Strikes my fancy

Do you ever start working on a room knowing that you might work on it over and over again?  That's this bedroom.  Currently occupied by our youngest inhabitant - she was 1 when we moved in.  Now she's almost 5 and has an opinion about her room!  She's help create and choose the art in her room as well as some furnishings.  The bedroom is 90% sleeping and clothing storage - there are other rooms for the majority of playing.  I bought a stencil to use in another room of the house, but as soon as L saw it she said "Mermaid tail!" And that started the wheels turning in my head.  I have a lot of paint at my house that I use when redoing furniture.  With "extra time" on my hands, I decided to use a few of those sample cans! After choosing the colors, it was time to start the stencil. Not gonna lie - this was some work!  The stencil was super easy to use, but the up and down on the ladder for all those rows...whew!  You can see ...

This is our main bathroom from our home's listing 4 years ago.  First two things I did was take out the rugs and the curtains.  Painted the walls grey and lived with it for awhile.  But I never did like the vanity - too big for the space (length & depth) Then we updated to  this curtain  as my 4 year old is this bathroom's main user.  During the 3 additional year, the yellow tile started cracking around the edges.  One day while shopping at our local Habitat Store, we picked up a sink that was a cute small sink.  What I didn't know then, was how hard it would be to find a vanity for said sink!   Then one day, on my local Facebook page, someone was giving away this desk.  I thought I'd give it a try and see if I could make it a vanity.  Y'all, I picked this up in June and finished it in March.  There were many moments throughout the process, when I almost gave up and just bought one. After being gifte...

Oh man, where to start with the kitchen.  This is the listing photo: As soon as we had the keys, little girl and I changed all the knobs to silver.  We bought a black fridge because...that's what color everything else was!  After we had been in for a bit, I took down the wallpaper - that was zero fun - and painted.  I also put peel and stick wallpaper on the back splash area because a girl can only handle so much fake wood and I had it leftover from a different project. We've mulled over lots of ideas with what to do with this space, but they all involve $$ and so I've focused on smaller things I can do for lesser $$.  I've changed the light fixture out as well.  Recently I've been thinking about color on the cabinets.  It's kind of hard to tell, but they are a creamy color.  I don't hate the color...too much, but the cabinet space (specifically in the uppers) is horrible, so we'll probably go with a different cabinet when we remodel....

One of the funniest thing about the listing for our home was that it said something about the backyard being ready for a cocktail party.  I don't know what you envision when you think of a cocktail party, but I can tell you that no lady in heels wanted to be in our backyard...or our back deck.  I loved the size of our deck the first time I saw it...and hated the red - probably because of the brick. I'll be honest - moving in with an almost 1 year old and so many "immediate" redo needs....we didn't take care of our deck.  We aren't convinced it was built to too high of a quality standard either, but we didn't love the wood like we should have.  So fast forward to this year and it was something I both wanted and needed to work on.  We replaced a few boards and needed to stain all of them.  I should say that our long term goal for this space is to make it screened in.  The mosquitoes around here are no joke!  We love our creek and our "it rained...

I've realized I need to keep a list of major home projects somewhere so I can remember when we've done things.  So what better place than my blog!  These are listing photo for the house: We bought the house in 2016 and moved in quickly.  We did an air test before we moved in (it had been vacant and with my mold allergy, I could smell something was off as soon as I walked in.  Thankfully it wasn't mold!)  The tester told us "you should take the carpets out, but since you don't have small animals or crawling children you should be fine for a bit"....we had a 9 month old.  We ripped out the carpet and lived on painted subfloors for a year while saving up money to redo the floors.  I'll tell more about that when I post about the floor redos. In 2017 we had the fireplace cleaned, even though we'll probably never use it....it never gets cold here (now I've probably jinxed myself for this winter!).  The man that cleaned it said to have ...

As soon as I saw this piece I knew I wanted to show it some love!   Some repair work, custom paint and new handles bring this a new life!   This one moved pretty slow and other than wanting it out of the house as I was moving - I kinda was ok with that :-)  This turned out so cute!

This is as good as it gets for a before picture - THREE different covers for this chair!  I loved the color & character of this chair and simply gave it a new cover.  Oh how I wished my new house had a porch!   It hurt a little when the purchaser told me they were going to paint and recover it :-(  To each their own - off to a new home in a nursery for a new baby boy! (ok, maybe the color & material weren't the best for a boy's nursery :-))

This was a simple makeover - I even used the same knobs!  But it was fun to bring a new life to a piece.

 This was a fun makeover.  I bought this cute bedside table/dresser at a yard sale when I first moved to ATL.  It was green...that always catches my eye!  At the time the color matched my bedroom, but the knobs were a bit wild.  You can see the round knob I used at the bottom of this photo.   And then I moved & got a new bedroom set and green just wasn't cutting it anymore.  So in came a soft yellow!  Such a cute all-purpose piece!

Sometimes makeovers are as simple as taking one piece off a mirror....

If you follow our blog you'll see we've inherited a love for old furniture...either refinishing or something else to make it useful for everyday life.  Well, we don't just do that for furniture - I do it for clothes too!  Ok, maybe not as much as with furniture (because I can't see potential/ideas for clothes as easy!), but every once in awhile. Take this 80s dress I found at the thrift store (at least I think it's from the 80s, maybe it's older!)     I wore it just like that (with a skinny or br oad bel t) for awhile, but I knew that I wanted to do something to make it feel more modern...knowing I'd wear it more if it felt less 80s. S o after fran tic brain storming emails with sister #3 I had a game plan .  But it was still hard to make that first cut!! I cut off the sle eves and made them more of a c ap sleeve and shorte ned t he skirt by 4 ".  I'm trying to decide if I want to go another 1.5 -2" shorter....     And here ...

This is one of the few pieces that has moved with me to every apartment I've lived in.  Actually, now that I think about it this is THE only piece of furniture that has moved to every apartment/house I've lived in (except the first two).  Wow - I must like this piece ;-) Our love story began when I was in college and wanted to "build" some furniture.  This was back in the day when Lowe's sold build-your-own furniture (do they still do that?).  I picked up two pieces and put them together and stained them.  This piece came with wooden knobs and at some point in my NY moves one broke.  I replaced all the knobs with the metal ones in the picture.  I knew I wanted to do something different with the piece.  It was stained cherry and I couldn't decide between going darker or painting it.  So for THREE YEARS  I lived with this piece and the fact that the stain didn't go cover the whole piece (look closely under the knobs, you'll see it....) ...

I have been looking for a desk to make a vanity for quite some time.  I was scouring Craigslist and came across this beauty.  I got to see a different part of Atlanta when going to pick this guy up!  The drawers stuck and someone decided to try out chalk paint...  I love the color green and thought I could live with this for awhile, but I was wrong.  So I took some gray paint I already had (you'll see that featured in another post) and made it darker by adding some black paint that I already had.  Sanded down the desk to take off the chalkiness and applied - 1 COAT!  I was so excited it only took one coat ;-) Here's the piece now...without the cool handheld vanity mirror I recently got from one of my favorite antique dealers (hint: my sister!) I'm in love....and I think this will be a piece I move with me and use in different ways in different houses - we shall see!

If you need any proof that my sisters and I think alike - even while miles away - just keep reading.  I was gifted this beautiful rocking chair - because the giver had seen some of the work I've done and thought I could do a "marvelous" job with it.      Now, I'll admit right now that sister #3 pays much better attention to detail to me & I was intimidated by this chair!  Great bones, but it needed some lovin.   Luckily the wood and frame were in pretty good shape and I could focus on simply reupholstering it.  That's when I call my resident This Old House expert....sister #3.  She pointed me to products and a great site for material.  And then she answered every.single.frantic.text I sent while working on this chair.  But my first question was "what fabric?!"  I switched between what I knew would be "historically accurate" (= leather) and wanting to do a bold, modern fabric (since when did I become a bold, m...