Changes

By the end of the summer, we will be moving into my in-laws house, for a multitude of reasons. With my husband still in school, it will be a money stress reliever, beyond anything else. We are extremely lucky to have a home where we can go to and are welcomed!
We will be occupying two of the upstairs 4 bedrooms and the walkout partially finished basement. We are slowly working on packing up our stuff and making room for ourselves in their house. I will take plenty of before and afters, but for now, here is the basic floor plan:

We plan to use bedroom #1 as our bedroom, it was the room my husband grew up in. It's a nice cozy, but big enough space. We have secret plans for bedroom #2 that I will reveal shortly!
The basement living space will be our living room/office/dining area/ mudroom. I am working on our furniture layout now. I would like to know what we can keep/ what we need to get rid of or store, before the move!

Reveal Monday: Coffee Table

A while ago I told you about my "new" coffee table  and how I stained the top and began painting the bottom. Just to refresh your memory, here is the during (two old coffee tables pieced together)

AND the after...

Oh. Hi Soph.

Lets ignore the fact that while I was priming the shelves from our hutch, I got a little primer on the top's edge. Shhhh. Any suggestions on how to get primer off of stain? I know, don't paint on your stained coffee table top. I have had this foolproof method of covering the table top with a cut open trash bag, it fits perfectly kinda well. I will probably still use that method but I will be more careful. 

Because I am not having as much time to do projects as I have in the past few months, I am going to be posting reveals of projects only on Mondays. And hopefully, every Monday. I even have a few forgotten projects that I will try to sneak in. 

Is anyone else really bad about getting true before shots of projects? I could have sworn I took one of my hutch, but I can not find it anywhere. Booo. Oh well, I will be sure to take an "in progress" shot. Maybe. It's so ugly, it may not deserve a before. We will see. 

Here are some more living room shots with the new table...

Link Parties:
Mod Mix Monday

Progress Week Days 2-4

Let's be honest, 3 of those days were Memorial Day Weekend and I didn't do much but walk and go to BBQs. Oh yes, I did stain my coffee table top (from my pieced together coffee table) It stinks. I almost cried. I used Minwax Bombay Mahogany and it came out bright red. My mom talked me off the ledge (over the phone) and I decided I would try another coat. Worst case scenario I would sand it and paint it. So after two coats it still looked like it belonged in a room with a duck wallpaper border (not that there is anything wrong with duck wallpaper borders, just not for us.)

Bright. Red. Horrid. This picture was taken after I had sanded it a bit (hence the light spots.) I had used the polyshades 1-step stain for the first two coats. As a first time stainer I thought it would be easier. I didn't love it, it was sort of gunky. So for coat #3, I went with a different color (dark walnut) and used the plain ole Minwax wood finish stain. The picture doesn't show much difference, but here it is...

I think I like it more? One more coat and I will know! Otherwise it's getting painted white like it's base.

Before 

Primed

I'd also like to give a special shout out to Sophia, who is now having a growling dream next to me, but spent the day "helping" me. 

Thanks Soph.

Daybed Love Seat

I have just finished my 3D design course at school. For our final project, we had to create a chair from found materials and it had to be life sized. Since this is my second time around with the whole school thing, I have learned not to make projects that I can't do anything with, if I can help it! So, I decided the newly built chair would be for Sophia. DUH!
So I took the day Saturday to drive around to find a discarded something to make a chair out of. He said we could start from a chair, as long as we altered it. I ended up finding this bed at EcoBuilding Bargains for pretty cheap. It came with the headboard, foot board and the side rails, and was in decent shape. WOOO! I should have turned around and re-donated the side rails, because they attacked my arm in the car later that day, boooooo.

Headboard

Footboard

I brought it to my parents garage to butcher it. I needed to cut the foot board in half (and fast, my dad was out for a bit and I was afraid he would convince me my idea was not thought out yet, he would have been correct.) So I cut the foot board in half for the "arms" of the love seat with an electric jig-saw. Cut first, ask questions later.

It was not as simple as I had originally thought. The top of the "arms" hit above the square leg, I needed them to sit flush. Thankfully, my dad came home and intervened a little bit. He helped me decide where on the arm's legs I should cut. I wanted the end of the leg to be tapering in, not out. I don't know why, just did. I cut them off with a small coping saw, because it was a small cut and I felt that I had a bit more control that way.
To attach the sides to the headboard, I used the existing slots (where the rails would go into) and cut slots in the back of the sides to biscuit join them together.

We let the sides set in place overnight.

Then, we used scrap wood, cut at a 20 deg angle, and screwed to the inside front of each side and to the inside of the back legs, to screw the seat to. It made the whole structure much more "sound." We routered the front end of the plywood seat, to soften the edge. I also cut down the arm posts, they were just too tall, and sort of screamed "this seat used to be a bed." The finials on the back were loose. I started looking for new ones but didn't find any soon enough, so they are loosely placed on the posts. Maybe they will stay, maybe they will change, who knows?
The structure was done. I had not like the color/finish/floral motif on the bed to begin with, but now that it looked really bad. My dad suggested just painting over the floral layer of wood, but I couldn't do it half way. So I primed & painted my heart out. I decided to leave the top of the arms wood, I would like to stain them a bit darker. But, for deadline purposes, that will happen later. I made a little seat cover out of drop cloth, not perfect but it works! Another addition I would like to make is a layer of foam under the fabric. We angled the seat for proper lounging, so I also want to add an upholstered, angled back.

My prof was impressed with it, I was especially proud. It took me a couple days longer than I would have liked, but I am glad I took the time I did! What do you think?

Before-ish

After

Linked to:






 

Painful Hutch

We have this hutch.

But it Looks So Comfy....

After a long day, I often think of how nice it would be to come home and sit on one of these...

I know it's not cute, it's scale is sooooo off, but, how can you look at that and not think "ahhhhhhh." It has cupholders and the seats recline/swallow you whole. The only thing it's missing is a wine fridge (that would obviously open from the top! I always tell my husband he is getting a man cave in our next place and it will have seats like this. He doesn't seem that enthused about it, I AM! Where else can you put these monsters and be able to enjoy them without anyone ever knowing you actually bought them??? Maybe one day I will share a picture of his swan chair...That's right, we have swans in our bedroom. I cringe at the thought of it too, but he loves that damn chair.

Why We Live Where We Live

When we bought our place, we were thinking we would live there for 2, maybe 3 years. Tops. Hello 4 years, nice to see you! Yep, 4 years later, we are still here!

Here is why we like it: