chairs...

We had these great Pottery Barn dining chairs bought on Craigslist a while ago. I loved them!
We recently bought a huge round table and I decided I didn't want my chairs to match anymore. I love the look of mismatched chairs. I sold the Pottery Barn chairs and came out ahead. So I also bought another round table with 4 chairs for $50. They were plain old ugly oak but solid.

Did I mention I got 4 of them and a table for $50?

See?


So I used my new sander...


And my $5.00 mistint Kilz primer...


To get this...well this times 4 since I had 4 chairs.


I used a brush to paint the first chair and then quickly decided to break out my paint sprayer. I did 4 coats of Olympic "Black Magic" which is a gray/black and beautiful. It's the same color of the countertop in the new bathroom. I will not be using Olympic paint again though, I think I will have it color matched at Sherwin Williams or Ben Moore. The Olympic paint didn't cover well at all.

Anyway, I got this times 4. I sealed it with some polyacrylic and we're using them now.


I just have to paint the round table it came with black and paint our huge dining round table gray and I'll be "done". All of you DIYers will understand the "". Is there ever really done?

crafts and projects...

Just a few things we've done around the house.

More paper garland for the living room...




Made over this desk with a chalkboard top, couldn't find room for it and sold it on Craigslist.




Found this cute 1940's platter at Goodwill for $2.99! Goes great with my cuckoo clocks.


Made velvet pillow covers for our bedroom. I love the channel stitched pillow covers from Pottery Barn but didn't like the price. So I made these for $15 total. The back is just a gray twill and the front is velvet that I quilted.



I also made a lumbar pillow.


And the most exciting part is we now have two fully functional sinks in the upstairs bathroom. We bought both sinks at the reStore. They are both Kohler but they aren't the same style. That is how I wanted it. We went back and forth about the counter top and didn't want to spend a lot of money. Since this bathroom won't see a lot of use, we opted to go with an oak plywood that I painted and sealed with Polycrylic. The plywood was $50, paint $12 and Polycrylic $9. Deal!



Now we can start framing the built ins, putting beadboard on the walls and painting. The girls are already using the bathroom but it will be nice to have it finished.

doing what you love...

Spiderman pose.

I've always tried to support my kids in their interests. When Ava was about 5 she was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. I bought her the movie, the dress, the shoes, the basket, the dog and some dolls. Graedon loved pirates when he was two and had a pirate ship, eye patch and the works. Now it's superheros and Redwall.

Their interests now are a little more expensive. The older girls are into movie making so I bought Lauren a Flip video camera for her birthday.

Ava loves horses so every week I drive her out to take lessons.



Maddie loves dogs and we recently adopted two whippets with the express agreement that she trains them and scoops their poop.




Fortunately one of Lauren's interests doesn't cost me a thing. Twice a week she volunteers for our library shelving books. Boring to me but she loves being there. It will look good on a work resume to have references other than her parents or friends!

It was so hard that first day to drop her off and drive away. What if she needed me? What if there was a problem? Nevermind that she is 15 and can use a phone to call me. It was just weird to me. We homeschool so I've never had the experience of having my kids gone all day.

Sometimes their interests are just being together as a family and experiencing the wonder of watercolors. The little kids thought this was so neat. When the older girls were young, I shied away from crafts because it made a mess and didn't go perfectly. Now, I don't mind the mess and love to see my kids creativity. My house is filled with their drawings and paintings.







We're blessed to have my business, Miss Label to support those interests that do cost money. But really they just love when I sit and listen to what they are thinking. And that doesn't cost a dime but does reap big rewards even though sometimes their stories go on forever and I try not to fall asleep.

I'm looking forward to what the littler kids interests will be and where the older kids interests will take them. And I pray that they will always know that I supported them wholeheartedly when they become rich from their ideas. Maybe even kickback some of that money. Hint, hint.

which one?

We've narrowed it down to 4 options for the door color. These are not true paint colors but we just wanted the idea before going to look.

Please excuse my crude photoshop attempt.

Red:


Teal:


Green:


Yellow:


Which one would you choose? Please keep in mind that the glass storm door covers a lot of it. The trim is white and there will be a covered porch next year (the wood and cement you see are temporary).

Here is a bad view of the whole front of the house last summer. The blue window trim is now painted white.

the girly chandelier

Remember I bought this at the reStore?


Well it looks like this now:




I sprayed it with a custom mixed green and hand painted the flowers yellow. I also designed and printed the white geometric paper on my color laser printer. Brian rewired it to plug in.

You would think I would be happy with it but you would be wrong. It is nice but not in my living room. It is much too girly and cutesy. I fighting the urge to spray paint it all red so I put it up for sale on Craigslist. I've had two offers but no one has shown up with the money.

I wish I could put it in the girls room but their ceilings are too low. I'm not sure what I'll do with it if it doesn't sell. I hate feeling like I wasted money and time. Sigh...

On another note...you can see I finally picked a gray color for the walls. It is Behr Silver Drop reduced -50%. But it wasn't quite right. So I got desperate and threw together a bunch of gray samples, added in some Polar Bear white from Behr and painted at 10:00 pm. I didn't care what it looked like in the morning I just wanted it done. Miraculously I loved the color and it was the look I was going for. It's a beige, warm gray with no purple or blue undertones. Now I need to repaint my dining room and stencil it.

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what I'm doing today...

After 5 years of having an original 1938 door (that was rotting and didn't fit the opening so we could see daylight around the edges), we replaced it with this nice looking solid wood door. I love the windows at the top. They let lots of light in. I don't love the dark color like I thought I would.

So I need to pick a paint color. My first thought was red but our neighbors have a red door. Our house is blue with white trim so I'm thinking a nice bright yellow or bright green. Something bold and fun. I would love hot pink but I don't think Brian would go for it.

I asked the couple who bought some bookshelves from me on Craigslist and they said orange or green. I think I may ask the postman as well.

I was hoping to pick the color by tomorrow but the forecast is for rain the next couple of days so I guess it doesn't really matter.

So what color would you choose?

another day, another slipcover...

I'm not sure I've mentioned this before but I would rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than make slipcovers. I love to sew and had my Peanutbutter and Ellie business sewing clothes for girls for 3 years. But sewing slipcovers...blah!

Maybe if I had enough money to purchase furniture that is beautiful I wouldn't have to fix it up, but really, what is the fun in that?


Here is the chair we bought at a garage sale for $7.50. It's actually one of a pair that the owner's uncle made in the 1970's. They are really sturdy and comfortable. Unfortunately they had really ugly fabric in really poor shape. I was going to reupholster it but at the rate our furniture gets dirty it would be a lost cause. So slipcovering was my only option.

Here it is after the slipcover. The fabric is by Premier Prints and the gray trim is twill. I wanted the gray trim so it didn't look too cutesy. If you look to your left you will see my slipcovered tv. :)






Now I'm in the process of slipcovering the rocking swivel chair we bought at the same garage sale. I have the pattern cut and the cushion done as you can see. It will be in a blue ticking stripe.



Linking:

our own library...

We finally finished the built in bookshelves in the hallway! Now I have most of my homeschool books there and it frees up the space in the schoolroom to build a custom long desk for the girls. Our plan is to have three computer stations on the long desk and shelves above. First priority though is to finish the upstairs bathroom.

Here is what the hallway looked like before. I loved it but it was a lot of wasted space.


So after Brian tore out the chair rail and the baseboards we discovered really cool old wallpaper. It had been painted over so many times (including 3 by me) we couldn't save it but we did create this mess.


Oops! So I decided I would really like having beadboard paneling behind the bookcases since there was no way we were going to rip out the lathe and plaster and sheetrock.


Brian built the frame work.

Then we had to stop for a quick trip to Urgent Care as Brian had cut into his fingertips with his new circular saw.


Okay, back to work. After the base went in and before he nailed it down we put in a letter to future homeowners and a copy of that days newspaper.



Shelves up and ready to be caulked, primed and painted. I painted it with our trim paint, tried and true Behr Decorators White in semi gloss.


I layed some really cool contact paper down so the shelves wouldn't get scratched or dirty and we loaded it up with all our homeschool books.




Please ignore my pull up bar. I'm doing another round of P90X and this is the only place I could put it and still see the tv. I guess I could have taken it down for the pictures though.


Brian even found a library stool that needs some work. I'll probably play around and rearrange books for awhile but it's fully functional as is and I love having the extra space. My favorite part is the trim around the top and bottom. It makes it looks like it's always been there.

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