I started this project when James was on a business trip. I was able to accomplish a bit. I painted the walls and cabinet myself. The mirror and bird art I had James spray paint once he was home and saw the surprise makeover. James is a pro spray painter. I however lay it on too thick, cause drips and it is just a hot mess when I am done with it. Here is the after:

So how was it cheap you ask? Well I used items we had lying around, like paint. The paint on the cabinets is the same paint we used on our front door makeover (http://form2form.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/come-knock-on-my-door/ ) and the paint on the walls is the same paint we used in our living room. The mirrors we purchased at target for $10 each awhile ago (http://form2form.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/guest-bathroom/ ).The knobs came from the cabinet company James works for, the bird art was a present from my brother last year and the curtian was the existing one. As well as the tray, I snatched that from our guest room (http://form2form.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/diy%c2%a0tray/). The counter is so long and had a big empty space so it def. needed something. So there you have it, a zero dollar makeover. Trust me it will not stay like this just until we can afford to give it a true makeover like we did in our guest bathroom(http://form2form.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/guest-bathroom/). Has anyone else recently completed a makeover? Major or small, free or expensive irregardless do tell!

Spot The Similarties

While cleaning the other day I found this in one of my books:

And it kinda reminded me of this:

Sure it may be too soon for another post about our masterbedroom but I am so inlove I couldnt resist. Small dressers used as nightstands, black like ours also creating symettrey on each side of the room. A Upholstered headboard with a mirror above it to give the room balance. So similar to ours except ours is a modern take so its a bit more netural and placid than beauitful traditonal style.

Switcheroo

Hope everyone had a good weekend! I felt like it flew by! We didn’t do any projects this weekend. Instead I finally introduced James to my mom’s side of the family. We’ve been together for over 6 years and this is his first time coming to a family reunion kinda event. He fit in perfectly! My favorite comment he said was, “Everyone in your family is so tan! They probably think I am a different species.” Gotta love genetics.

Okay enough family talk, James and I have had up our Ikea outdoor table up for a while and I am finally getting around to showing you what we did with it. Shame on me!

Here is what it looked like at my birthday party:

There is DJ, he is taking my photo! Take a good look at those chairs and now look here:

This is what it looked like around the fourth of July. Why the switch in chairs? Well we LOVED the white ones but at $40 a pop at Target it was too much so we settled for the $25 black ones. Fast forward a week later and the white chairs are clearance for $20 each! Woot Woot! We quickly return our black ones and scooped up the white ones. Since then we have been happily ever after! So there is my thrifty monday find weeks later! Happy Monday!

Getting Our Dig On

Okay, onto the process. One of the things we HATED about our driveway was how it fanned out and basically extended all the way up to the front porch. We wanted to make sure the new driveway was a perfect rectangle and was spaced away from the house a bit so we could create a walkway leading from it to the front steps.

So, once all of the original landscaping timbers were removed, we drove stakes into the ground at each of the four corners of the new rectangular layout, connecting them with hot pink string! Fun! James picked the hot pink because he thought it was more flamboyant. The string would be our guide for the retaining wall. In case you were wondering, we wanted a retaining wall to establish a border, and it will also allow us to build up and level the new driveway. We spray painted the ground below the string to mark where we needed to dig the trench.

To make the trench-digging easier we rented a ground saw, which basically saws up the ground. Not sure how they came up with that name for it. We used it thinking it would eliminate the need for much manual digging (wrong). We quickly realized we made two mistakes! One, and it’s a biggie, we did not call Miss Utility to find out if there were any underground cables, wires, water lines, etc. where we would be digging. Luckily we didn’t hit anything. Secondly we should have used a trencher–the ground saw did not cut deep enough.

After a lot of blood (James’s), sweat (both of ours), and tears (mostly mine), we were able to start laying the first row of timbers, starting in the lowest corner and going out in both directions from it. It wasn’t long before we realized we had a lot of work ahead of us. . .

See our yard is very unlevel and in the middle of the driveway was a huge hump, so we had to dig deeper in the front and middle of the driveway to ensure the wall base would be below grade after the driveway was leveled front to back.

Okay enough with words let me show you some photos day by day:

Then James asked me to help him bury a dead man…

At first I thought he had finally lost it and he was taking advantage of the asphalt driveway coming our way to commit murder. But he put my fears to rest when he explained that a deadman, also called a tie-back, is something you build to reinforce the retaining wall. Oooohhh…

This was day 4 which, by the way, is weekend number 2 we spent digging in the yard. Oh joy.

Day 7, which means the third weekend doing this. Honestly for most people it might not take that long but I married Mr. Perfectionist. With each new board we had to remeasure the entire wall to ensure it was still staying in line and was level and square. At least he builds his stuff to last. And those are the last of my project pictures. A special thanks to Dan & Erin for coming out during the last few digging days and helping us dig! And thanks everyone for reading this post, not the most exciting one but next Friday will be! I will finally have after photos! =) Hope everyone has an AMAZING weekend, hopefully free of digging!

Nitty Gritty Details

Remember how I showed yall our new guest room last week:

Well I am back with the boring details of how we put it all together.
James built the headboard and night stands. All three items cost us under $200 amazing! We spray painted the headboard so there were not too many colors going on.
The lovely lamps were almost a wild goose chase! We found them clearance on Jcpenny.com and only after ordering them did we find out they were out of stock. We searched two stores before we found the lamps and thankfully they were clearance for $30 each originally $60.
Lastly James hung those lovely art pieces of framed art we drew.
The frames are from IKEA and came with the wire attachment to hang but James had something else in mind:

To ensure the frames would be level he attached small pieces of plywood to the wall, leveled of course, then used double-sided tape for the frame to sit on to stabilize it as well as ensuring it stays level. Yup that was a concern for him. He a little bit of a perfectionist you think? I love that about him. =)

Virginia Is For Lovers

I totally stole this idea of pinterest which is the best website ever and you must join in. Here is the orignal piece:

And this is what I started with:
After a few coats of paint we had left over from our first makeover and some white ceiling paint we had lying around I had this:

All I need to do now is draw the heart. And where will it go you may ask? Over the Richmond area of course. That is where we met, had our first kissed, where he proposed, and where we were wedded. I did consider using the outline of New York State at first but the state border is kinda weird and I am much more familiar with VA’s since I am born and raise from here. Plus Virginia is for lovers!

Mirror Mirror On The Floor

I have been meaning to post this for awhile and you will see it is obviously a old post just keep reading. . .
I have had this mirror since I was 12.

Yup. Very traditonal but since we have a mid-century dresser in there we thought why not add some other furniture from other eras to give it a collectic look but the color was too much. So we pulled out a can of trusty spray paint and took the mirror apart to paint piece by piece.

Yup that tree is bare. There is your hint that this is a old post! I’m sorry! Forgive me? Anyways hanging it on a tree really helped so James could paint it from all angles. And because we did not want to leave the mirror outside to dry because as James said, ‘What if a leaf falls on it and messes up the paint job?’. He pulled out some nails and a hammer to do this:

He is so inventive! No wonder I keep him around. Anways onto the final product:

We just used one of high gloss black spray paint so the total cost of this project was under $5. Yay! So have I convience you all to go find something to spray paint?

And Here it is

Okay so before James was awesome enough to build the end tables let me show you what we were working with:

Yes that is an ottoman but here is what we have now:

We even added feet or wheels we bought at IKEA. It was this easy:

Removed the old feet we had and screwed in the new ones. I’ll show you were the old feet went in a few days.
Yup so we hope you love it and noticed my new B! Isn’t it cute? I picked it up at Hobby Lobby for $3