Master Bedroom Lamps

After 'The Flood' this summer we had a lot of damage, and not just water damage. The workers did some damage while trying to help us out. They moved lamps while holding box cutters and sliced the shades, they ripped a bedskirt apart while moving the bed to pull up the ruined wood floor...I could go on but I won't. So here I was with all of this stuff to replace or fix. The bedskirt was pretty trashed so I just wrote it off completely. We were allotted money from insurance for the bedding and since there were box cutter slices and boot prints on the bedding as well I thought I better get to looking for something to replace it with. Well, life gets in the way of that sometimes. School supplies were bought, school clothes were bought, other projects needed to be finished and so on. Here we are almost 3 full months after the flood and we still had plain bedding and some cheap white lampshades that I bought at Target. So I went out and bought some gray cotton fabric and starting the crafting! These were the plain lampshades

These were the strips of fabric after they were hemmed and a thread was run for the hand ruffling. My mother's sewing machine has a ruffling attachment but it has never worked, so I sat and ruffled at night after the kids were in bed. I ruffled and ruffled...do NOT attempt this if you don't have a functioning ruffling attachment, it is torture!!!

Then came the gluing. I have a love/hate relationship with the hot glue gun. I love it because it is so wonderful for all of my crafts, but I burn myself pretty bad at least once every single time I use the silly thing!!!

This is what I ended up with:

Not too bad ;) I love them and it's just what I wanted. I can't wait to get the new bedding as well. On the day I had everything in place to take pictures for the blog, the old bedding officially bit the dust and I had to improvise with what I had on hand. One project down...about a million left to go!

April's Master Furniture

My friend April had seen pictures of the projects I had done, mostly for myself, and asked me if I could do her master bedroom furniture. She got it several years ago and it was still in great condition, but it was pretty dated. She was wanting to go a different direction. We talked about things and she had decided that sleek black was the way to go! So I got started. The theory here was to tackle the hardest piece first and then move on to the easier and smaller pieces. So I started with the armoire. Knotty pine had to be sanded, sealed the knots as best as could, then primed. This piece ended up being a learning process for me. I had done lots of furniture before, I had even painted black before, I had NOT tried to do flat black on knotty pine! Even primed it was crazy hard and showed brush marks. I had tried my sprayer first and learned quickly that I have a horrible sprayer and will hopefully be getting an awesome one soon! But all things aside the pieces turned out great!

The Armoire

before

after

The Nightstands

before

after

The Bed

before

after

The Dresser

before

after

Her space looks fabulous and she was very happy with her furniture makeover!

The Desk

I had previously posted about this project on my personal blog, but since I feel it shows just how dramatic a makeover can be for a piece of furniture, I just had to post it here as well. I LOVE my projects, they make me happy. For the longest time (seriously it was 8.5 years), we had the ugliest desk known to man. It was a corner desk, which I hate anyway because of their total disregard for space, but it was also particle board laminated with a wood grain picture on top for the body of the desk and flat black for the tops and shelves. Can you say YUCK??? All the storage for the desk was open and because of my love of projects and the fact that I'm a busy mom and keep other people's children as well, the mess was very visible to everyone that walked into our bedroom. This is what it looked like almost contantly!

And sadly enough this was pretty clean since it was the day the desk was scheduled for death, I had already de-cluttered the top section! I don't like mess. I like clean! So I scoured the internet and looked in antique stores and searched until I thought I would lose my mind. No one had the perfect desk, or rather an affordable perfect desk. I found great desks for about $900 - $1500, but I just couldn't justify spending the money on that. I wanted a fantastic desk that I could store everything in and have great functionality out of. Finally, one day while I was on Craigslist looking for an entirely different project, I happened upon an ad for a desk. It was ridiculously ugly, but listed as a solid wood desk for $80. I thought, "okay then, I can work with that!" So I called the lady up and set up a time to go look at it. It was in a not so good part of town so I called in my father and his truck to go with me. We went, and the desk was NOT solid wood. It was mostly MDF with some wood, it had been altered, and a wood grain formica had been put on the top. I hummed and hawed and talked it over with my dad for a few minutes. I mean, how practical would this purchase be? But, I just couldn't pass up the storage or the price so I went for it! This is what it looked like.

I got the thing home and sanded the formica top to rough it up a bit for the paint. I used a great primer and sprayed the whole thing. I do not have a great sprayer so I decided after the primer I was going to go with a good old fashioned paint brush and some foam rollers. It went great! I changed out the hardware and gave the desk some nice jewelry with glass pulls and a gleaming custom glass top! The desk, paint, pulls, and top all together cost $257, most of which went to the custom glass top. I'd say that is money well spent ;)

Ashleigh's Table

 After doing a few projects for friends and constantly posting about my own on facebook, I got a call from another friend about a project. Ashleigh had this computer armoire that didn't quite live up to what she wanted, so she asked me for some advice. We ended up meeting at her house to talk about it and one piece of furniture slowly escalated into several! Yay for me, but it would definitely keep me busy for quite some time! After we had discussed all the pieces up for makeovers, she decided she wanted her dining table done first. So, I picked colors and all decisions were made very quickly and very easily. We were clicking right along. The table is a big one 80"L x 39.5"W x 32H fixed...no leaves. After a much needed trip to Vegas with the hubby and some awesome friends (Yay again!), it was back home and time to get started on this project. My very awesome husband went with me to pick up the table and get it into our garage. This is the table the night I brought it home

                                           

This is what I call a gorgeous piece of furniture! The lines of this table are just about perfection to me. I love the chunky size and the turned legs. I love the farmhouse appeal and the nice solid top. But, it needed some love. The red paint is faded and not the direction Ashleigh was wanting to go. First things first though...repair! I filled gouges and cracks and glued the apron back in a couple of places and for a while I had a lovely polka dotted table

Fabulous huh ;) A necessary step to get to where I wanted to be though.There was a lot of sanding involved and then more sanding involved after I did a primer coat. But finally I got to the fun part. The table was painted it's final colors and ready for it's new decorative accents. It looked pretty terrific just like this

But, as you can see it has more plans ahead! This is when my heart started pounding like crazy and my stomach started churning. Could I do this? Would it look okay? How much bleeding would there be under the tape? It's so high contrast, this could go so wrong so extremely fast! So I dove in and just went for it, with a really steady hand by the way.

I was scared to death! But the paint had to dry for 6 hours before I could do the second coat and check my tapes. Argh!!!! So immediately after the second coat, I very painstakingly took off the tapes.

Would you look at that!!! Yes, three exclamation points on that because it is the best paint line EVER! I started breathing again finally, it had been a while! This is the finished product and it is so awesome. Ashleigh was thrilled. It's always good to have a happy customer! Now for the next piece :)