Furniture Flip Friday: Feeling Blue

Hers.

After refurbishing a slew of dressers, we were desperate for a change.  It was then that we found this old, solid wood desk for a great price.  Bingo.  If anything was going to cure our dresser monotony, this would be it.

It had dovetail drawers (always a bonus) and was in great shape.  We started cleaning it out and, much to our surprise, found old papers stuffed behind the drawers.  Ironically enough, there were a list of addresses from Tennessee, a few were even from the small town Chris’ maternal family was originally from- such a small world!

As much as I love my standard antique white color scheme with oil-rubbed bronze hardware, I knew this desk needed some spice.  And what’s spicier than blue drawers (besides those jalapeno poppers that still haunt my taste buds…).

Painting just the drawers blue gave the desk a cute pop of color without looking too over the top.  The best part was, this ended up being the cheapest design decision I’ve made to-date.  I found the perfect shade of light blue sitting in the oops paint pile at Lowe’s.  I knew I only needed a little (I’ve actually used this paint for drawers on two different desks now and still have some remaining) so the little sample jar was perfect.  It’s an Olympus satin paint and, unfortunately, I can’t tell you the name because it was a custom mix and mixed, apparently, incorrectly.  And, yes, you’re reading the lid correctly; it was a grand total of FIFTY CENTS!  After Chris got over the initial shock, a long bout of gloating started as apparently it was thanks to his “good influence rubbing off on me.”  Ha!

It ended up being the perfect color for this though!  For simplicity sake, we sprayed the whole desk (except the drawers and top) antique white and then I used a brush to paint the drawers blue.

I lightly distressed all the edges of the desk and drawers because, well, let’s be honest, I have an addiction to my sander.  It also helped give the desk that cute shabby, vintage look.

Voilah. Blue drawers.

We decided to go with a stained top for this piece so we stripped the original stain and applied Minwax’s Special Walnut stain.

The hardware got a spray of oil-rubbed bronze paint to finish it off.

My favorite part of this desk, obviously, was the blue drawers but the paneling on each side of the desk was a close second.  I’m not going to lie- this was a hard piece to give up, even though we already have a desk and not one I’m going to let go of anytime soon (see pics of our current desk here).  Chris had to talk me out of keeping this new desk once… or twice… okay, maybe 10 times.  It ended up going to a woman decorating her new office space.  I swear the woman was Sarah Jessica Parker’s doppleganger so at least I can take comfort in the fact that Carrie would be proud (Chris + all men out there: that’s a Sex in the City reference).

Transformation Breakdown:

• Base Paint: Antique white
• Drawer Paint: A custom pale blue color
• Top Stain: Minwax, special walnut
• Hardware: Oil-rubbed bronze

After.

As a reminder of where we started, here’s the before again.

And after…

  

Furniture Flip Friday: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee Table

His.

Sometimes waking up early on a Saturday pays off. For example, a few weeks ago I was awoken at the ungodly hour of 10am and was unable to fall back asleep, so I decided to peruse Craigslist, particularly the free section, when… huzzah! Free coffee table! If you’ve ever tried to nab something for free on Craigslist, you know you have to act fast. So I immediately e-mailed the person and asked if it was still available. Well, my “early rise” had paid off as I was the first one to contact them, but I had to be able to get there within 30 minutes. I quickly threw clothes at Julie and dragged her out of bed screaming, “no time to explain, get in the car!” In retrospect she probably thought the zombies had finally come and it was time to bug out. No matter, we had a coffee table to race to!

Well, we got there and picked up the table just in time to beat the rain. It was covered in dust and wasn’t particularly pretty but it was solid wood and it was free, so we weren’t really going to complain. Once we got home and got it cleaned up, we found out it was made by Lane, a rather reputable wood furniture company.

So here she is, in all her 80’s glory:

So it really wasn’t half bad. I mean, it wasn’t really half good, either, but we had something we could work with. We decided to do our typical antique white finish with a stained top. The wood had a really rich grain but definitely needed a fresh stain.

The first thing I did was paint the legs and bottom shelf white. Simple enough, but thinking back on it I probably should have stripped the top first because I got some old stain gunk on the fresh paint job and had to do a lot of touch-ups. Oh well, live and learn, right?

So once the paint was cured, I stripped and sanded the top, similar to how I redid our front door (read more here). Some of the old stain and poly was really on there, so it ended up being pretty time consuming:

Finally, the top was ready for stain. We went with Minwax Special Walnut because a) we already had it and b) it’s a rich color that isn’t so dark it hides the grain.

After a good coat of stain and about four coats of polyurethane (the more coats you use, the more even it will turn out), we had a coffee table looking so good that… you guessed it, Julie wanted to keep it! It turns out, though, that it was a pretty easy argument to win, since our current coffee table was built by my grandfather and will never be replaced. Oh, and the thought of a 100% profit piece had Julie seeing dollar signs and new shoes.

Transformation Breakdown:

• Base Paint: Antique White
• Top Stain: Minwax Special Walnut

After.

Quite the difference!  Now, for more after pictures.

Furniture Flip Friday: The Dresser I Barely Saved

Hers.

You may remember that our last Furniture Flip Friday post told the unfortunate tale of the parting of my beloved dresser (read more here).  Well, Chris owed me and it didn’t take long for me to collect.

Introduce what almost became another sales victim.  Yes, yes, it looked very generic and honestly, pretty ugly.

The key is seeing past all the outdated stain and hardware and finding pieces with good lines.  I mean, look at the detail in the feet and, while the shell applique is atrocious, I knew it’d make for great detailing once painted.  It was a great find at only $35 too, especially for a solid wood piece!

But I knew this dresser was a keeper when it spoke to me.  Yes, I had myself a dresser that could communicate.  Don’t believe me?  Psh, well non-believers, don’t you worry.  I have proof.

Such profound words that appeared on the inside of one of the drawers.  Was it a question, a declaration, or just a weird come-on?  Well, we may never know but you better believe I was “feelin it” as a keeper for my house.  Sorry Chris, this one’s staying.

Still having a hard time seeing the potential?  Chris definitely was so let’s walk through the transformation.

First we (err… Chris) sprayed the base (drawers out) with primer then two coats of an antique white color.

Then the drawers.

Here’s a trick for you.  To help keep the drawers upright, we place one brick against the underside of the drawer and another one on the back inside of the drawer.  Fancy, I know.

Next up, hardware.  17 in all, phew.  We chose to spray oil-rubbed bronze which would pop against the antique white.

Finally, we decided to paint the top a flat black for a cute contrast (2 coats).  After the black dried, we painted three coats of polyurethane to seal it.

It came out even better than I thought.  I knew I was going to have a hard time letting go of this one.  So what did Chris do?  List it for sale of course.  I decided to give it two days then secretly take the sales post down.  Can you guess what happened?  We were contacted by someone interested in buying it immediately.  Boo.

And then I did a bad thing…  I fibbed a little.  I told the potential buyer that it just sold.  I mean, it was sort-of true.  I just didn’t mention that I had sold it to myself…

Eep, Chris was going to kill me.  So I took the obvious next course of action.  I went on a desperate search for an identical dresser.

Apparently I had stocked up on some good furniture karma because I found this guy for sale.

Now for a side by side.

  

Pretty close eh?  I got it for only $5 more – still solid wood and a name brand piece, just slightly shorter.  The buyer was interested so I just needed to break the news to Chris that we had 2 days to finish the piece and oops, we were keeping the other one.  Love you honey!

Transformation Breakdown:

• Base Paint: Antique white
• Top Paint: Flat black
• Hardware: Oil-rubbed bronze

After.

The dresser I saved…

The detailing on the feet and shell applique may be my favorite part.  I love how they were really enhanced by the paint and distressing.  Before, they seemed to get lost, blending in with the rest of the piece due to it all being the same stain color.

And now for the substitute dresser…  Now if only I could always get away with this tactic…

Four Trips Around the World

Hers.

What’s black, white, and chic all over?  That would be my new globe!  Before I go much further, I need to issue a warning to my former geography teacher: if you happen to stumble upon this post, please skip it.  Some funny business may be about to happen to an old globe.  No globes were necessarily hurt in the process, just altered… slightly…

But let me start at the beginning.

Now that we’re slowing down on full-on room makeovers, I’ve been more focused on accessorizing.  Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by finding things that both fit our decor, fill the space needed, but also don’t just look like I raided all the shelves of Home Goods for a generic look.  Don’t get me wrong- I love me some Home Goods but it’s hard to find unique, one-of-a-kind pieces in a box store.  That’s why I’ve been trying to outfit our home with both the new and old to give it that truly lived-in, home-y feel.

To help fill the “old” criteria, I’ve been loving the non-traditional look of black and white globes lately.  It transforms a classic school room item into chic looking decor.

I especially loved the idea of a chalkboard globe, especially with chalkboard’s newfound popularity.

Source: Pinterest

Source: Domayne 

I found these two retail options- one from Z Gallerie (non-chalkboard) and the other from Anthropologie (made of soapstone for a chalk option).

Source: Z Gallerie, $79.95

Source: Anthropologie, $368 

Hmm… a little pricey for a non-functional globe who’s only purpose is making a corner of my room prettier (former geography teacher- are you still reading? Seriously, skip this post).

I figured this would be the perfect candidate for our next DIY.

I know some people have refinished globes and used them as a message board instead, but I actually like the look of all the continents on there so I decided to stay that route (see geography teach, I’m a half truest so not all is lost!).

I was pretty on-board with a chalkboard option… until our 3 year-old nephew was scheduled for a visit and we dashed around the house child-proofing as best we could.  In the midst of our impromptu safety check, I came to the realization that a chalkboard globe was doomed for being erased if ever in reach of anyone under the age of 13 (or with my luck, the cat would think it was her new friend and lick it clean) and the thought of redrawing all seven continents again sounded like a nightmare.  No thanks.  The more permanent, the better.

His.

I’m not much of a geography expert. In fact, unless they make a car or beer I like, I probably can’t find it on a map… which basically means I can only find Germany and Ireland. So when Julie announced she wanted a globe, I figured it would at least be a learning opportunity, so the search began.

Around the same time, my mom knew we were always on the lookout for cool antiques and was offering a few items she had picked up from my grandparents’ house, one of which was, rather conveniently, a globe. Apparently my great-grandfather was a teacher, and she had picked up the globe he had in his classroom. It was about at simple as you could get- it was round, resembled the planet earth, and had a stand that did little more than hold its axis on a tilt and allow it to spin… sort of- but it was all we were really looking for. I got my mom’s blessing to paint it, and now we had a project.

First of all, since we were going to paint it, we needed a way to redraw the continents after we painted over them. Granted, this thing was so old it still listed Prussia and the USSR as countries, but the continents have only moved a negligible distance since the 50s and Julie only wanted to trace the continents, so it was good enough. I’m so bad at drawing that I can’t even trace, so that part was left to Julie. I just had to spray it.

Since we were going to paint the stand differently than the globe, I had to find a way to hold it up to paint it. My solution? Cut apart and bend up a coat hangar and hang it from a tree in the backyard:

Pretty cool, huh? I wanted to do a scaled-down version of the solar system, but a) our entire neighborhood isn’t big enough and b) I have yet to find globes for the other seven planets. Bummer.

Anyway, once I got it strung up, I sprayed it with a coat of primer:

Now that I turned the Earth into the Moon, it was time for a few coats of black paint. We went with a basic flat black and since we weren’t convinced this would work out in the first place, we just used the cheap stuff from Wal-Mart.

Julie wasn’t particularly fond of me using her curtain rod to dry my globe:

Once it was dry, we just had to paint the continents back on! As I stated before, I can’t even trace, so that task fell to Julie as well.

Hers.

You know what’s more fun than tracing a full globe once?  Doing it twice.

Okay, so this was the more cumbersome point of the project but I just turned on Brother vs Brother on HGTV to distract me from the mundane task (anyone else watching that show and wishing they just filmed another series of Design Star instead?).

While you may already know they sell carbon transfer paper, did you know they sell white transfer paper?  This really saved the day on this project.  The regular carbon paper transfer would’ve gotten lost on the black paint so this did just the trick.

I taped the tracing paper I had originally traced the continents onto on top of the white transfer paper then taped that to the globe.  Be sure you have it taped in a few places so it doesn’t slip while you’re tracing it.  I found it helpful to trace each continent on its own tracing paper sheet then trace them on the globe one by one.  I also left myself guides when I ran out of sheet (i.e. Turkey goes here, or match up Spain here, etc).

Use a ball-point pen (color doesn’t matter) to trace the image.  Push hard on the pen so as you need to go through two layers- the tracing paper and the white transfer paper- but don’t push so hard that it tears the sheet.

Getting up close and personal with the world even taught me a few things in the process:

• I forgot how close Russia and Alaska were to each other.  I mean, I know Palin can supposedly see Russia from her house but, really, she probably can!
• Greenland is massive.  I mean seriously, that country practically took up it’s own transfer sheet.

Here’s an example of what the transfer looks like on the globe after tracing it.

Now to make it more permanent.  The best tool for tracing these thin continent lines was a white Sharpie paint pen.  I used the oil-based paint version with a fine point, found at art supply stores.

Yay for tracing the world for a third time!  Seriously, time to enter me into a geography bee (hopefully they use a 1950s map).  Be sure to shake the paint pen and press the tip down a few times to test it before going to town on the globe.

The paint was showing up a little thin on the first coat so I went over it a second time.  Yup, you counted right… I ended up drawing the world a total of four times.  Good thing a Brother vs Brother marathon was on… although, I’m seriously annoyed by that show.  For anyone else who watched it, was I the only one annoyed that the girl who worked her butt off despite having the flu didn’t even make it to the final two?  Also, how ridiculous was it that they wasted air time having the teams compete to see which house they would work on each week?  No one cares- just give them their assignment and let them start working.  Sorry, rant over.

With the fourth coat, we were done!  Finally!

For those of you wanting to recreate this project, here’s our list of materials:

• Flat black spray paint (the cheap kind from Walmart will do): $1
• Tracing paper (found at any art supply store): $3
• White transfer paper (found at any art supply store): $3 (with 40% coupon at JoAnn’s)
• White Sharpie pen, fine point (found at any art supply store): $3
• Old globe: ours was free
• Total cost: $10

Not too bad for $10 huh?  You can find cheap globes at flea markets and thrift stores so even if your awesome in-laws don’t have a spare one on-hand to let you experiment with, you can still do this project on the cheap.

After.

Loosen Up My Buttons, Babe

Hers.

Ah yes, this was my anthem for the second half of our headboard project.  Curse you Pussycat Dolls and your catchy lyrics that get stuck in my head for days!  For those of you up-to-date, you know our latest endeavor has been creating a winged, tufted headboard for the guest bedroom (for those of you needing to catch up, check out the project breakdown here).  You may also remember my oath to do this all without touching a sewing machine.

Well, I had reached the final portion of the project – covering the screws with matching fabric buttons.  We decided to take a day’s break from the project… and the day turned into a week… I’m sure you DIYers know how that goes.

The main source of my procrastination was the fact that I was waiting on my button making kit to arrive in the mail… okay, so maybe that only accounted for 2 days.  The other 5 days involved me dreading the creation of 67 buttons.  Yup, we had 67 screws to cover.  Yippee…  While the ultra-tall headboard makes quite a statement, it came with quite the price.  In the end it was worth it and I love the look, but for those of you with the same mindset I had of “the bigger, the better,” here’s your warning:

Big tufted headboards = a heck of a lot of buttons = a heck of a lot of work.

The process isn’t really that bad.  It takes about 1-1.5 minutes per button.  I sat and did mine while catching up on Real Housewives of Orange County because nothing makes dreadfully boring tasks like button making more interesting than a room full of overly-tanned, plastic-faced women screaming at each other.

So, here we go:  how to make fabric buttons without busting out the evil beast also known as the sewing machine.

First things first, you’ll need a button making kit, button shells, and button backs.  The least expensive option I found was a set from eBay for 100 buttons (buy extra because you’ll inevitably screw a few up).  I chose to buy size 24 (or 5/8″) buttons.  For those of you using the “tufting via screwdriver” method like we did, this size works great or you can go a little larger, depending on your preference.  For this method, I recommend buying flat backs (instead of wire backs) as you’ll be gluing rather than sewing it to the headboard.

Materials:

• Button making kit which consists of a pusher (the pink item seen bottom left) and a mold (the clear item seen on the bottom right): $2.99 from eBay
• Button back (seen at the top left)
• Button shell (seen at the top middle): this plus the backs are $15.99 from eBay for a set of 100
• Fabric swatch
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun

Step One: Take the mold (the clear piece), placing the flat side down.  Put your piece of fabric over the mold.  Place the pusher (the pink piece) on top of the fabric (flat side up).

Step Two: Push the pusher (who would’ve seen that coming?) so the fabric is pushed down into the mold.  I gave the pusher a good twist too to really be sure the fabric was wedged in there.

Remove the pusher and you’ll see your fabric swatch is beginning to make the button shape.

Step Three: Place the button shell with the rounded side down, on top of the fabric swatch (still placed in the mold).

Step Four: Place the pusher on top of the button shell and push down.

When you remove the pusher, the fabric and shell should be lodged in the mold.

Step Five: Without removing the shell and fabric from the mold, trim the excess fabric from the edges.  Don’t trim it too close as you’ll need to fold the edges over the back in the next step.

Here you can see how much fabric should be trimmed.

 

Step Six: Next, fold the edges in, covering the back of the button shell and use the pusher to push it into shape.

Meet my best friend.  The hot glue gun.  In theory, you can use the pusher to push down the button back and it should pop in, securing the fabric in the back.  My fabric, however, was too thick to successfully do this so I found gluing the back on worked just as well.  If your fabric is thinner, you may be able to use the pusher instead and skip this step.

Step Seven: Use a hot glue gun to put glue on the back side of the button.

Step Eight: Quickly (before the fabric unfolds or glue cools), place the button back on top of the glue, securing the fabric ends.

Step Nine: Warning!  The hot glue will make the button back very hot so don’t use your finger to push it into place.  I used my pusher again to be sure the button back was secure and pushed it firmly in place.

Voilah!  Fabric button!

To finalize the headboard, I used my trusty friend again to put glue on the backs of each button then simply placed it on each screw on the headboard.

I gave it a little extra push with my finger for good measure.

It’s held great was SO much easier than sewing the buttons through the headboard.  That’s just nonsense, people.

Happy button making!

Tuft Luck

Hers.

I think every room needs a little glam factor.  Our guest bedroom started out pretty glamorous… for a nursery.

Now before you all freak out, no, my eggo’s not preggo.  The above picture was taken when the sellers were still in the house.  I’m still a little bummed they took the chandelier with them- that was the best part.  They left us with a lovely 80s dome light in its place and the birdcage decals.  Gee, you shouldn’t have… no, really, you shouldn’t have.

We haven’t shown many pictures of the guest room thus far (besides the construction of the bench at the end of the bed- read more here), so I guess we need to do a little catching up.

The guest room actually ended up being one of the first rooms we painted upon moving in since we had all the bedrooms re-carpeted immediately.  And because we’re lazy painters, we wanted to paint while the old floors were still in so we didn’t have to cover them for protection against paint drips.  The bright red color was cute for a nursery- a nice departure from the typical pink used for girls- but it was a little too… well, bright red, especially for a guest room.  So, we went from bright red to a flat sheen of dark gray and softened it with whites and teal as the accent.

The dark gray brought some drama to this mama but I knew something was still missing.  The wall above the bed was an empty void begging to be filled with awesome-ness.

Bedroom… drama… hmm…  I smell a headboard project coming on.

I knew I needed something pretty tall to cover up a lot of the blank space above the bed and I wanted the headboard to be the room’s statement piece.  I was drawn to tall tufted options that included wings on the side that enveloped the bed such as these.

Source: Mix and Chic

Source: Jillian Harris

I was curious what headboards like this cost.  I finally found a pretty close match to what I was dreaming of, seen below.

Source: Ethos Interiors

Unfortunately, it came with two problems:

1. It was from Australia.  I can only imagine what shipping a headboard from across the globe would cost.
2. It was retailing for $690.  Now, I’ve seen plenty of way more expensive headboards but still, $690 was more than I’ve spent on everything in our master bedroom thus far and this room would only get used a few times a year when we had overnight visitors so it didn’t really seem worth it.

I found a few, less exciting, domestic options from the usual suspects but those weren’t any more reasonable.

Source: Pottery Barn, $799

Source: Horchow, $1199

Source: Restoration Hardware, $1465

So, what’s a girl to do?  Buy her husband some beer, suggest steak and potatoes for dinner (it helps if your husband is severely Irish), then sweetly ask his help DIY-ing a headboard masterpiece.  This method has proven 100% effective thus far so, ladies, take notes.

And we were off.

First, I needed to settle on a fabric.  Because I wasn’t 100% convinced this was going to work (not that I don’t have faith in you, honey, but this seemed a long shot even for you), I didn’t want to spend a ton on fabric.  I also couldn’t decide on a color (should I go white, cream, light gray, medium gray, or dark gray) so I decided to let fate decide for me.  At my favorite fabric store, I hit up the remnant section to see what white and gray options they had.  I found one cream option (seen on the right) and one gray (seen on the left) option that were long enough to work.

At $5 a yard (each was 2.5 yards, which they rounded down to 2 costing me $10 each), it was a score.  I thought I’d end up going with the cream option but it ended up looking too yellow against all the white bedding I already had in the room.  I considered completely redoing all the bedding to better coordinate but my conveniently-too-pragmatic husband quickly shot that option down.  So, gray it was.

His.

I’m beginning to think my wife has me figured out: every time she wants something expensive for the house, I end up building something almost identical for a fraction of the cost like the leaning bookshelves seen here and the telescope lamp seen here. Lately I’ve been suspecting that she doesn’t actually want the expensive version, she just wants to scare me into a DIY project by threatening to spend an obscene amount of money on something.

So her latest obsession? A headboard. For the guest bedroom. Now, here’s the thing about our guest bedroom: it’s just for guests. We don’t have overnight guests often and the few that we do have aren’t particularly picky about their lodging (if they were, we wouldn’t invite them to our house). So, frankly, I didn’t see the point. Sure, the space above the bed was empty, but the only time we ever really go in that room is when we can’t find the cat. Either way, Julie tends to get what Julie wants, so I now had to figure out how to make a headboard.

First things first: size. The width pretty much took care of itself as it would be dictated by the width of the bed frame, but we had to decide how tall we wanted it to be on the wall. We ultimately decided that it needed to be 5′, which meant the actual “board” part of the headboard would be 3′ tall. So I started with some plywood:

Cut cut cut!

Next, Julie wanted some “poof” or something, so we looked at craft stores for foam padding. Well, it turns out that I could’ve taken a decent vacation for what it would’ve cost to buy that much padding, but I had a more cost-effective solution in mind:

That’s right, Wal-Mart mattress pads (yes, the same ones that when stacked high enough make dorm beds somewhat tolerable). It was plenty long but barely wide enough, but with a little stretching and clever layering, we hid it pretty well. We even had enough left over from the ends to refinish a small chair.

We used spray adhesive to secure them to the plywood, but due to the porous nature of the pads, it wasn’t the strongest hold.

We added a second because a) we needed the extra thickness and b) cheap mattress pads have weird textures pressed into them to make you think it has some bogus cooling effect or something. Not bad for just $20 for the pair.

I ended up stapling the edges for a cleaner finish and more permanent hold while we positioned the fabric.

And trimmed the excess:

Now, you normally use batting to ensure a smooth finish but we were on a mission of frugality and the cost of batting just wasn’t going to cut it.  We realized that batting was essentially just a thick layer of fibers so we found a cheap-o cotton blanket to help hide any uneven points on the padding. Once again, our trip to Wal-Mart proved fruitful.

This time I flipped it over and stapled it to the back of the plywood so it held nice and tight across the padding:

Ignore the lumpy edges, those hide easily with the final piece of fabric.

The next stage of the process was unexpectedly tedious. We moved things inside for a cleaner, cooler, and lighter work environment. Good thing we have an awkwardly empty space in our living room after all, I guess.

So we draped the fabric over the board and smoothed everything out. What came next was an exercise in patience and dedication: tufting. I don’t know how it’s normally done, but I knew how I was going to do it: screws. But using short screws and washers, I could create that “pressed in” look, and it would hold, like forever.

So I started in the center:

Note: the fabric was draped loosely over the ends of the board so we’d have plenty of slack if we needed it.

Initially I tried measuring where each screw would go but that got old quickly. Plus, the positioning of the fabric would change slightly as I pressed on it to screw it in, so eventually I figured out how to predict where things needed to be and just eyeballed it.

What seemed like years later, I had driven in all 67 screws. Now the weird part: trying to bunch up the fabric into a “diamond-shaped tuft”.

Finally, it was time to secure everything. I didn’t want to flip the board over and crush the tufting, so I had to work from below. Fortunately we have an extra bedroom that is also awkwardly empty, so there was  some soft floor space so I could work on my back.

After stapling all around, we cut off the excess fabric.

We folded a straight line from the end of each tuft off the edge to create a uniform look around all the edges.  We then stapled that tuft to the back of the headboard so it held.

After completing the board, it was time to move on to the posts. I used generic 2×6 lumber but had to be careful to select really straight pieces. Each post was 5′, so I just bought one 2x6x10 and cut it in half.

The process for wrapping the posts in fabric was a bit like wrapping a present, but instead of a box it’s lumber, instead of paper it’s fabric, and instead of tape it’s staples. we also made sure all the staples and edges ended up in what would be the back side of the board, so the nice smooth edge faced outward.

First with the cheap blanket:

Be sure to wrap the ends, too:

Repeat process with actual fabric:

Cut off excess:

Finally, it was time to put it all together. We moved the board to the guest room and laid it on the bed. Then, I set the posts up on the side and had Julie press down while I drilled up. This was actually a really difficult process, and of course Julie decided pictures were more important than being helpful.

Almost done (I only had to chase the cat away 100 times).

Repeat the process for the other side, and your headboard is done. Time to mount it! Fortunately our bed frame had a bracket welded onto it for who knows what, but it had some holes I was able to run some drywall screws  through to secure everything so it didn’t flip over and turn my in-laws into Flat Stanley.

Huzzah! Headboard!

Hers.

We wrapped up the upholstery work and installed the headboard in the room.  I then realized I had a dilemma.  Do I stop here or do I keep going?  Much like Sandro on this season’s Project Runway (anyone else watching this season?), I decided our headboard needed more bling and by bling, I, of course, mean nailhead detail.  After two calls consulting outsiders, one voted for, one voted against, I ultimately decided to go for it.  Oh yes, these side wings were in for a treat.

So while Chris stood beside me, giving himself a pat on the back for finishing another project, I, instead, smiled sweetly at him and asked for his help on the next stage of the project.

And I soon learned a vital lesson- never EVER convince yourself to save a few dollars by buying a case of loose nailhead, thinking you can spend a few extra minutes taking care to line them up straight.  This is the most frustrating, arduous process that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  Chris thought it would help by buying fishing line and nailing it down as a guide to follow.

A great idea in theory but it didn’t execute that well.  Each time we’d nail a head in, it seemed impossible to get it to line up with the fishing line.  At the last second, it would go rogue on us and veer off course.  After an hour spent on this and barely making progress, I decided we could splurge and buy the cheater’s kit aka a nailhead kit that you only had to nail every 10th or so piece aka my lifesaver.

People of the DIY world- spend the extra dough for this.  So. Worth. It.

I bought mine at Michael’s, but here’s a link to buy it from Amazon.

If that doesn’t convince you, it comes with a bonus of packaging that doubles as a cat toy.

After the nightmare of sparring with individual nailheads, this was a breeze.  You just unwrap the string of nailhead from the packaging and cut it off where you need it to stop.  I suggest cutting it to size before you begin nailing it in because the weight from the package makes it harder to install straight.

Next, place the string on the headboard and nail in the heads where there’s a hole in the trim (every 10th head or so).  Tip: use a rubber mallet to nail in the head to prevent scratches.

30 minutes and 2 nailhead trim kits later, I was done!

Stay tuned for an additional post on how we made the fabric-covered buttons to complete the tufted look.

Materials and Costs:

• Fabric (from local fabric store): $10 for the full remnant
• Foam (aka 2 egg crate mattress pads from Walmart): $20
• Batting (aka cheap blanket from Walmart): $5
• Spray Adhesive (any craft store): $0 as we already had some on-hand
• Staples and Staple Gun (any home improvement store): $0 as we already had some on-hand
• Small sheet metal screws (from Home Depot): $3
• Plywood (from Home Depot): $10
• 2x6s to create side wings (from Home Depot): $5
• Washers (from Home Depot): $1
• 2 nailhead trim kits (from Michael’s with 40% off coupon): $24
• Rubber mallet (from Walmart): $5
• Button making kit (from this eBay vendor): $17

Total: $100

After.

 

Update: To see how we made fabric buttons to cover the screws on the headboard, check out our easy, step-by-step guide here.

We Have An Arch Nemesis

Hers.

And it’s name is: our pantry door.  Chris and I are coming to find that we have bad door luck.  I don’t know what kind of bad door karma we picked up over the years… perhaps from my younger self slamming too many of them in teenage angst or Chris graffiti-ing his college dorm door with Irish drinking phases (he argues that his dorm was getting demolished after that semester anyway so why not pay tribute to our home land of paleness and potatoes).  Whatever it was, the door species has an enemy number one and it is us.

If you remember, our epic battle with doors began with our patio door.  After a year of living with a chewed up door from the previous owner’s dog, we finally bought a new door to replace it.  Turns out, the door didn’t fit.  A father-in-law, many colorful exclamations, and a full weekend later, the matter was finally resolved.  Read more in our post about it here.

Well, the evil door realm went dormant for a few years but, alas, it returned… with a vengeance.

But, let me start at the beginning.

You may remember our pantry renovation where we turned this disorganized, non-functional mess…

Into this super functional, beautiful being (read more on the transformation here).

We decided to replace the old pantry door with a new one that matched the rest of the new doors we’ve been installing throughout the house.

All done, right?  Wrong.  So very very wrong.

His.

I. (expletive deleted). Hate. Doors. I mean, I really hate them. We live in North Texas, a region notorious for unstable soil. What this means for us is, no matter how much care I put into expertly fitting our doors to within exact tolerances, the foundation will eventually shift one way or another and the door either won’t close or won’t stay closed. The pantry door, however,was another story. It had it out for me.

Julie was convinced we needed a door that matched all the other interior doors we were installing in the house. The pantry opening was 20″ and the smallest door I could find (without custom ordering something for like a million dollars or whatever) was 24.” “No worries,” I foolishly thought, “I’ll just cut 2″ off each side.” I was in for a bit of a surprise.

As I began cutting into the door I learned something very disheartening: doors are now such low-quality crap that they’re hollow. As in, there’s nothing between the side you open and the side you close. It’s just air. Now, I’m all about cutting costs, building efficiently, and conserving materials, but when my door is barely as sturdy as the box it came in, it tends toward the ridiculous. I’m kind of scared to knock.

Look at this junk:

So what did I do? Well,I had three options: order a custom door (I’d have to take out a second mortgage), buy a second door and try to figure something else out (I already wasted money on this one, why would I buy another useless cardboard box?), or do what I do best and pinch my pennies until a solution falls out. So, I took the one solid piece of the door (i.e. the outer frame, which is probably only there so you can mount hinges) and hammered it back in to make my own custom-sized door.

After a little glue, wood filler, and frustration, I had my own custom door. Is this the most ghetto thing I’ve ever done? Yes. Did it work? Mostly. It was still a tight squeeze so I had to sand it down in a few places.

Once I got it mounted and installed the knob, I had a door that was about 80% functional and, most importantly, looked good closed. For now.

As it turns out, the thin frame I reinstalled wasn’t quite up to the job of being, what I now realize, the most frequently operated door in the house, not to mention the fact it had a spice rack bolted to the back. Eventually the screws for the hinge managed to work themselves loose and a few had even ripped themselves out. So, effectively, the door fell off. Oops.

Hers.

Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned.  It wasn’t all lost though.  I took this as an opportunity to sneak in more “shabbiness” to our home (shh don’t tell Chris- he thinks shabby translates to junk, ha).  Besides, I had been dreaming of an old rustic-looking pantry door anyway.  None of that standard builder grade stuff here!

Come join me in my drool-fest over these fantasticly shabby doors:

Source: Houzz via Pinterest

Source: Two Maisons

Source: Down to Earth Style

Source: Cottage Living

So, here’s the part where I tell you I found the perfect shabby contender for our pantry door, right?  Right.  Here you go.  Just look at her.

She was p-e-r-f-e-c-t.  And the best part?  I found her at a local architectural salvage place so, of course, she cost next to nothing for me to claim her.  Like $1o nothing.  Done and done.  Right?

Wrong.

Sooomeone (*ahem Chris) had to rain on my parade with the ole “I bet it’s lead paint” line.  Sigh, how I hate when the hubby proves me wrong.  Lead paint… pantry…. food… it doesn’t make for the best combo.  And now we mourn.  Goodbye old, poison-infused door.  

Sooo we were nowhere closer to keeping Chloe the cat out of turning our pantry into her personal jungle gym aka finding a pantry door.

To cheer me up, Chris drove us over to a second architectural salvage shop.  I kid you not, I sorted through the door section (which is made up of 400 or so doors) a full three times before I finally gave up and admitted they didn’t have anything that would fit the bill.  Not only that, but this place was significantly more expensive, like $60-100 per door more expensive.  I may be a little naive but isn’t paying $100 for an old beat-up door a little ridiculous, even for me?

As I made my way to the exit (moping and dragging my feet in disappointment of course), I saw an excited Chris galloping towards me.  I figured he found some old tools or, worse, the expensive set of gas logs he’s tried to talk me into for the last seven visits (what’s wrong with good ole firewood??).  But, instead, he claims to have found the perfect door… in the shutter room.  Whaa?

We rounded the corner to find piles upon piles of old house shutters stacked against each other.  It’s like the TJ Maxx of shutters in there.  Ugh, and I hate sorting.

I decided to forfeit one clean finger to gingerly push each shutter from the other, one by one until I finally found the perfect candidate.

BOOM.

Helloooo new door.  What was most funny about this find was that finding a door for our oddly shaped pantry opening (20″ wide) had been a nightmare.  Door manufacturers apparently didn’t go that skinny.  This shutter was the perfect width!  All we had to do was trim it down a little on the bottom, which was solid wood so we wouldn’t have the problem we had with the last door which was hollow.  Also, it had all that intricate molding that made those old shabby doors look dull in comparison.  I was even sold on the black paint.  Glossy black doors ARE all the rage now, afterall.  Why not jump on that bandwagon already?

It was originally listed for $60 but, because it was a lone soldier- all the other matching shutters were either gone or didn’t make it to the store, the store discounted it down to $30 for us.  Why, yes, we will pay an additional $20 for a few extra years on our life aka a lead paint-free door.

At this point, I was on a roll.  As we walked up to the counter to pay, we passed by the door accessories room (this salvage shop is so magical).  The heavens parted and there was my antique door plate and antique crystal knob that would complete the look of our pantry door.  Mama needs some bling, mk?

A $5 door plate, $7 knob, and $30 door later, we were all set.  There was no stopping us now!

His.

Alright, so we had to scrap the original door idea and were back to square one. By now Julie had decided that she really wanted an antique door, and since door dimensions weren’t really standardized until later in the 20th century, I figured that might not be a bad route to take. If nothing else, older doors are probably solid wood and can be cut to size without any, um, issues. So it was off to the “architectural salvage warehouse,” i.e. overpriced junkyard.

Our first stop was in a part of town that’s… well, it was in the hood. Like, I was surprised no one pulled smash n’ grab for my car radio. Anyway, they had just about every door ever installed in Dallas before 1950, so there was plenty to choose from. One common factor, though, was that they all had the tell-tale signs of lead paint. I don’t possess the equipment, facilities, or expertise to properly remove and dispose of lead paint, and since my health insurance provider and I would prefer to avoid permanent nervous system damage I told Julie there was no way we were getting any of those doors. Sorry ’bout your bad luck…

Now, at this point Julie and I were getting into a fairly expressive argument over how I wanted her to be miserable the rest of her life by choosing my nervous system over her door, and an employee came over to see what all the fuss was about. Julie explained how much she loved toxic doors and I explained how much I love not dying, and the woman did her best to quell my fears. “Oh, you have nothing to worry about,” she said reassuringly, “I’ve been around this stuff for two whole years and I’m fine!” At that moment we both noticed that her hair probably hadn’t been washed since 1997 and she spoke through what can only be described as “meth teeth”… and we began looking for the exit.

Anyway, Julie has already told a mostly accurate story of how we found our actual door, so I’ll skip forward to what we ended up doing with it. It was in pretty sad shape when we got it and definitely needed to be cleaned up and painted, but overall the wood was in good condition except at the very bottom (this is a shot of the back side, which was never painted since it faced the side of a house in its former life as a shutter):

Once we got it cleaned up and scraped off any stray splinters, we painted it an oil-based flat black. I really hate working with oil-based paint, but they really do lay down the best finishes.

True to form, Julie’s original color choice didn’t last long, and a day later she decided it looked too much like a chalkboard. So I went out to buy some gloss black.

Once it was painted, I had to cut it down to size. Remember the bit at the bottom I said was in sad shape? Well, as luck would have it, that’s exactly how much I needed to chop off!

The final challenge was finding a latch. We were able to re-use the hinges from the old door, but the molding and accents on the door made it just impossible enough to fit a traditional latch that we were once again scratching our heads. My brilliant solution? A ball catch, typically seen mounted on the frame of a door that presses closed. This basically made our knob a dummy knob, which meant it could be mounted anywhere we wanted.

After.

His.

“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is, none. None more black.”

Pop quiz- what movie is this from?

CraigsList Crashes: Volume 3

Hers.

Everyone knows that CraigsList is full of the good, the bad, and the ugly and boy, can it get really ugly.  The posts that crack me up the most are those where the ugly stuff is listed for a fortune.  I mean, seriously people, just because you decided to buy it at one point doesn’t mean it holds value.

Case and point: this mirror.  Does your living room need a nice piece above the fireplace?  Or does your dining room need a beautiful accent mirror to hang above the buffet?  Or does your entry need a mirror that you can check your make-up before you step out the door?  Well, have I found a classy piece for you!

My biggest question is who’s home decor would this fit into?  They better hope Hugh Hefner is a CraigsList searcher. And doesn’t already have one.

Want to get an early start on Father’s Day this year?  You’re in luck- I have the best gift idea for you!  For a mere $350, you could give Dad everything he needs.  Hint: it’s stuffed AND adds some style to his wardrobe.

At least they recognize that the tie is ugly.  I’m not sure that I agree with their “this is a gift that keeps on giving” promise.  I think the only consequence this present would have would be my dad gifting me with something equally as priceless… such as the item listed below.

Now, I see a few problems with this piece:

1. What sick person wants to watch a tiger burn in front of their eyes?  That’s got to be some sort of animal cruelty.
2. A conversation piece?  Well, that’s probably true.  Here’s the conversation I envision happening when your guests come over and see it.  Guest: “Uh, what is that?” Candle owner: “It’s a tiger candle!” Guest: “Did you lose a bet?  Or get stuck with the worst white elephant gift?” Candle owner: “Oh no, I just think it’s a great centerpiece for my table!” Guest: “But… why do you want to burn a tiger?” Candle owner: “Oh, but isn’t it stunning work?” Guest: “Um, I have to go.”
3. Not only is this most ridiculous candle I’ve seen on CraigsList but it comes with a ridiculous price tag.  Seriously, you think this thing is worth $125?  Really?  Really??
4. Curious as to how quickly this thing would go, I periodically look for it on CraigsList to see if the ad had been taken down yet, in which I would then assume it had been purchased.  It was posted at the start of 2013, and guess what?  As of today, it’s still available.  Shocking!

This post wins “Best Photo” award.  Nevermind the ridiculous price they have for this daybed (a cheap metal bed frame from the early 90s shouldn’t cost $150 people!).  What I love about this is that the woman holding the bed is clearly trying to avoid being in the picture but instead of scooting over so she’s able to crop herself out, she just smiles but doesn’t look at the camera, hoping she blends in with all the other junk around her.  You can’t fool us!  We see you!!

And now to name the winner of the “Worst Boyfriend of Eternity” title.

So, not only is he willing to trade his future fiancé’s ring for a motorcycle but he’s willing to take a $5,000 loss for it!  Well sir, congrats to you on sealing your fate as a bachelor for life.  At least you can ride off into the sunset with… yourself.

His.

I think one of my favorite pages on the internet is the “free” section of Craigslist. Not only can you snatch up some good stuff for free if you can quick-draw your phone as soon as it’s posted, but I also realized some people use it as a two-way street, meaning they want something for free, too. This is a prime example:

Here, this guy has cleverly disguised this ad as an offer for free concrete chunks, but what he’s really hoping for is some free labor to haul it away. If you have no way to haul off your busted up patio, maybe you shouldn’t have busted up your patio, dude.

This next guy really gets it, though. This is clearly an individual who understands the male laborer, that we will do just about anything for beer. I can’t count the number of times I’ve worked on a friend’s car, saving them thousands of dollars over taking it to a shop, all in exchange for $8 worth of beer. The true brilliance of this ad lies in this guy’s presumably successful ploy to get rid of two unwanted things, his old wood and this pile of the cheap beer no one else wanted. Except the wine coolers, your wife can have those.

I love a good riddle, and here’s a doozy:

Is it worthless? Or is it worth $10? I’m betting his wife told him he couldn’t watch the game until he posted their stuff on Craigslist.

This next post is another fun riddle. The only thing I can think of that fits conveniently into a TV box is… well, a TV, and literally 100% of the TVs I have bought came in their own box. So, begs the question, what do I need a TV box for? This guy also wins the award for the “greatest overestimation of demand for a product” of all time.

Hey, a sculptu- wait, what?

One of my favorite things to do when I’m bored is just look at random ads on Craigslist. You get a feel for exactly who is using the internet these days, especially when they’re from east Texas. This guy apparently has a slightly different concept of what guinea pigs are for than us “city folk” do.

This might actually be my favorite ad of all time, though. First of all, it’s a good price on goggles. Second, I love this guy’s enthusiasm for selling his goggles. But most importantly, it demonstrates exactly why I don’t eat at Braums, and frankly seeing a guy bent on combining ice cream and goggles wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen there.

Hooked on Character

Hers.

As the master bathroom renovations were wrapping up (read more on that process here, here, here, and finally here), I began noticing that something was off.  As much as I was loving the sparkly new shower and luxurious-looking granite, it was beginning to look more catalog and less home-y.  While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I knew I was craving some good ole character in the space.

It only took a few seconds for me to put my finger on the real problem.  Everything was too new.  Nothing was distressed or worn!  *Gasp, whose house was I in??

Never fear, if it’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding the good, the old, and the battered.  The idea hit me as we began narrowing down our towel bar options.  There was a shiny, new, brushed nickel towel bar that matched our towel rings and toilet paper holder but it seemed so blah.

Instead, I decided to find decorative hooks to line up in a row.  I wanted something that was unique and would add that piece of character the room was missing.  You’d think finding pretty, unique hooks wouldn’t be that hard.  After hours of trolling Etsy and stores like Hobby Lobby, I only managed to find options that were either too standard/new looking or too expensive.  I was starting to think I needed to reroute my idea.

But then I came across this battered piece in Garden Ridge.

And while one hook was broken, the other three were just what I was looking for.  With an iron look, distress by way of white paint splotches, and the unique scroll-look, I knew I had a winner.

Chris gave me his usual “are you insane” look but knew arguing was a lost cause.  Especially since it was also the cheapest option I’d found at a grand total of $7.99 meaning each hook ended up being $2.67 each.

Compare that with hooks I found on Etsy like the one below totaling $16 EACH (eep!).

Source: Etsy, Alacart Creations

We just had to get rid of the ugly white backing behind the hooks, screw them into the wall, and, voilah!, instant character.

Two hooks looked odd on the wall so we went with three.  Two to hang towels and one to hang the awesome metal “W” I found at a flea market.  Because you can never have enough initials in your home.

His.

This was one of the more complicated sub-projects in the master bath, so I’ve created a detailed step-by-step guide. With the right tools, you can usually finish this in a weekend:

1. Get hooks.

2. Screw hooks into wall.

3. Have a beer.

It can be a daunting task, but it will definitely pay off in the end. Having a distressed thing that you can also hang towels on is a high-end solution to the everyday problem of style vs. being dry.

After.

Shelf Shocked

Hers.

As our bathroom renovation came to a close, we could begin focusing on more of the smaller details, such as what to put on all the walls.  Our newly converted linen closet to cabinet has plenty of storage but I liked the idea of using our now wide open wall for additional storage.

Idea #1: Our first idea was to find a unique piece of furniture with shelves to put against the wall and butt up against the shower glass (opposite side of the shower door).  We found this beautiful piece on a trip to Canton, thinking it would be the perfect solution.

Well, we got it home (it miraculously fit in the car) and hauled it into the bathroom.  Unfortunately, it looked massive in the bathroom and did the exact thing we had just spent a ton of money to fix: made the bathroom look cramped and tiny.  It had to go.

Idea #2: The biggest problem with the piece of furniture was that it was boxy and took up too much room.  I still liked the idea of open concept storage so decided wall shelves would be just the solution.  Open shelving has become the new hottest thing for kitchens and bathrooms and I couldn’t wait to incorporate it into our space.  But first, we had to find shelves.

Well, spoiler alert, we couldn’t find any that were the right depth to store towels yet short enough, taking up minimal space.  So guess who’s newest task was to make me some shelves?

But before he goes off complaining how another project was completed 100% by him, let me show you my involvement… by way of these beautiful brackets.

I didn’t want ordinary floating shelves.  I wanted something unique that would be visually interesting.  I love the look of old corbels for shelves but those can get expensive.  Our local architectural salvage store usually has them priced at $50 and up each.  And I needed four.

Luckily, I found these iron scroll brackets at Hobby Lobby for $7.99 and, of course, bought them on a day they were 50% off.  For 16 bucks for 4, it was quite the deal.

Now, cue the carpenter.

His.

Once we finished the bathroom, Julie announced that we needed to “finish everything,” which apparently meant that we needed to put some sort of storage piece on every wall. On the wall backing up to the closet, Julie wanted to put up some shelves but “couldn’t find” exactly what she was looking for, meaning I knew what she was going to say next: “do you think you could build some?” It turns out that for the first time ever, what Julie wanted was actually… simple. So yes, yes I could build them.

What I was going to build was pretty straightforward: a board set atop two iron brackets. Luckily, Julie wanted a “bulky” look, which meant I was able to use plain, cheap, run-of-the-mill (no pun intended) framing wood- a 2×8, to be exact. $5 and one cut later, I had two shelves.

Now, this wood was meant for ceiling joists rather than shelves, so I had to do a little sanding. I smoothed all the surfaces and rounded all the edges and corners, partly because I didn’t want it to look like it was fresh from a lumberyard, but mostly because Julie would inevitably run into it and I didn’t want any hazardous edges:

Next, I stained them to match the color of the floor. I used Minwax Dark Walnut wood stain and didn’t wipe it off to achieve the darkest color possible. I then sealed it with a satin urethane, mostly for waterproofing.

My only real challenge was convincing Julie that, despite her greatest wishes, drywall could not support an infinite amount of weight, and shelves made of iron and solid wood would have to be mounted to the studs inside the wall. This meant that along that particular wall, they could only be placed in two places. Additionally, the brackets had to be placed exactly 16″ apart, as that is the distance between the wall studs. After a few minutes of debate and deliberation, Julie reluctantly agreed to place the brackets where I knew they had to be. We measured everything out and mounted the brackets, and the boards literally just rest on top of the brackets, no hardware or anything.
BOOM! Shelves.

After.