Its the fact that everything is good, no seriously each and every person can have their on taste and you are not judged. You have your own boards and your own styles and its ok to like what "you" want to like. I have had this really neat thing to happen to me in the last 6 to 8mths. I have found myself. Like when I say found myself, I mean that I have never really had a specific taste. My mom is a great homemaker, my mother-in-law has good taste too. Lots of people in my family do also. But it always seems like I have just been lost in the middle. I would like things that one would do and mix it with something else that I would see at one of the other houses. I never really said, "Oh this is the style I like and I"m going with it!" Part of it is because I haven't really focused on it because I have been tending to 4 growing children for 13 years and the focus has for sure been 100 percent on them and not on the mama.
So anyways, I feel like after taking much time and looking though my boards and also watching the show "Fixer Upper" I have finally found a style and taste that I love! So one room at a time I have been changing it to make it match how I would like it look. The only downer to this process is that I'm not rich like they are on the show so I have to do it with hammy down stuff or look on pinterest to try and find a cheaper way of doing things. A couple of weeks back I had a blog entry on my distressed wall with old boards that my dad had from a box that come off the farm. Today the wall that I'm writing about I didn't have any old boards so I went to Lowes hardware and had them to cut me some boards out of some white plywood. It was around 35.00 for a 4X8 sheet. I had to have 2 boards. This was my only expense in this project because I was gonna use all the other stuff I had from previous projects to complete it.
I wish I had taken a picture of all the boards I had gotten at Lowes. The 4X8 sheet made a lot of boards because I told the guy that run the saw at Lowes that I wanted them cut 4" wide. The first 3 cuts where free then the rest of the cuts are .25 each. It wasn't very much and the boards are straight and even. My wall was just a little under 4 feet wide so I only had to cut off a couple inches off each board.
Tools I used:
circular saw
nail gun with air compressor
Vaseline
small Dremel tool (round sander on the end)
grey stain
white flat paint
level
level
First board, use a stud finder to make sure you have the nails with the nail gun in the right place. Once I found them I drew straight lines up the wall so I would know where they are every time.
Next Use a Level to make sure your boards are level before laying the rest of the boards. I only had to do this once.
I checked both ends, and the middle.
Of course I always have helpers when I'm working.
This is to show how I used a jig saw and cut out the squares for the electric sockets.
This was the hard part for me because I'm not a carpenter by any stretch. It was getting around the steps. I cut out a small square with the circular saw, then used a Dremel tool with a round sander on the end to make it smooth. This took me awhile because I had never done it before.
Another thing I didn't figure for was the fancy crown molding at the top. Oh my Word, Can you say pain in the neck!!!! It took for ever using that small sanding tool to make it all go together. But I was very proud of how it finished. ***Key Point I didn't think about that at the top when I started my project. So make sure you look at your wall before you start something like this to make sure you can maneuver around what ever you have on that wall.
Once I finished the wall, I did the same method I did here. (that tells about the stain, Vaseline method for the distressed look to come through. Once you do that, you paint over with flat white paint. I used 2 coats.
You lightly sand in the areas you want the distressed look to appear.
So this is the finished project! I had a old lantern that I took the oil part out of a used a battery light to put on the inside. I purchased the large metal K at "of course" Hobby Lobby.
This is a up close because the long picture you really loose how pretty the distressed part is. Its hard to tell from the bottom pictures.
This is with little light on in the lantern.
This is with the light on.
We have been looking for the last several months at chicken feeders. All kinds, plastic, metal, barrels, square containers. My brother and I both like having chickens for our kids to tend to, play with and take care of. So he and I had been sharing pictures back and forth of all kinds of feeders that we had run into that would be the most practical for our coops. We finally ran across one that I really really liked. So today my husband and I went to Lowes and bought some of the largest PVC pipe that you could find put it together and used bendable wire strips to mount it to the side of the coop. We also used caps for the tops to keep the food dry.
We are gonna build a small shed to come off the side of the coop so they can stand and eat and drink without being in the weather and it will also keep the food in the end of the pipe dry.
So I have finally caught up on a lot of projects that I've been doing around the house so I'm planing to make a couple of post here in the next few days to show what all we have been working on.
I'm trying to redo a lot in my house to go to the white, gray, farmhouse style. I had somewhat the farmhouse style already, but was with more of the reds, greens and hickory style type furniture. So I've been making slip covers, redoing furniture, and adding that ship lap look.
This coffee table that I purchased was at a consignment shop in Greensboro for 66.00. I wanted it to have that distressed look. So I am using the same bucket of flat white paint, a can of black flat paint that you can get at Lowes for .99 and some boiled linseed that my husband already had in his shop....
This is the table when I first purchased it.
It was a little somewhat scuffed up because it had been used.
The first thing I did was sand it. I used my husband hand sander and used a pretty rough grade sand paper because it needed to get the shinny coat on top off.
This sand paper is really rough and it won't take near as long to sand it down and get that top coat off.
Next I painted the entire table white with the basic house flat paint.
I was doing this late in the evening, I'm also redoing a rocker you can see in this picture but that post will come later. Anyways, I let this table dry over night, but if you did it first thing in the am you could easily finish this project in a day.
Next I re sanded again, to make the distressed look. I sanded most of the white off the top but left the sides exactly how I wanted them to look
These are much softer types of sand paper and was some my husband already had in his shop so if you had to purchase these it would probably add a little extra cost to the project, say around 5 to 7 dollars. But I used this to do the sides so it would look distressed.
I was gonna leave the top like this to continue on the project, and you can if you like it, but we really wanted to it show some character with dents and scratches so I went back sanded more of the white off and then took a chain and large hammer and we just laid it on the table and hit it hard to make dents all in the table.
This is my sweet husband helping me with this part, it wasn't hard, but I think he just likes to hit stuff! LoL
Once the dents and bangs are made, you use the black flat paint to spray lightly over the dents.
Next sand the black spots to where only the paint in the dent is left behind, unfortunately I don't have a picture of this because my husband grabbed the sander an did it before I could think to take the picture. But this is the close up of some of the dents.
Ok, so once you have the black in a few places, your back to painting the white flat all over again. After you do this you sand with the same softer paper on the places that you would like to make it look distressed!
I wanted to give the table a little protection but didn't want to use a strong polyurethane because I didn't want a shiny look to the table, so we used boiled linseed to go over it to protect it from water.
I just used a old wash cloth and applied this all over the top of the table.
I also made the little tray in the table but that's another post!
Ok, So does anyone out there really use a coat closet? Well, maybe I should say does anyone out there with kids use a coat closet? Cause basically I think they hold a lot of junk. Mine did anyways. I never hung the first coat in it. I kept it closed cause I wanted to stick everything I could think of in there and hope and pray no one ever opened the dog gone thing. I had only shelves, paint buckets, old vcr's (yes I said VCR) in said closet. So I decided with the holidays coming up, and my hubby wanting to have company to come here this year (sigh, tired face) that I needed a nice cleaned out area for people to hang their coats and it be cute and not cost much to change.
So yes, you can see it looked bad... and yes it had shelves inside that I had to rip out. Which I must say was harder than I thought to remove! But I did get them out. It was just your typical plain jane coat closet.
So the first thing I did, after the ripping and roaring took place, was to clean all the mess up. And remove the spider webs, which I absolutely hate because the kids will tell you mama loves animals, all kinds but NOT spiders!
So its clean, and the painting begins. I used some old grey paint from where I had just finished my pallet wall project in my bathroom. Then once the paint dried, I added some pallets to the middle to give it a little country look :) and some plain hooks from Lowes Home Store.
I moved the same shelves I had carefully removed from the top down to the bottom to give it the little seat for the kids to sit on when they tie their shoes. I used a old chair cushion and recovered it with some cool looking material from Walmart. Then I attached some of the left over pallets with the nail gun to give it a finished look.
I was really tickled with how it turned out. I did get a old tub, small stool and wall art all from hobby lobby. But with the coupon I think it was around 60 to 70 bucks. The basket for gloves and hats came from Walmart. The old lantern was one my husband had from long ago. Here are some other views.
This is the view from the front door. I also have a little fake light that hangs in there that is battery powered so at night it looks like the lantern is lit. So what do you think?
This is another post that's kinda old. I did this project back in the summer time but wasn't blogging at the time but did think to take a picture. I love how on pinterest you can see all these old dressers changed into a sink by cutting a hole and sitting a vessel sink on top. I really wanted to do something like that, but this was gonna be for my girls bathroom and of course they wouldn't take care of a antique dresser the way a adult would (makeup, fingernail polish remover, yikes!) so I decided to use something a little different.
When Kylah was born in 2003 it was very popular to get these dressers that had the changing station area built on top. It was long on one end, high up on the other to put a basket for diapers and wipes. It was really cool to use at the time with all 4 of my kids especially as a space saver cause the changing pad laid right on top. Anyways, I decided that it would be neat to use this piece of furniture for them cause it was something that they had as a baby.
Not the best picture I know, but hey I wasn't blogging at the time and just wanted to take a before and after picture to see if it would turn out. So I started off sanding it really really well to get the coating off the top so the paint would adhere good. Once I sanded it, I cleaned it off with a old diaper cloth to make sure I removed all the sawdust. I purchased black furniture paint from Lowes and started with a coat. I let that dry 24 hours, lightly (I mean really light) sanded it again the next day and painted another coat of black. My hubby bought some spray polyurethane from Lowes and we took it outside and sprayed a coat on it. Waited 24 hours, lightly sanded and I brushed the polyurethane on this time. I did this about 3 times to make the coats thick because I know how messy my girls are. I still would like to go back and add another coat or two just to give it a great thick shine but I haven't done it. We bought a vessel sink from Lowes for 80 and a friend of ours cut the hole for the sink. So for the paint, sink, some new nobs(lowes) and polyurethane we have about 100 in our sink instead of 400 to buy a new sink and vanity, YAY!
We also had our friend to build a little magazine rack that matches the cabinet to put books in. You don't have to do that, but it looks pretty cool, like a old milk crate. We did purchase a vessel sink faucet, I can't remember exactly what it cost, but with that you could go as expensive as you wanted to depending on how fancy you wanted it to be. We choose a little more modern one for the girls to make it look like young tweens :) We had to use some small screws to hold the top drawer closed because of the hardware to the sink underneath, but the 2 lower drawers are still usable for pjs and what ever else you may would want to put in there.
I bought all the hardware for the bathroom to match off of Amazon it was way way cheaper than Lowes. It looks great and is very durable. Let me know what you think!
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