Granting Clemency

I am not kidding you when I say that this little chair was on its way to certain furniture death until I yelled “STOP!” to my husband nanoseconds before he threw it into the garbage can.  So little did he care about this chair he didn’t even want to use it as kindling!  This little fella has been in his family for years and years {mostly being used as a chew toy in someone’s dank basement} and I just couldn’t bear to let it go to the dump.  It was given to us when our first little guy was born more than two years ago, at which time it was once again banished to a basement—this time, ours.  We've been in purge mode so my husband thought it was time for it to go, but I had other plans.

I must be honest and tell you that there were probably a half-dozen moments where I wished I hadn’t used my good name to save this little beast, but I didn’t want to hear an “I told you so.”  It was smelly.  The rope-seat was caked with nastiness.  It was so gross I won’t even share my hypothesis of what it was.  I like you that much.  I thought it would be simple to just untie and unfurl the rope, but due to gross-ity {I think I just made that word up} I used bolt cutters to cut the rope.  Seriously.

Now, what you’ve been patiently waiting for:

 Before

Sadly {or gladly?} my point-and-shoot didn’t capture the detail of this little gremlin.  The backing was some type of houndstoothy contact- or wallpaper.  

Once I had the rope and contact paper off, the chair was literally falling apart.  I shored it up with Gorilla wood glue and filled in some of the teeth marks along the back of the chair with wood putty.   This little guy HAD to be painted.  I would have liked to keep a natural look, but it was in such bad shape and needed so much repair I had to paint in order to resuscitate it.

After a light sanding I sprayed it with Zinsser Cover Stain primer to seal the stains and smells.

I then gave it a few coats of Rustoleum Warm Yellow.  Such a friendly color.

Once dry, I added a new weaved seat as well as batting and fabric to the back of the chair to complete the makeover.  How adorable is this little fella now?  So sorry for thinking you a gremlin.

Before                       After

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The epitome of 80’s awesomeness

 

First, let me apologize for the angle of this photo.  It was taken shortly after moving into our house and prior to my awareness of the importance of “before” photos.  I think despite my shoddy photography, you can still see the majestic wonder of our old fireplace/mantle.  The rough cedar was especially fun to attempt to clean.

My husband spearheaded the revamp of this area in design, demo and construction as I was pregnant or tending to an infant and relatively useless when it came to anything non baby-related.  He built the mantle with the help of his father (and his tools) at his parent’s house.  This is where the whole measure twice, cut once saying comes into play, in that building off-site (cutting, constructing, detailing) without double checking the fit of the piece resulted in an extra high mantle.  I love it but it is a tad high.  My handy hubby also did all of the tiling, using a glazed porcelain mosaic on the wall and a larger tile of the same kind on the floor. 

Here is a “during” shot featuring my macho hubby (check out those slippers), our sad little fake Christmas tree and the project super, our first born at 3 months old.  So much greatness in this pic!

We enlisted the help of my sister to help paint in the eleventh hour before our son’s baptism.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute.  What a great Godmother!

And here she (the fireplace, not my sister) stands today: fresh, shiny and new.  I love how it modernizes and lightens up the space.  Such a difference!

                               Before                                    After

 

Technorati Tags: fireplace,mantle

Wishful thinking

I love painting. Nothing specific, and certainly nothing complicated, but I love the change that can happen with a little swap of color (or colour if you're Canadian). Rustoleum has some great colors to choose from in spray paints and I'll be posting some projects soon to show you some of their vibrant hues.

A big (potential) project we have looming in our home is painting the kitchen cabinets. I know it will be a tedious task, which is why I've been looking into sprayers. Graco has some very affordable options that have minimal overspray -- something important to consider since part of the project would include spraying inside our home.
This bad boy is only $109 at Lowe's and I know I have some coupons around here somewhere. It claims to spray a 6' x 6' area in 4 minutes. If time is money then I'll save... time... money... well, I'm not going to do the math but I love things that save time. Of course, I have yet to run this by my big brother the paint expert, so we'll see what he thinks before I commit to anything (not that I always listen to him :)

I'm throwing a dance party

Put on your best white shoes and get ready to boogie! I hit 10 followers, so it's time to par-tay! Woo hoo!




How can that not bring a smile to your face? Happy Friday, ya'll!

Extreme couponing?

More like extremely bad at couponing!


Well, I guess I shouldn't say I'm baaad at couponing, it's just that this is 4 weeks - that's right, one month - worth of coupons that I'm just now going through. I can't even think of a good excuse for procrastinating, except that I'm a habitual procrastinator. We all have our demons, I guess. We all have our vices too, hence the glass of wine.

Do you say kooopon or quepon?

Get in Shape, Girl!

I'm channeling my 6 year old self right now. Who else had the book and cassette tape, Get in Shape, Girl? I still have the jingle in my head.
Get in shape, girl... you'll love feeling. Get in shape, girl... it's so appealing!

Well, 24 years and 2 babies later, this girl really DOES need to get in shape! Enter this:


It's the E514 Elliptical from Nautilus. And its been sitting in my garage for two days now, waiting for my hubby and I to move it into the basement. Thank goodness for the weekend! You know what I'll be doing - hopefully in addition to some other projects. What about you?

Spring/Easter mantle

Since my last fireplace/mantle post, I've made a few seasonal updates. Glassware is from Ikea, the mirror was moved from the adjacent wall and the print is from the super awesome ladies at eighteen25. Not only do they come up with the cutest prints, but they just give them away. I am not kidding you. How generous is that?! Go check out their site--it's one of my favorites!



Here is a close-up of the poster. I had it printed through Wal-Mart and had it shipped to the store (to save a few bucks), which was somewhat a catastrophe in itself. Ok, catastrophe is probably a strong word--maybe irritating would be more appropriate.

Anyway... I received an email saying it was ready, hauled the kids over to the store only to find that no one knew where it was. So I emailed Wal-Mart and they said it wasn't printed yet. I got a call from the store yesterday saying that it had been there for a week. Ok. I got it home and opened it and it was a glossy finish, when it was supposed to be matte. Whatever. I wasn't going to try to have it reprinted, what with Easter being only two weeks away! All that aside, I think its super cute. If you want to print one for your home head on over to eighteen25 for the download!


Did you notice any other changes from the first picture? Oh, you're right, I did fiddle with the fireplace doors a little more! I used some black rub 'n buff to "antique" them a little bit. I'm still not thrilled with them but I feel like I'm heading in the right direction... to buy a new fireplace surround. :)

Is it spring yet?

I don't know where you are, but the weather here in the Buckeye state has been such a tease! Warm one day, cold and snowing the next. I am loving the signs that warmer weather will soon be here on a more permanently temporary basis. Does that even make sense? You know what I mean if you deal with the change of seasons. :) My tulips and daffodils are trying to pop up, as are my irises. I can't wait to see the bright colors those flowers will bring!

I'm also thinking of what to plant in our garden this year. We usually buy plants (rather than plant seeds) and typically get ahead of ourselves at the nursery. A conversation between my husband and I usually goes something like this:

Oh, we should get eggplant!
What will we do with it?
I don't know but it will be good!

How about peppers?
I don't like peppers.
I don't either, but maybe we'll like them if they come from our own garden!

This usually results in us over-buying and over-planting, but there's something about spring that incites reckless foliage enthusiasm.

Here is our garden last year. In this little space we squeezed in 6 tomato plants, and 3 plants each of cayanne peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce and melon. Too much? Oh, yes. As you can imagine some things didn't make it but we certainly enjoyed what did.


We'll try to plan a little better this year and hope we don't get overly excited at the endless possibilities that we can't accommodate.

If you like to garden, what do you plant? Any useful tips or tricks?

Out with the Old

Some old things are good, like antiques for example (unless you're Billy Bob Thornton and have a phobia of them, then they're scaaaary.) But some old things are not so good, like gaping holes in your house.

Ok, so a gaping hole isn't exactly something old, but I forgot to take a before picture of what was previously in this spot: a leaky, aluminum five-foot sliding glass door. My pal here, Steve, reworked the opening, building a new header to accommodate a six foot door which made the space feel larger. He would kill me if he knew I was showcasing him on my blog.

Oh, here's a pic of the old gal. I would like to say that she had seen her day, but an aluminum door in Ohio probably only had one or two good days, what with the crazy conductivity allowing the house to heat and cool when you don't want it to.


We replaced the door with a triple paned aluminum-clad wood door with blinds between the glass and the difference in energy efficiency is astounding. Between the door and our windows, we've easily saved $360 a year, not to mention the style we've gained!



We've since painted the door white to match the rest of the millwork in our house, but I do love how it looks unfinished. I'm just a sucker for the beauty of natural wood!