Hannahs Room

So I have been working on my daughters room.... pretty much forever. When we built the house I painted stripes in her bedroom. I had gotten the inspiration from an HGTV show I saw only I was pretty sick of painting when it came to her room and I didnt feel like taping the stripes so I free handed it. Well, my hand is shaky and it was more like squiggles than stripes. I had intended to put chair railing up for, oh, about 6 years, but never nagged my husband enough. Here is what it had pretty much looked like for the past 6 years, only usually much messier.

 The stripes were cute, but they were visually messy. Since my daughter is a pretty messy kid ( no matter how much I try to make her otherwise) her room was always an eyesore to me.
I covered up the stripes with paintable, bead board look wallpaper and we finally added some chair rail in the form of door casing molding. We got a contractors pack and covered her room, the dining room, the mirrors in the bathrooms, my jewelry holder, and still have 2 long boards and a bunch of scraps left. All for $50!
Here it is now.. ahhhh!

Oh and we got her a bed from IKEA. I really wanted an antique iron bed, and almost had one from Craigs List, but I couldn't get it that weekend and the guy really needed to get rid of it quickly. Oh well. This one from IKEA is pretty nice for a little girl and its much sturdier than it looks.

 Here is the lighting before and after:

Ugly builders light                                                  

  Lovely crystal chandelier I found for $80 and added some plastic colored dangly's to it. And one of those ceiling medallions to cover up the ugly unpainted spot on the ceiling.

Its still a work in progress. I made a bed skirt from tulle but it needs a backing so I will have to share that later. I also want to add some sheers around the headboard and put up a few pictures or something. Then there's the side table which just has a scrap of fabric on it, the messy bookshelves and desk.... sigh.

A new ironing board cover from a curtain panel.

I love my ironing board. Its huge and so wonderful for ironing big pieces of fabric. Unfortunately the fabric was all stained and nasty and just plain boring.
I knew I could make my own, but figured it would be too much trouble. A few weeks ago I decided to see how the old cover was attached. I noticed that it was just a cord that was threaded through the serged edges of the fabric, pulled tight, and wrapped around that little green thingy you see below.

Ok. Easy peasy! I can do this! I pulled the cord out of the old cover to reuse. I then decided that I really liked the fabric of some curtains that used to hang in my craft room that I just wasnt in love with there. It is a thick but soft and durable fabric that would be perfect for my ironing board. So I smoothed out the old fabric as best as I could (I really wanted to iron it out but..) and used it as a pattern for the new cover.

You can see how nasty the old cover was?  I just pinned it down and cut out the basic shape. Next I used my serger to finish off the edges. I then took the old cord and threaded it through the serger stitches on the new cover.

I used this double eye bodkin to pass the cord through the stitches.  My mother-in-law bought me some at Jo-Ann. I usually use it to hide the tale ends of serger stitches back into the stitches.
After it was all threaded I placed it on the ironing board and pulled and pulled then fastened with the green ... thingy. Here it is now

 

 A super cheap redo and another thing to cross off of my to do list.  Yay!

 oh.. I just realized that I need to re-cover the little hideaway sleeve board too ( its tucked away in this shot) awe man!

If you havent yet, I would like to ask you all to check out my My Memories software give away. Only 2 people have entered so far :(

Here is a quick little project that I made with the My Memories software. I forgot to share it on the giveaway post.

Thanks for dropping by!

China Hutch Turned Linen Closet

A few days ago, in my "organizing my tablecloths" post, I told you about the crappy piece of furniture I was painting.  Well I spent the entire day, and part of the next in the garage working on it. Boy was it hot too! Why do I choose to revamp big pieces of furniture in the middle of summer? Crazy? Yes, I agree. Here is what I was painting.

You may remember it from my dining room makeover. An ugly little thing isnt it. It was my moms, who gave it to my oldest sister, who gave it to my youngest sister, who didnt really want it. Uhh... thanks sisters. Mom said it was about 35 years old (said it was a piece of crap). Not an heirloom quality piece of furniture, for sure. The bottom doors and that middle panel between them are plastic that was very well painted to look like wood.

 See there?

 

Just a beat up, ugly piece of crap. It did a good enough job holding my china, but my dining room is only  10x10 and much too small for this thing. 

I think the only real pieces of wood are the molding around the top and bottom, and the support shelved. Needless to say, I didnt have any concerns about painting over all that fake wood and plastic. Actually I was scared of sanding it and getting lead poisoning, so I just used a rub on, liquid sander stuff. Seems to have worked. 

One day I decided that it would look great in my guest bathroom. I measured it out and it seemed like it would fit perfectly in this little  nook.

Since it was going in my (mostly) black and white bathroom I decided to paint it black. So I did, and here you go. The following pictures were taken with a different camera and settings. The diamonds on the wall aren't really that bold. Its more like the above picture.

My husband has some issues with it. He says he doesnt like the glass on it. Says you can see yourself in the reflection when you are "taking a deuce".. hahah.. a deuce...ummm ew! I said I didnt care because it was the guest bath. Use our own stinkin bathroom if you dont like it.
Lets get back to the pictures shall we? mkay
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 Convenient Bathroom Readers (I personally think reading on the toilet is disgusting), wet wipes, and extra potty paper are within easy reach.

What do you think? Do you love it? I do... I say that about all of my projects, but this is right up there with my burlap pegboard lovin it!

I have been collecting and gathering up glass containers for all the fun stuff in the hutch.

I tried to add some lavender scented water to that atomizer to act a s a room spray. Not too sure if its going to work or not. Either way it looks cool in here. 

The clock was hanging in my bathroom, but went so well in here that I moved it. 
I want to get a basket or something for those toilet paper rolls. I could hide them, but I think I like them out.

The mirrors in the hutch really brighten things up in there. The big mirror used to hang on the mirror over the sink, The one with the writing on it had a hook on it that I pulled off.

I might rearrange and add stuff, but I like it for now.

Oh this piece had brass handles and hinges. I never really realized it was a shiny brass at one time. Here are the pieces before. This is what I always remembered it looking like growing up.

And after I cleaned it up a bit. Just this little bit look a lot of elbow grease and that Brasso junk smells so bad! I decided that lots of people have payed big bucks for their knobs and pulls to look like antiqued brass, so I left it at this.

Looks good with the black paint. Oh, by the way, I used a Rustoleum Painters Touch latex in Flat Black. I was going to use a wipe on poly, but it had solidified and so I decided to use a beeswax, feed and wax goop that you rub on your wood to polish and protect it. Smelled like oranges. mmmm.

So now, dear readers, I part with one last picture. The ugly flooring just screams out at you now. If this were my forever house I would so rip that mess right up. If we had concrete floors I still might, but our house is on a crawl space. sigh.

Thanks for visiting.

Linking up to:

An Oregon Cottage (love this blog!)

A New Roof

On March 26th we had the worst hail storm I have ever seen. It was actually quite fascinating. I always enjoy seeing hail, especially when its hot weather (yes it was summer like in March), so I was standing at the windows watching it. When I realized that it was getting harder, I shoved everyone out of the way and ran to the front door to capture this video.

Ok, the blogger quality really stinks and it added a chirpy noise, but you get the massiveness, and loudness of this storm. When it cleared up I went out and took some pictures.

I heard there were baseball sized hail down the road. It stripped the trees nearly bare and there was a lovely pine scent to the air when it was all over. Smelled like Christmas. Several weeks later I was driving down the interstate and enjoying the bright green spring of the trees when I came to a section where the trees all looked like it was still winter. I realized it was from this storm.

 

  Within minutes of the storm passing there were roofer wars going on all over our mailbox. One would put up a flyer and another would come along and take it down and put up his own. Blue tarps and roofer signs were seen everywhere. Now our house is only 5 years old (nearly 6 now) so my husband didnt think anything was wrong. I was concerned with the old outbuilding that came with our property. 

 Well, we did nothing about it, until the appraisers came to appraise the house for a refinance. They noted that we might have hail damage because quite a lot of folks in the area suffered damage from the storm. We couldnt get it refinanced until an inspector came out.. blah blah blah now we have a new roof. The old shed is really the only one that needed to be fixed, but apparently our shingles werent properly installed when our house was built so the roofer we chose talked the insurance agent into replacing it now instead of down the road when it could possibly be worse off. The only damage we had inside was a small water stain in my daughters bedroom ceiling. We figure it was from a vent boot that wasnt properly installed. We were right. 

They finally came and installed our new shingles this week. Here are the before and after pictures.I took the before and after at totally opposite times of day, but you get the picture.

Before:

 

After:

We tried to stick with the same-ish color because we still loved the gray. However the roofer suggested a shingle with a bigger color variation so it looks like it has more texture. Since our property is lower than the road the roof is well seen. I just love it!  

Made me so sad to see my house with the big blue tarp on it :(

Shed -before

  After. I really want to paint this ugly beast. The new roof makes it look so much better already.

This was the best kind of makeover. One where I didnt have to do any work and the insurance paid for it. Yay!