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 got this neat piece from my mama with a plan already in my head to make this a bit of a bar in our new home.  The apartment we live in has yellowish walls - so you can only imagine how yellow this piece really looked against the wall!   After creating a paint booth of sorts and filling our place with fumes :-)  We ended up with this piece and I LOVE the color!

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!

So recently our church merged with another church - one that used to be a church of 2,500 people in Southeast Atlanta...the church is over 120 years old!  I had no idea there were so many rooms in the building...and there was stuff in all of them (desks, pianos, pulpits, extra pews and chairs are the most popular...I have NEVER seen that many pulpits in one place!).  I happened to come in one evening when they were cleaning out rooms....and I turned into my mother :-)  I left with 6 pieces to restore/redo and 5 are done and sold (less than a work week later!)  Here are the few I did first.  

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

This is another lovely little piece that started with a frantic e-mail to my partner-with-a-truck.   This did have a door when I got it (see it on the left?), but I quickly took it off.  Well, quickly after my furniture guru adviser thought it was a good idea :-)   Starting building the shelves and shore up the supports.   Shelves done & outside painted!   Trying out drawer knobs....   Finished product!  You can't see this too well, but the inside is painted gray.  It's funny how each of these photos (from my phone) make it look like a different color blue.  For me this was adventurous for a piece I wasn't keeping, but after some Facebook feedback - I took a bit of a plunge...and it worked!  Who knows, maybe the next piece will be a more daring color!

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 ...