On the Move.....

I know it's been FOR-EVA since I've blogged, and to my two faithful readers who have noticed, my apologies. The short version is that we have been getting the house prepped to put on the market tomorrow. Yes, we are going to (try to) sell our house, in an effort to downsize our life a bit. Just a re-ordering of priorities. We had the photographer/videographer come over to our (miraculously clean) house for a photo session on Friday, and I'll be able to share the pics with you tomorrow, I think, when we go live. So until then....

Bye-bye brass!

I'm NOT a big fan of shiney brass objects. Not. A. Fan. In fact, one of the first "home improvement" projects I made my husband do was change out the tarnished brassy french handles on the doors. They are now a nice, uniform satin nickel. Nice.

But that project ended up being a LOT more expensive than I would have thought. After all, you can't change the handles ($26/each) and leave the ugly brass hinges, too, right? And apparently we have a LOT of doors in our house.

So when I look at our shiney brass ceiling fans, I become a little deflated. I know that you can find cheap-o fans, but the fans we have may be ugly, but they are GOOD fans! I can't justify the expense to replace them.

Hello, Spray Paint.

My best friend.

So while my hubby was out of town this week, I decided to give it a go, and try painting the brassy awefulness that was clinging to the family room ceiling.

I failed to get a true "before" picture, since I was in such a mad rush to get it down, so here's a half-hearted one:

Just imagine it with fan blades :)

And to be fair, this was one of the better looking brass fans, since it wasn't completely brass... it did have that going for it. Also, I liked that because I didn't have to take down the ENTIRE fan for this project. I just took off the blades, the light kit, and the grill thingy.

I taped over all the electrical work with newspaper & masking tape in a very technically exacting method.... uh, sure.

I gave everyone a good coat of primer.

The screws I just threw in a little box, and sprayed while I shook the box a little. Seems to have worked :)

Now, as I was reassembling my masterpiece, I ran into a bit of a dilemna. Since I didn't take apart the whole thing, I realized that the little pull-chain for the fan was still attached within the fan motor part, and there was no apparent way for me to remove it for spraying outside. I couldn't leave it as-is, because it really stood out next to the light nickel.... Enter Grocery Bag Spray Paint Accessory.

Yes, that's right, I grabbed a bag, kind of cradled the little chain inside, and did some blind spraying. Maybe not the most efficient use of spray paint, but hey, it got the job done! And I didn't find any "snow" on the fabric of my couch underneath when I was finished. Nice.

So here she is, with some new frosted shades to replace the dated cut glass ones (please ignore the hideous curly-shirley light bulbs that my hubby is obssessed with. Someday I'll switch them out when he won't notice!):

Sleek!

Linking up to Transformation Thursday at

Free {repurposed} curtains

We haven't had "real" curtains in our master bedroom, well, ever. I've been working on decorating the bedroom after 4 years of living here, and it's coming along slowly. I painted the room from dusty pink to a nice brown, I painted a CL dresser, we had already bought some Shabby Chic Target furniture from CL, and I bought a lovely duvet cover (have yet to get the comforter, but who am I to be picky?). Everything is quite plain. I got to looking at the naked windows, bemoaning the fact that I don't have a budget to buy ANY supplies right now. Well, I was reading on the Nesting Place about her Lessons Learned from Houses Past, and she was talking about how back in the day she used Kmart bedsheets to make her living room curtains. Inspiration! I checked the closets for any extra sheets, but realized that I had already donated them to our Community Services at our church. Bummer.

After moping around for a while, I walked by the dining room and stopped dead in my tracks.

The tablecloth.

This tablecloth was given to me by my MIL, who bought it at goodwill or something. It's served us well. It's a lovely color of green with some decorative trim type stuff. But it's a solid color. We have a vespers service at our house every Friday night, which includes food for about 15-20 young adults. Solid tablecloths are not my friend. This poor little lovely had grease stains here and there, but I loved the color, so I kept using it. But now I grabbed it off of the table and ran upstairs to the sewing room. Before I could change my mind, I folded it in half and cut it.

Then I folded the raw edge over and over once more to create the rod pocket

I knew that these would not be long enough to do panels, so I decided to make them a swaggy valance thing. For the lift-up tie things (love all my terminology?) I used scraps of cavas left over from my living room curtains. I just cut them into strips, sewed up the long sides to make a tube, then turned the tubes inside out.

I then pressed it down to create crisp edges.

Then I sewed the short sides together to make a loop.

I slipped them over the curtain rod, and voila! New curtain-swaggy-valance thingies.

Oh, and there's another one on the other side of the bed, but that is my husband's side, and it has socks all over the floor. Thought I'd spare you that.

Lesson learned: You can pretty much always find something to repurpose in your house. My curtains were free, and I couldn't be more pleased with the result!

Linking up to Transformation Thursday at

And

Framed Photos

Thanks to the gals over at Shanty2Chic for giving me the inspiration for this piece. One of the things I love about it is the ease of changing out photos. I don't know about you, but I get a bit tired of having decade-old photos of my family on the walls. While a few "vintage" shots are cool, I don't need to be looking at my 80s hair day in and day out. With this particular set-up, you can change out the photos with NO hassle whatsoever. Awesome.
I actually made this about a month ago, but haven't been able to post about it, since it was a Christmas gift for my parents. And since we kept having delays in them coming for Christmas, I've had to keep this beauty to myself. No longer! They were hear this weekend, and the frame is now safely in Iowa.
In case you're interested in making one of your own, here's how I did it:

First, I collected the frames. It was kind of a bugger to find a nice, large frame that wasn't a million bucks or plastic. I didn't find any I liked at Goodwill, and the ones at Michael's were 50% off, but that was still a pricey option. Until I walked by this fixture back by custom framing that had a bunch of odd frames hanging off of it. As much as I love the Ooops! paint from Lowes, aparently Michaels has Oops! frames! I got this large, heavy, solid wood custom frame for $8. Eight dollars, people! I think I'm in love.
So my other frames I picked up at Goodwill. Got several different sized, all different colors, but that won't last long. I also picked up a "B" at Walmart (for Brown, my parents' last name) and sprayed all of it black.

 Since this custom frame was an Oops, there was no glass or backing or hanging mechanism to go along with it. The glass was no problem, because I didn't want any anyways (so there!) but I would need a backer. I ended up buying a foam tri-fold display board and cutting it to size.

 To cover it I used a dropcloth from Lowes.

 Super cheap, love the texture. I cut it a few inches larger than my custom-foam board, then used spray adhesive to stick it on.

 This was my first time using spray adhesive, and it was pretty cool! It stuck really well.... at least for the first week. As the project sat languishing in my room, waiting to be gifted, I did notice that the adhesive was more sticky than adhering. But it was likely user error. I didn't exactly follow the directions exactly (gasp!).
Anyhow, before I arranged the frames, I removed all hardware from the back--hangy-things, clippy-things, turny-things, all of it.

 I then arranged the frames how I wanted them, and hot-glued them to the drop-cloth board. I then got those magnetic bull-dog clips from walmart and hot glued them on.
All that was left was to choose the picures. I had five openings, so I had one picture for each family unit (my brother, my sister, me, and my parents) plus one of the grandchildren together. I printed them all in black & white to keep it from looking too busy. The frames are all different styles, remember, though since I painted them all the same black, it looks cohesive enough.
I finally attached a wire to the back using a picture-hanging kit, and it was ready to go!

 I'm pretty sure my parents loved it, and I loved that it was fun & easy to make, and pretty cheap, too.

First dresser re-do

I finally finished my first painted dresser. I think it came out well. I had found this dresser on CL for $25. It was a little beat up, and had a handle broken. I liked the lines, but didn't like the flecked-wood look of 1970. I decided it was a good price to try my first painting job. I KNOW I took a before picture, but I can't for the life of me find it. So here you can see at least the corner of it....

I started by removing all the hardware & giving it a good sand. I then wiped with a damp cloth to remove all the dust. I gave two coats of primer, using this:

Yes, I used a foam brush for this. I think it worked out pretty good, actually. Here's after the first coat:

And the second:

I used and Oops! paint I found at Lowes for $2. It's a pretty close match to the blog-celebrity Heirloom White, and it was in a matte finish. I've never worked with a matte finish before, but I really liked it. I like the not-shiney-ness of it. And again, I used a foam brush. It was actually very helpful for getting in the crevices.

Here we are after one coat:

And two coats:

I then gave her a light sand (yes, it's a her... with legs like that, it's got to be a her!)

I then used some leftover paint from my bedroom re-paint, and trimmed in the groves. This was actually pretty tricky, and required the use of my daughter's new Crayola craft paint brush set she got for Christmas. She doesn't know she donated to the cause, since I was doing it while she slept.

I then gave her a light sand,

and wiped her down with a damp cloth.

After making sure it was COMPLETELY dry, I sprayed two coats of Polycrylic satin. It gave it a very nice, light sheen, and should hopefully help to protect it a bit from scratches and dings. Time will tell.

So here she is, happily hanging out in our bedroom: