In Case You Were Wondering...

 This is what I was up to this weekend.  Some of you guessed it, and I really confused others of you, but I was fixing up a Goodwill tray.  Last week I dropped off some stuff at Goodwill, and you know I couldn't pass up going inside and seeing what they had!  Here is my $2 purchase...

Mini Tutorial:

 1.  Prep work - sand, clean, prime and base coat 2. tape off area for accent color  
3. touch up  4. clear glaze coating  5. wait proper dry time (I forgot this last step, and had to go back to start)


I really wanted to add some more color into this room, but mainly I needed a home for my coasters besides in a drawer now that they look so darn pretty!  I think the tray really adds a pop of color and ties in well with the tin art we have on our mantel. 

 For those of you wondering if we had a living room... we do!  I'm sorry I have never posted pictures of this room before, but I couldn't figure out a good way of photographing it without showing you all of the padding around our hearth ;)  Our fireplace is monstrous, and trying to photograph around it is no easy task.  So in light of keeping it real I choose little mans noggin over pretty pictures.

 {join the party}

   

Winter Decor

From the sounds of it most people around blog land have been rejuvenated by the New Year.  I took down all of the Christmas decor and generally de-cluttered, but I think I am in a little post Christmas funk.  After everything has been put away I feel like my home is empty, and I haven't found any type of motivation to get crackin' on remedying that.  That was until Courtney over at A Thoughtful Place re-posted about a little DIY project she had done about two months ago.  I read her blog daily and don't know how I missed that post as I have been eying that cable knit bowl and vase she has for months!  I won't re-post the tutorial as I followed her exact cable knit vase tutorial here.

So now that I had some fun new pieces to work with I decided that I would start in my entryway.  As those of you who have been following for awhile know it got a little spruce up with a stencil wall, but I still hadn't figured out what I wanted to display in the cabinets cubbyholes.   I fell in love with the Arthur Court dog treat bowl while remodeling one of my clients kitchens a few years back.   

See it there on the counter next to the cake dish?

  

I had this on our kitchen counter for awhile as well, but it was just getting in the way.  I moved it into one of the cubbyholes, and added toy baskets to the bottom shelves where little sticky hands like to grab.  Below are what look to be like the same photo, but look closely they're different.  We had tried installing undercabinet lights in this cabinet years ago when we lived in our first apartment.  We about blew up the place trying to attach the plug to the wires and gave up.  While at The Dollar Store I picked up a few battery operated lights, and while they give off a slightly blue tint I didn't blow the house up!

No Lights

Lights

 

 

Cable knit vase check, dog treat bowl check, under cabinet lights check.  One room down, fifty billion left to go {who am I kidding, I live in a ranch}!  I do need a little of your help, see that bowl with brown ball looking things in it?  Little man and I picked those up before Christmas to make a cute wreath, but then I got to laying around busy and didn't get to it.  Now I don't know what to do with them, any ideas I'm stumped.

DIY Play Kitchen

Remember this guy?   

Over the past two weeks I have been diligently working to make this tv cabinet that I purchased at a furniture resale store into the {this is my bias coming out folks} cutest play kitchen of all time!  We had been planning on purchasing a play kitchen all finished, but my discriminating taste kicked in.  The plastic kitchens are fine, but lets be honest they aren't the prettiest things ever.  This is going to be in our kitchen for a few years, and I want it to look good.  So on to the wood kitchens.  Ugh, most are pink and for girls.  REALLY?!  I'm sorry, but boys like to get into cabinets and bang the pots and pans around too!

After being inspired by the wood kitchens my exact statement to hubby was "oh, I could make one of those.  It would be cuter too!".  So off to Goodwill, Salvation Army, Antique Square, and finally a furniture resale store with that little guy for $15.  Done and Done!

Step 1:  This piece of furniture was a laminate tv cabinet.  I knew in order to make it last with a destructive little guy I was going to have to do some good prep work.  Before painting, the cabinet was transported over to a good friends home where I conned the hole for the sink was cut out.  The cabinet was sanded all over, primed, sanded, painted, sanded, painted two more times and two good coats of polyurethane were added {do NOT skip this step, it really makes everything so much more durable for persons who aren't careful i.e. children}.  I already had all of the paint in the garage, which determined the color scheme.

Step 2:  Anything that was going to have a silver base coat got spray painted {sorry for the pictures, most were done at night in the garage}.

Step 3:  Two coats of chalkboard paint were directly applied to the laminate side.  Using a tip from the brilliant Janell over at  Isabella & Max Rooms, chalk was applied to the entire side after it had dried and then erased.   It really does help not getting a lasting image of previous drawings on it.  

Step 4:  Using some scrap wood we had in the garage a frame was made to go around the chalkboard wall.  I put it together and painted it prior to attaching it to the cabinet so that I wouldn't have to trim it out at all.  Then I just touched up the areas where the nails were covered.

Step 5:  After searching for a faucet to use, I decided to not invest the $30+ price tag of an actual faucet and become inventive.  I found this little "J-trap" in the plumbing isle.  It came with that base/washer.  After spraying it with a good coat of silver paint, a metal washer was dropped into the base and screwed into the cabinet.  The actual "J-trap" was then screwed onto the base.  Not only does this allow for durability, but the "faucet head" is able to turn like a real faucet would.

Step 6:  Actually this came after the base coats of paint, but prior to the polyurethane.  Black paint was applied to create the "stove top".  

Step 7:  Holes were drilled for the knobs being used as faucet handles as well as stove knobs. 

Step 8:  I found some scrap fabric at Hobby Lobby that coordinated with the colors of paint I was using {I didn't purchase any new paint, but used what I already had in the garage}.  Using stitch witchery I made a no sew curtain to the opening size.

Step 9:  The only type of curtain rod that I could find to fit this opening was a tension rod.  I know my son, and this would become a fun game to tear that curtain off.  Instead I cut down a dowel rod to slightly smaller than the opening.  I drilled small holes into the center of each end on the dowel rod.  Holes were then drilled through the cabinet so that a screw could attach the dowel rod to the side of the cabinet {fabric was already on rod before being hung}.

Step 10:  I drew an outline on the cabinet doors of what I wanted it to look like {this came in handy, because I didn't like how the oven and microwave were and repainted them}.  Then the appropriate paint colors were added.  Finally, a few stickers were attached for the fridge "big chill" logo and the microwaves buttons.

Step 11:  Pretty it up - All of the accessories that made his kitchen extra unique were added including {to hubby's dismay} all 95 pieces of food.  I really liked that "F" hood, but if I had it to do again I would get a shorter hook.

Adding up the Cost:

cabinet - $15

supplies - $9.65

knobs - $12.36

replacement of broken knob - $3.99

fabric - $3.67

storage - $7.99

accessories - $22.98

Total - Priceless $75.74

and drum roll please...

Alright, before I let you all get back to your lives here are some pictures of the little man playing in his kitchen all.day.long!

{I know his outfit doesn't match, it was early on Christmas morning and we had to grab a sweater to keep the little guy warm!}

 

Cabinet Refinishing {learning from your mistakes!}

 WOW!  What a busy weekend, and it doesn't seem like this week will let up at all either.  Even when I feel like I am prepared, something always seems to set me back!  At least I got my goal of finishing my cabinets checked off my to-do list {the original goal was birthday party, then Thanksgiving}.

Most projects give me much gratification, even the process of tedious work.  I push through projects with the motivation that once done I will have a beautiful end product.  However, when you are just re-doing something because you did it wrong the first time the process just becomes a pain in your behind.  This is such the case with my kitchen cabinets.  So let me tell you a story of doing it RIGHT the first time!

So this is the only photo I could find of my kitchen when we moved into our house four years ago.  That is my awesome brother working really hard to sand all of the texture off that wall so I could put up a chalk board wall.  Isn't he fab?!  The existing cabinets are actually really nice cabinets, better than what you can find in a lot of prefab cabinets today.  They are solid wood frame-less with dovetailed solid wood drawers.  Although you can see the knife hinges, I kinda adore that character it provides. The problem would be, although it is hard to tell, the color of the cabinets were butter cream and disgusting. 

 

My mom and brother helped me take down all of the 80's wallpaper and we painted the kitchen this Behr color Georgia Mudpie.  Then they went home and I starred at how ugly the cabinets were.  This is our first home, and therefore didn't know much about home improvement {and at 24 my patience wasn't as great but don't tell my mom I admitted that}.  So without sanding, priming or much else I whipped out my Ultra Pure White paint and went to town on the cabinets.  They looked great for awhile, until you bumped something against them and the paint peeled off down to the butter cream color.  Turns out when I went to the garage the original paint was oil based, and I just painted everything with latex... OOPS!  If you haven't heard, you can't paint over oil based paint with latex based paint.  IT WON'T STICK!!!!!

Fast forward to this August, and I had finally been fed up with the paint coming off near the cabinet knobs.  I decided I would test one door to see if I could scrape off the old paint and sand the oil based paint down to where latex primer would stick to it.  This time I was going to do it properly, and I could take all of the time I needed because I was going to do one door at a time in the same Ultra Pure White.

The.hardest.part was scraping ALL of the white latex paint off of the doors.  I have amazing arm muscles now!  Then I sanded the door down with a medium grit sandpaper, touched up any nicks with wood filler, sanded it down with fine grit sandpaper and washed the door.

 

After priming the door with Kilz latex primer, the door was sanded again with fine grit sandpaper.  A coat of latex what was suppose to be white paint, sanded, and painted.  On top of that went two coats of polyurethane.  The door went back up to its proper place, WHAT?!  I grabbed the wrong white paint!  This was a unknown, color matched gray-white.  Take a close look at this picture below.  The upper cabinets and tall pantry cabinet are Ultra Pure White.  The base cabinets and oven cabinet are unknown gray-white.  You probably can't tell the difference {hence the frustration having to paint all the cabinets at once before big first birthday party, lots of out of town guests coming in, why do I get myself into messes like this when I'm already stressed?!}.  The difference is enough that you can't have cabinets that butt up to each other different, but that if whole sections are different only I can tell they aren't the same.  Look at the base molding where the tall pantry meets up with the brown walls base molding, yeah their different!

Moral of the story, do it right the first time and you will save yourself three months of fixing your mistake.  Since I was already investing so much time into these cabinets, I thought I would fix something that I hate about them.  Only the upper cabinets hardware, and only some of that, is  aligned in the middle of the frame.  Before painting the cabinets their new gray-white paint, the existing hardware hole was filled in with wood filler.  After the filler had dried it was sanded smooth along with the rest of the door {see I am learning from my mistakes}.  I measured the same spot on every door to be drilled and marked it with pencil.  Then I freaked out that I was going to mess up and have holes in my cabinets, bit my lip and drilled the holes.

 ...and after this novel of a blog post I have cabinet hardware on the doors where they can actually be functional and pretty!

 I'll say it again, projects around our house are a process not done all at once.  But, here is the inspiration board for the kitchen of my dreams.  The paint color and window treatments are on my immediate want list with that Ikea runner coming in at a close second.