Modern

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Mid Century Modification

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Here is a project I’ve been working on for a while. It’s been stuck in the planning stages since we moved in. This old dresser came from my great aunt who got it from her mother (my great grandmother) it’s in pretty rough shape.

 So I took a couple of the worse for wear drawers out so I could use the space for shelves.
  

And tah dah new entertainment center.


 

Luckily we got some bed side tables that had this strange MDF packing material that was the perfect size to serve as a base for the shelves. We just glued and nailed some plywood on the top and a strip of oak on the front to help it match the esthetic of the rest of the piece. 

   
   

 
Next it was time to shore up the legs. The original lumber was pretty dry rotted so after salvaging the nut out of the old piece we seated it into a scrap of deck lumber. I don’t think we’ll have any stability problems there.

 
 

We also put a new back on it after the old one fell right off. Then cut some holes in the new back to run wiring for components. 

  
Finally it was time for paint, I originally used Valspar Chalky finish paint… Big mistake, it was so toothy even attempting to put on the finishing wax was impossible. So inevitably I just went over it with my usual satin finish latex.

 
  

 
I added a couple of orange accents as well, to the base of the legs and the backer board.

  
 
 

With everything back in place it looks pretty good. I may still refinish the drawer fronts so they match the rest of the furniture but for now I think it looks great.

 

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Hall of Frame 

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Back when we visited our friends in North Carolina I got some vintage frames to add some artwork to this odd Hallway we have.

  

 I added some existing old frames I have to them just by giving them some funky paint jobs and decided I would hang them (mostly) empty like at our old house.

   
I’m not really sure why anyone needs this many frames but they sure do make me happy 

  
 
 I added decorative metal sheeting to a few of them to match the awesome barn door my father made for us. I’m going to paint the hall side of the frame of the door to match the frames next week.  

  
Some of the frames with the sheeting required silicon caulk to secure the metal but that was a super quick job. 

  
Some of the frames also got some map cutouts in them of places we’ve lived or been.

  
Lastly I repainted this big collage that has photos of Mr. Smith’s late mother. We had it set up at her celebration of life.

  
 In order to match it to the rest of the installation I just removed a few of the pictures and used a paper similar to our wall color to give the impression of empty frames and did a couple maps and a couple metal inserts as well. 

  
The hardest part of the whole process was the hanging bit. 

  
Oh there is that barn door I was talking about. 

Of course I had help, including help from the cat

  
But eventually it was done

  
And not too shabby if I do say so myself, you can see the barn door peeking out again here. 

  
  
Hopefully Mr. Smith likes it when he finally gets back from his business trip 

  

  
I even snuck our little silhouettes in. 

It was a relatively easy job to create a high impact space

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Bulls and Bears

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No, I’m not in Chicago (Alas, I’m sure it’s much cooler there) But amidst all the things in my life I completely forgot to blog about a project I did a couple of months back for the office I work at.

This isn’t the first decorating project I’ve had the chance to do for the office and I’m sure it won’t be the last; if you want to see the others you can click here or here. 

  
I work at a financial planning office. It’s pretty awesome but it is lacking a little… Style. Luckily I’ve been given the go ahead to jazz it up a bit. We had a bunch of coasters from various places but no matching sets so I took the liberty of buying a little pack of blanks from the craft store and sanding them nice and smooth.

   
 Then I just doodled a little geometric design. I chose a bull and a bear since we work in stock portfolios (among a myriad of other things), used my scanner to enlarg it to the right size for the coaster then numbered each section to correspond with a paint color. In other words I made myself a paint by numbers, that way I wouldn’t end up with two like colors touching each other due to lack of planning. 

  
Then I taped the photocopied image onto the coaster and traced over the lines with the blunt edge of an exact-o knife

  
This left an etching of the image in the soft pine wood of the coaster. 

  
After that it was just a matter of painting each section like I had planned out. 

  
I had four coasters in total so to make each one different i flipped the images so the animals were facing opposite directions and also shuffled which numbers corresponded to which colors. 

  
After the paint was dried I then used a walnut stain over top. Stain over paint may sound kind of silly but on a thin coat of paint  it still pulls out the grain of the wood and gives the paint a distressed/vintage look.

   
 The final touch is just a quick clear coat to seal everything and protect it from sweating water glasses. 

  

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Tiny Bows, Meet Teensey Bubbles

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It all started with this sink a little over two weeks ago. If you’ve been following along on The TinyBows facebook page you’ve likely seen little updates but this is the big transformation.

My Bathroom was A color called “Swimming Pool” and done in ridiculous Gerber daisies as any 14 year old might choose. I still like Gerber daisies. Just not in my decorating choices.

I liked bright colors so much I even painted the door bright green.

In addition to the leaky sink the (oh so lovely) popcorn ceiling started to fall down about ten years ago… As you might be able to tell I just proceeded to scrape the rest of it down

So when we took out the vanity it wasn’t tiled under the cabinet, we knew this going in, the unfortunate part of this is that the cabinent was not a standard size. So we either needed to take up the flooring (not an enjoyable task) or figure out a work around. You might also note that when I painted the walls the first time around I did so directly over the wall paper because this wallpaper is like cement bonded to the wall… Unfortunately that had to go.

So after about a twelve hour day in a steam room we finally got all the wall paper off without too much damage to the dry wall and only minor heat rash and steam burns.

The hideous old brass light fixture came down for a makeover of it’s own

And a paint color was discovered. We seem to choose paint colors based on names. I originally wanted to do it the same color as my office which is called “Sigh” or possibly my bedroom “Blanket” but in the end I was out voted for the aptly named “Teensey Bubbles” from Lowe’s new HGTV Sherwin Williams collection.

We also found our new vanity and sink at Lowes. Due to the original footprint being an odd size we had to build a box around it to make the footprint match. The sides of the box will be painted and the top will be tiled and integrated into the backsplash

The ceiling got the bead board and crown molding treatment (I never want to do a miter cut again) and the door is, thank goodness no longer green.

Hooray no more hideous brass fixtures

And here is the sink post painting of the kickboard and side.

So before and after, keeping in mind the backsplash isn’t done yet. I have to wait a full three weeks for everything to cure before the mastic will bond properly.

I’m so happy to have a functioning bathroom again.