They Were Framed!

If you missed it, earlier today I posted a little DIY project that I completed yesterday.  I was curious to see if any of you out there in the blog-o-sphere have been up to any crafty business yourselves and I received a response!  It is from my very own mama and she did a bang up job of expanding the visual space above her wine cabinet.

Before

She started with the adorable canvas of my brother and nephew.  It has hung in this spot for a while now but just wasn't quite big enough in relation to its surroundings.  To solve this problem Mama hit up her local thrift store and found this solid oak frame for $3.50 and bought a can of black spray paint for $3.  She then hung it around the existing canvas and voila!  

After

You might remember the post from a couple of years ago that Mama is quite crafty spray paint and thrifted picture frames. 

Reading Rainbow

The Hubs has the neatest collection books from the series "Redwall" by Brian Jacques.  There are 34 books in the series and we have 14 of them.  We want Baby A to have them to grow up with so we bequeathed them to her and her nursery.  You can see them here:

Being the neurotic mama-to-be/design obsessed woman that I am the book jackets just weren't doing it for me in the context of the nursery.  My first attempt and making them over was to simply take the jackets off.  Alas, all of the book spines are red and I was not feeling 14 spines of red.  Luckily, a solution was found and executed yesterday.

After a quick field trip to Michaels for paper and wrapping I was ready to start the process.  It was all pretty easy.  The largest scrapbook paper that I could find was 12"x12" and didn't quite cover the book so I purchased some white matte wrapping paper to cover the books.  

After cutting out 14 white book covers I trimmed the scrapbook paper to size and secured them to the white book covers with double-sided tape.  A silver paint Sharpie was used to write the title on the cover.  I'm still debating about adding the title to the spine as well but I kind of like the simplicity of the monochrome rainbow right now.

Have any of you been crafty lately?

Tales from the Garage

I love me a good garage transformation, as you may know.  It is that area of your house that is usually a pit for most American families.  You are either in the situation of not being able to fit both or even one vehicle in at all, it has sports gear, tools, and/or misc. crap strewn about or your are one of the very few that keeps a tidy and sparse garage for your cars.  Our garage fell somewhere in between.  First off, it looked like a murder room.  Our walls were riddled with holes, spray paint spurts and random shelving. 

Here is our pitiful before:  Don't you love the gaping spaces around our pipes?  We had our entire house re-piped (all new plumbing!) and not all of the evidence of the repairs have been remedied as of yet.

 Notice our old toilet...

I made a small effort to start the process last week and made my way through all of the piles to at least get it to the place you see below.  This included a coat of primer (leftover paint from the previous owners that I used to cover up the hideous stains on the walls behind those shelves on the right).
 

Hubs was up next and he had the hardest job of all; patching about 1,000 holes.  Like his shirt?  *Side Note Alert* We visited the first ever legal Texas bourbon distillery last summer in the Hill Country.  It is awesome and if you are lucky enough to get your hands on some Garrison Brothers Bourbon count yourself blessed. *Side Note Complete* He also had to sweep a graveyard of Daddy Long Legs off the walls.  Gross.

Had to give you a close-up of our laughable attic access.  It is as shoty as it looks and yes, that is a jump rope that you see attached intended to act as a way to pull down the ladder.  Yikes.

Up-close and personal with random wall graffiti. 

Look at all of those glorious patches!  And the glorious hole we found behind the peg board.  This is why you always take everything down...to make sure there are not huge gaping holes in your walls.

 

We got a steal of a deal on paint at Lowe's by purchasing a 5 gallon bucket of mis-tinted Valspar.  It just so happened to be in a color similar to what we were wanting and in the right finish.  For 1/2 price you can't beat that!
 

We are still in the process of painting the ceiling and we will eventually get to painting the floor as well.  But for now, this is where we stand.  I'm hoping to get it wrapped up by the weekend so that both of our cars can move back into their shady home.  Who else was a weekend warrior?  

A Queen is Only as Powerful as Her Throne

That is to say that we needed a new toilet (or two) in our fabulous first house.  We are pretty sure that the commodes were original to the home born in 1961.  That is one old poo pot.  They were very small, short and used three gallons of water to unsuccessfully flush the toilet.  It's a win-win, right?  Hardly.

                              Master "Before"                        Hall Bath "Before"                              

While Mom and Pop were in town for the baby shower we decided that it would be the perfect time to install the first new toilet.  We started in the hall/guest bathroom.  "Why not begin by replacing the master toilet?" you might ask.  The thought was that with Baby A coming in a few weeks that guests will soon be checking into the Dorffarosa it would be nice if they had use of luxurious new toilet.  

The family took a field trip to Lowe's to find us a new (and much improved) bathroom seat.  We wanted to make sure that we didn't get a bottom-of-the-barrel toilet but there was no need to spend $600 on one either.  We ended up bringing home an American Standard model that features amenities such as:


- Chair height
- Elongated seat
- Water-saving technology (only uses 1.3 gallons of water!)
- EverClean seat and bowl


I might be more excited about this new tinkler than I would be about a new Mercedes.  It is sad but true.  Above is the original "before" from February and here is the more recent "before" from June.

Drum roll, please...Here is the new and much improved bathroom and toilet!  (Insert symbols crashing)  In addition to the new throne you might also notice the new runner.  Thank you, Ikea!

One last time, Before and After!

What have you been waiting to replace in your home?  Would a new kitchen faucet send you into a pleasure frenzy?  Or maybe new windows would blow your skirt up?  Please share what home project you have anxiously awaiting to complete.  Come on, you're among friends. 

Free Art

Free! Could there ever be a better word? I submit that there could not. When working on the Dorfflette's nursery it occurred to me that she needs some fanciful art on the walls to launch her imagination. Lucky for us I had torn apart a fabulous Anthropologie catalog this past Christmas, well before I knew that I was pregnant.

All that was left to do was get some uniform and inexpensive frames and creative matting. Off to Ikea and Hobby Lobby! To the EnDorff-Mobile.

Here are our supplies.

- Ikea Frames: $1.99 ea x 6
- Scrapbook Paper: $.44 ea x 6
- Art: FREE!





I envision our little papaya creating story lines and personalities for each of these adorably accessorized animals. Nothing like an inexpensive original to inspire your nursery decor and your baby.

Cabinet How-To

Do you have out dated cabinets but don't want to fork over a ton of money to replace? Repaint them! You might have seen in our previous kitchen post that we repainted every cabinet, inside and out, in our kitchen recently. I highly recommend it for a less expensive update that will give you a major aesthetic impact.

Here's how we did it. We started by removing all of the cabinet doors and then pulled on our big girl pants (mom and I) and scrubbed the insides of the cabinets. Our cabinet interiors was unexpectedly scary.


Just kidding. It's like I say in my blog title, "Mostly facts, some fiction." Factually, most of them looked as though they had not been scrubbed since the house was originally built in 1961.

Now you see a door.


Now you don't. It's magic; I can tell that you're mystified right now. Don't be scared.


You can see that even without the doors there is a ton of cabinet surface to paint.



After the scrubbing came a little light sanding. We were lucky that our cabinets were solid wood throughout and did not have a heavy varnish on them. We tried a couple of different methods for painting the interiors of the cabinets, including spray paint, which we do not recommend. In the end it was easiest to use a small cabinet and doors roller (you can purchase these at any paint/home improvement store). They work great and give you even coverage.


After many, many coats of Valspar's Du Jour in semi-gloss finish we had all of the interiors and bases painted. We did this over the course of a few days to allow them to fully dry.


Look how happy we are! We started with this set of cabinets and were still very optimistic that it wouldn't take long at all. We were so wrong, but we did have fun.


This is clearly not a fashionable post. When working on one's house it is very important to look as unfortunate as possible. I did a pretty good job of that, if I do say so myself. (Pregger belly hanging over the jeans is clutch)


The cabinet doors were an entirely different beast that I wrestled with for weeks. The cabinet interiors taught me a valuable lesson: primer will save you time and paint. You will also need a good pair of work gloves, unless you don't mind having nails and skin on your hands. I used a medium-heavy gauge sandpaper block. It worked well to remove what looked like maple syrup drips that would magically show up when painted.


Our doors had mitered borders that liked to catch dust. I used a blow dryer to make sure that they were free and clear before brushing on the primer. Using a micro-fiber rag, I wiped down the doors to remove all excess dust.


Zinsser is always my first choice for primer. It gives you really nice coverage and dries fairly quickly.



One important thing to remember when painting the doors is to paint the backside first. This will insure that the front dries perfectly. After I applied the primer it took about two coats of paint to cover all of the wood grain. Then we just added new knobs and hinges that we bought in bulk from Home Depot. They made all of the difference in the world compared to the white and gold ceramic ones that were on the doors/drawers previously.

Cabinet doors before:


Cabinet doors after:


It is as easy as that. We have a ton of cabinets which is why our paint project took so long. Smaller areas go much faster, of course. Our hall bath cabinets only took me a single day to paint. Just take it one room at a time and from there, a single cabinet at a time. You can do it! When you do, please share your photos with the class.