Coffee Table DIY

May 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I have been keeping my eye out for a coffee table for some time now. We love our trunk, but kept finding that it was a little too small for practical use. After we added in our oriental rug, it was clear that we needed a larger coffee table that wasn’t going to look so funny sitting in the middle of the room.

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Last week I finally found a coffee table that fit my criteria: wooden, large, and not too expensive. I was wandering through my favorite used furniture store and I came across the perfect table.  It was a really good quality table that obviously needed some TLC, but the price tag read $20 and I was sold.

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I decided to take my inspiration from this Ethan Allen piece that I have been drooling over for the last few weeks. I love how the bottom is white and the top is wood. Although my coffee table didn’t have slats on the bottom like this one, I thought it could still work. I also might mention that the table above costs $849 while my DIY table cost $20 (I already had the paint from another project).

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I love the finished product. it is fresh and new, and the white helps lighten up the room a bit while the top of the table helps pull everything together. I did contemplate painting the whole thing white (and may someday in the future) by my husband asked me to stop painting things white, so I stopped for now. :)

Do you ever try to replicate items that you are drooling over for less?

Filed Under: DIY, Furniture, Living room Tagged With: , , ,

Refinishing the Drawers

May 16, 2013 by 8 Comments

As I mentioned in this post we recently received two sets of drawers from my late great uncle and aunts house. Both Fergal and I love the fact that we have something that has been passed down to us and are excited that they fit so perfectly in our guest room. That being said, the drawers are a bit older with some normal ware and tare so I decided to give them a bit of a facelift in the form of new drawer pulls and a coat of wood stain to darken them slightly.

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Above is what the original drawers look like. They are such great quality, and super sturdy. I wasn’t crazy about the drawer pulls, I felt like they didn’t match the rest of the decor in my house. I also wanted to darken them slightly to give them a brand new look and feel.

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The first step was to take all the drawers out and remove all of the drawer pulls. Then it was time to scrub down the drawers. Particularly hard to scrub was the marks left by the drawer pulls, but I didn’t need anything more than some elbow grease and a damp cloth.

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These are the items that I needed for the actual project. There is wood filler, sand paper, stain, and the drawer pulls.

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The reason I needed wood filler was because roughly half of the drawers had drawer pulls that were not standard size. In order to get all of the same type of drawer pull (which I really wanted) it was necessary to drill new holes and make the old holes disappear. I would definitely recommend this type of wood filler – it worked great. Once I had filled all of the holes that needed filling, Fergal came and helped me drill the new holes.

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Once the drawers all had their new holes it was time to sand down the surface, clean it off, and then stain the furniture. The whole process of staining took about half and hour and I only did one very thin coat. You can see the before and after really clearly in the picture above. Once everything was stained it was time to let the wood dry – I left it alone for about 24 hours.

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The last step was adding the new drawer pulls and then putting the drawers back in place. I am so excited with how the drawers turned out – they look amazing. I did have trouble capturing the true color of the drawers, so I added in the fuzzy picture of the tall and narrow set because that was the one that best reflected the colors of the drawers.

Have you ever stained anything?

 

 

Filed Under: Bedroom, DIY, Furniture Tagged With: , , ,

Bedroom Curtains

May 2, 2013 by 4 Comments

One of the projects I tackled in April was to make us some decorative curtains for the bedroom. We installed shades when we first moved in, but I never was crazy about how they looked all alone.

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Before

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First I made easy shades by hemming large pieces of linen/burlap fabric. I hung them and was not enthused with the plain look. (That dog in the picture is Roxy – she was a house guest of ours for a few days – isn’t she cute?!).

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I decided to make them faux empire shades, and and was able to do them while the curtains were hanging (talk about dead arm!). Overall I am really happy with the way that these turned out!

Filed Under: Bedroom, DIY, Working with Fabric Tagged With: , ,

New Projects to Come!

March 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in this post, we received several items from my great Uncles house after he passed away. Both my husband and I are really excited that we can use furniture that was already in the family. Some of the items need a little TLC, and we are excited to get working on them. With the Easter holiday upon us, we probably won’t get to working on these projects for another week or so, but I wanted to share anyway!

We have two sets of drawers and a chair that we will be working on. The drawers need a good polish and maybe some new hardware to update them a bit. The chair is going to be a big, fun, job of mine.

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These drawers will be living in our guest room! We have a lot of reorganizing to do in order to make the room look like we want it to, so expect more details on that later!

New Chair

The chair needs to be re-upholstered as well as possibly painted to match the desk that I white washed some time ago. I didn’t know that the chair would fit so well as a pair with this desk, but it is the perfect height and style to compliment the desk.

Do you have any big projects in the horizon? I would love to hear about them in the comments below!

Filed Under: Bedroom, DIY, Furniture, Working with Fabric Tagged With: , , ,

Fenced In

March 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

One of the biggest issues we have had since adopting our pups is that our big back yard wasn’t fenced in. We are pretty close to a main road, so it wasn’t feasible to let the dogs off leash in the back yard, since they could easily run out into the road. While I have visions of a white picket fence all the way around our yard, that just isn’t in the budget this year. So, while saving money for the dream fence down the line, we decided that as soon as the snow melted after the last storm we had, a small pen would be constructed.

My husband was a trooper and constructed the pen all by himself in pretty cold temperatures. I went out for about two minutes to hold the fencing for him, but was relived when my ride came to pick me up, because it was miserably cold! The pen turned out great, and Fergal sent me a video of the dogs playing in it for the first time. I think that they were a little confused about why they were allowed out back without a leash on, but they got over it pretty quickly. One of the best parts of this whole thing (in my opinion) is that now, instead of having to walk the dogs first thing in the morning, I can let them play outside while I watch from inside. It makes getting up at 5:30 to take them out much more pleasant!

Filed Under: Barney, Cassie, DIY, Our House Tagged With: , , ,
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