Our Farmhouse Bed

I'm sure everyone has been on Ana-White.com. I first discovered her when she had submitted projects in the "I Made it Without My Hubby" contest on Shanty2Chic in January 2010. Since then I've dreamed of building the Farmhouse Bed king sized. With 2 moves in between now and then its taken us awhile. Lucky for me it finally happened.

I really love the way it turned out. Its exactly as I had hoped it would.

The building process didn't take too long. Be sure and measure your mattress because we ended up making ours slightly more narrow.

This is the point I realized that my rubber pad on the bottom of the sander was worn down and was damaging the wood. I ordered a replacement but didn't want to wait and decided to buy another sander.

After nail holes were filled and the entire piece sanded we applied a conditioner to it.

Left: first coat

Right: second coat (still wet)

The first coat of stain was applied and we began to worry. It looked awful. Not at all the look we were after. We just left it like that for a couple days as we were busy with other things.

Our first coat was done with Minwax Dark walnut liquid stain

The second coat we used Minwax walnut in gel stain.

We had both of these from previous projects.

The gel stain is nice because it really coats evenly, even when the denser parts of the wood was not taking to the liquid stain.  We're sold on this stuff.

After that we applied one coat of polyurethane and sanded with 400 grit sand paper. After that we applied a second coat. It is so smooth we didn't feel it needed a light sand.

My husband came up with this way for the box spring mattresses to sit on. These brackets for the 2x4's were found at Home Depot for 73cents each. I'm sure any hardware store would carry them. Because we have no idea how many more times we will be moving we needed this bed to be easy to disassemble. We found the hardware for the rails to attach to the headboard and footboard here. They work like a charm.

To say we are happy with the results is a complete understatement.

Thank you Ana White for providing free furniture plans for people like us to use and enjoy.

Kids bathroom complete

We finally finished landscaping our backyard at the beginning of this month.  That seemed so foreign to me, decorating inside is much much easier.

 About two weeks ago Shannon came to visit me. We wanted to do some sort of craft but didn't come up with anything so I suggested we paint the kid's bathroom vanity.  She's been wanting to paint hers so I thought we could give it a try together on mine.

This is the kids bathroom before.

Very builder basic. There was nothing special about this bathroom.

First we lightly sanded the entire vanity. Making a huge mess in the process.

Second we cleaned up and taped off the vanity prepping for paint.

Third we primed then painted

Then I forgot to take more pictures. We ended up doing 3 coats of black paint. We used a small paintbrush to get in the grooves and a foam roller on the rest of the piece. It worked very well.

We are very pleased with the way this turned out.  I love how just framing out the mirror and painting the vanity has made a huge difference.

~Melanie

One more Mickey silhouette project

My kids loved the last project I did for their bathroom it made me extra excited to get the next one done. I originally wanted my sister's help. You see she can draw Mickey and all his friends really well. The only draw back is she's 7+ hours away. Darn it. Luckily my husband came to the rescue. He ended up doing the whole project for me.

The supplies we used:
-one white poster board
-one black poster board
-poster frame we were currently not using
-exacto knife
-scotch tape
-box tape

I found an image I liked doing a Google image search. We were looking for one that would fit our frame well and one that wasn't going to be too difficult. Then my husband enlarged the image to the size we wanted and printed it out.

 
Next the pages were taped together and then cut out with an exacto knife.

Then Mickey was taped to the black poster board so it would not move. Keep in mind which direction you want Mickey to be facing. Because we were putting ours over the toilet we wanted it to face the vanity and not the shower so we flipped the silhouette.

The white poster board was used only as a backdrop. This frame is very close to the size of poster board, if the frames were a little bit bigger that would not have worked.

We have made our three kids very happy.

My son loved the outside scrap we decided to frame that as well. Actually the two Mickey's side by side looked really cool. It made me think of doing some smaller ones, maybe in 8x10 frames and grouping 4 together using different colors. But I can't, we have enough Mickey's in our house now.

Entry Way

Shortly after we moved into the house we knew we needed a bench of some kind near the front door. In our house we have a no shoe policy. Then when the colder months approached us the short two foot long coat rack wasn't big enough. The hooks needed to be farther apart.

This is what our entry way looked like the day we moved in.

We removed the coat rack from the wall and reused the hooks.

This is how it turned out. We purchased some base board trim that was mainly flat with just a small detail at the top and installed it upside down. I really like the way it turned out.

Now for the bench. Back in October my husband designed a bench with the measurements perfectly fitting that space. He built it and sat there unfinished from November until now.

We added some 1/2" trim to cover the imperfections in the joints and used wood filler to smooth out some imperfections in the wood. We also finally added the backing.

It looks so much better in there now that's its finished.

I love the way it turned out and how it meets our needs now.

After looking at this picture I think the pictures frames on the other side of the wall might need to be painted white.  

Outdoor Furniture Refinish

I have been wanting a new chaise lounge for my backyard for awhile now, but I did not want to spend a lot of money on one. Then I came across this little beauty...

It had obviously been sitting in the Arizona sun baking for a few years. But since it was free, I decided to spruce it up. I used Olympia Outdoor Latex Paint.

The dry wood soaked up the paint, so it took 3 coats. I couldn't figure out a good sealant to use to protect the paint. A man at Lowes suggested an outdoor urethane. They had an aerosol version and he said it would work perfect. I guess we'll wait and see how well it works in the AZ sun!!

Simple artwork for our kids bathroom

This afternoon I decided to tackle one of the small projects that I have put off. Why is it the small projects that take the longest to do? Please tell me I'm not the only one with that problem.

The beginning of January we decided it was time to update the kids bathroom. The miscellaneous towels were driving me crazy and the monkey shower curtain had to go. I did not want to potty train another child and have another conversation about the stupid monkeys.

We decided to go with a Mickey theme for their bathroom. After all they are still really young and I want them to enjoy it. I'm not talking about a cheesy over the top Mickey bathroom. I'm talking simple black, white and red bathroom with subtle Mickey throughout.

I started with these two frames. Size 11"x11"

I bought these at Kirkland's probably 5 years ago.

I raided my scrapbook supplies that I haven't used in years and came up with this.

 They definitely aren't perfect but its the look I was going for.

I used an applesauce jar and small can to get the shape. I unfortunately had to free hand Minnie's bow.

I was thrilled I had red with white polka dot paper.

The shower curtain and towels are from Target.

List of to-do's to get this room finished.

-frame out the mirror and paint black

-paint the vanity black

-install hardware on the vanity

-make another artwork over the toilet

(I need my sisters help on the last one.)

-maybe get one more rug

How we are painting our vaulted ceiling

For months I've been concerned on how we were going to paint the family room area. Leaving it the boring builder beige was not an option. The ceilings are 10' that vault up to over 17'. I thought for sure we would have to rent scaffolding and also rent a truck or borrow someone's to get it here. My husband looked online and found someone that had built there own, that got him thinking. Saturday afternoon he decided that Monday we should paint. I couldn't believe it I was beyond excited and so happy that it was his idea not mine. So that night we gathered our supplies to build the scaffolding.

This is what we came up with. Who am I kidding, it was all my husband.

To build the scaffolding we used:
1- 4'x8' 19/32" plywood
8- 2x4's 8' long
2- 2x4's 10 feet long
4- 3"x3"x8' posts
lots of 3" wood screws

Here is the wall with primer. It took two coats of primer and 2 coats of paint.

Here's my husband cutting in. The scaffolding was very strudy, enough so that this didn't make me too nervous. If you look in the back you can see a ladder up against the wall. Now that made me nervous. I held the bucket of paint for him over the railing while he did that corner.

Now if this could just get done faster. The down side to this is the scaffolding is very heavy. Moving it around isn't much fun so the ceiling is painted 2 coats before moving on to the next section. It will become more tricky when we have to take it apart and put it back together in both the kitchen and entry way. Good thing we love the color and don't plan on repainting. We also have the motivation to get this done so this can be taken apart and the materials used in the garage to organize my husbands tools and stuff.

Pictures to come when its finished.


~Melanie

Inspiration

I apologize for the lack of blogging over the past several months.  In my defense my little family moved out of state and bought our first house.  The first few months we had visitors about every other week which made it very difficult to get projects done.  The ideas on what to do are just flooding my mind.  I'm trying very hard to be patient and do things little by little.  Most of the projects my husband and I have been working on have been painting. We moved into a home that was what we call "boring builder beige".  Not just the walls but the ceiling and trim too and it just looked dirty.  As more and more of the beige gets painted the more I love our home.

While shopping at Target a few weeks back I was drawn to the blue and white decor they have now.

The picture inspired me.  I knew I could come up with something similar but without the $50 price tag.  Plus I really wanted something larger.

My first thought was to use stencils.  After looking around I really couldn't find any I liked that didn't cost too much.  Then I went to Joann fabrics and found some fabric I liked but wasn't sure that was the route I wanted to go.  About a week later I went back to Joann's and found what I was looking for.  It was a nice bonus that it was 40% off.

I had some frames that weren't being used and knew they would be perfect for this project.

 We had a set of four frames we purchased from Kohl's about 5 or 6 years ago.  Although they are nice they just aren't our style any more.

 We spray painted the frames to give them a fresh clean look.  Then taped off the black wood trim and spray painted the mats in Heirloom white.  We had extra from a previous project.  I never thought to paint a mat before but it worked well and looks great.  It absorbed a lot and took about 3 coats.  We then taped the fabric to the back of the mats.

 This is what we ended up with.

It looks awesome in our dining room. I have a couple other project ideas for that room. Once those are done I'll show the whole room.

This project cost me less than $13 for the fabric.  I have enough leftover fabric that I plan on making pillows for the family room.  All the other supplies I had on hand.

I've linked up to:

Dresser revamp

This is a project I've been waiting to do since December. At the time we were living in an apartment and there just wasn't enough room.

I'm a pretty lucky wife. My husband enjoys projects so he helped (maybe I should rephrase that to, I helped him) with this project.

We were so excited to start this project we didn't get a true before picture with the drawers intact.

Sanding wasn't getting the job done so we used a paint stripper to remove the finish on the top only.

Then smoothed it out by sanding.

 

One coat of Minwax Dark Walnut stain was applied

Then 3-4 coats of a clear finish Minwax Polyurethane with a light sanding between coats.

We used  400 and 600 grit sandpaper on this part.

The drawers we started with a coat of primer and added several coats of Rustoleum Heritage White.

And this is the final product. I could not a happier with the results.  This dresser was always on okay piece of furniture but now its stunning. Our two year old son keeps telling us how pretty it is.

The hardware is original to the piece and I love the way the brushed nickle center gives it a pop.

~Melanie