Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Hallway

So we've been in our house for 6 years now and slowly but surely I have gone through and really tried to make it our own. I've ripped out walls and put in new cabinetry, changed carpet to wood, and vinyl to ceramic or stone. Hopefully what I have now will appeal to a new buyer eventually, but it has certainly made things easier, more functional, and nicer looking for us! I'm just going to share a few pictures of what I have done so far. The first thing that had to be taken care of was the kitchen, it was too small and didn't function well for a family of four! But I'm now making changes to it again so I'll post pics of that later. The second thing I did was paint the hallway between the kids bedrooms. When I started all of the walls in my house were plain white (I needed color), but there was also this horrible arch. I like a good arch...a GOOD arch, mine was not. It wasn't executed all that well to begin with and the hallway is small so it blocked natural light and made the white hallway seem dark and even smaller. So the arch had to go!
                
(That's my awesome dad - he helps me execute all this)

This is all prepped for the sheetrock and texture
                                                    

Base Coat - 
                                                    
The paint was great but I still wanted something more. So after taping and painting, and taping and painting, and taping and painting some more I finally got what I wanted! Color, pattern, and LOTS of interest!
                                                  
                                                          
I love the way the light hits all the different finishes!



















Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Something New










I know I said I was going to show off older work first, but I just finished this little table and I just can't wait to share it! This started out when my fabulous mother-in-law was having a new house built. She went through all of her things (a lot of which is antique furniture) and decided to purge a bit of it. Lucky me! I was the recipient of some fabulous pieces! It started out with this one table that I absolutely LOVED the legs on. The legs are turned perfection and I knew I  just had to have this piece! The only problem I could see was the top. It had been an extendable table at one time, most likely used as a buffet, but I wasn't in need of anything like that and the top was not in the greatest of condition. So I went into building mode and decided I needed to make a new top for those fabulous legs!
                                                                  
This is the top of the table before. You can see the seam and the fact that it had seen more than it's fare share of use! You can also see that a small piece on the legs was broken. I had to do a little repair and glue it back together.

                                                     
This is a full shot of those amazing legs I love after it was fixed. I got so excited I forgot to take a picture of the whole top before I ripped it off. I do that a lot! Bad blogging form I know, but maybe I'll get better! Anyway, the edges of the top were curvy and very pretty but I wanted the seamless look for the top of this table so I went to work on trying to draw up what I wanted. This is where the story takes a turn! I had this place in my living room where a very small table was needed. I really wanted a piece for that area but hadn't had a lot of luck finding it. One day while I was out in the garage I looked at those two halves of the top of the table I loved and it hit me! Cut down one of those halves and make a sort of small demi-lune type table! So I did just that! I went to Lowe's and bought some pre-made legs and then trucked myself over to my dad's shop. I cut the tabletop down to fit the area I needed it in and then used the drill press to make the holes to receive the newly purchased (and pretty cheap I might add) legs. And because I'm bad at taking pictures there are none of me working in the shop...next time for sure! But here is what I had when I was leaving my parents house that day.
                                                     
Pretty cute huh? Well at least I think it is, it's what I wanted. Now comes the truly fun part! I needed to paint it. I painted it a pretty aqua color, but I knew I wanted something more than just a little aqua table. This is where my addiction to Pinterest helped me out. I found and pinned this great tutorial on glazing from The Speckled Dog. She gave clear instructions and it was an easy little project that only took about 30 minutes. I had an episode of Sarah 101 on in the background and I was finished at the same time the episode was.
                       
                                                    
I brushed the glaze on, and I wiped it off. It was really that easy. The top is the only place that I had a little trouble. You really can't do a solid surface in small sections, it shows the lines. So I just painted the entire top with the glaze and worked quickly and used a wiping and blotting technique to get the look I wanted. This is the table after.
                                                      
And this is the table in place. Excuse my countrified chairs, more on them at a later date for sure. I love those chairs, they just need some love too!

Starting Out

It's really hard to know where to start sometimes. I'm still pretty new to the whole blogging thing anyway, but people keep asking me for one, so here we go. I had another more personal blog, but since I'm starting a business I figured I should try and make a more business-based blog. I have so many projects right now that it does feel a little overwhelming at times. It also doesn't really help that I'm not all that great at blogging either, but oh well! For a while I will be trying to play catch up and show off a lot of my work that has been done for a while. It's something that provides me with hours of joy and the most wonderful sense of accomplishment! Here's hoping everyone likes it!