Free dresser magic

A few months ago I happened to somehow score a free dresser while picking up a cabinet I found on CL. When I arrived to pick up the cabinet the owner appeared to be moving out of her apartment in a frenzy. I was offered at least 4 or 5 random pieces of plastic 80's looking furniture for free before getting a glimpse at the dresser. Although it was in pretty rough shape, it had great lines and detail. I couldn't pass it up when I she told me it was free. I had big plans before I even got her home...
Here are some pictures of the cabinet before I got my hands on it:

This dresser needs more work than Heidi Montag.

Not even missing pieces of wood could deter me from tackling this project... look at that amazing detail!


Heres her side profile next to her BFF Mr. Ugly Cabinet with random curly thing on top (more on him later).

Next up... After shots of my lovely dresser with a play by play on her extreme makeover!

The paint swatch bandit

My latest DIY project (which is the bane of my existence and will be chronicled on here in a few weeks) consists of refinishing some dining room chairs I found on craigs list for a sweet price. While working on this project today I realized I needed to go to Home Depot to grab a few things. While there I couldn't resist stopping by the paint center to check out a few samples for yet another secret painting project I have in the works. While perusing around the paint swatches I realized I have had most of them in my possession at one time or another, however, have absolutely no clue as to what happened to them all. It was around this time that I realized that in order to be green and probably save Home Depot from bankruptcy due to my blatant abuse of their free swatch system I should probably just take them all. After a quick look over my shoulder to make sure I was in the clear I proceeded to grab every single Glidden neutral that I could find. When my stack started to protrude out of my sweatshirt pocket and look like I was trying to conceal actual merchandise I gave up... I told the blues, greens, purples, reds and yellows that I would be back for them one day soon. When I got home I took a few minutes to dig around for a spare key ring or 2 (finally! Hoarding random objects serves a purpose!), and this is what unfolded:

Oh tawny birch.. your tawny birchness is the hi-light of my day. What's that? You see my hold punch coming towards you at a rapid speed? Don't worry... this won't hurt a bit...

See? What did I tell you. Next step is to join your friends on the color wheel-o-fun...

There you go.


Ta da! Glorious! Now I can cut back on wasteful paint swatch thievery and have all of my swatches organized and within arms reach. I may even wear them around my neck and call it fashion. Heidi Klum's got nothing on me.

Adventures in booger green

When we bought the house I was determined to have at least one room painted before we did anything else. The room that I sacrificed to the inexperienced painter gods just happened to be our bedroom. The place that was supposed to scream peace and relaxation. While lurking around on Rate My Space I found a bedroom that was bold and in your face. And it included... an accent wall. My thought process was something like this: Accent wall? Do I need one of those? If I do it then it might sound like I know what I'm doing. It's just paint, I can always re-do it. What colors did this lady use.... green and khaki? How hard can that be?
Little did I know at the time, but there are approximately 4,953 shades of both khaki and green. I picked out 2 that were near eachother on the paint wall and dove in head first. When all was said and done it took us 2 weeks to paint one room. ONE ROOM!!! We made every mistake that the beginning painter can make. Paint on the ceiling, too much paint on the brush, gloopy drips down the wall, painting while drunk (ok maybe not completely drunk, but a glass or 2 of wine will definately impair your painting know-how). You name it we did it.
In the end, we wound up with this:

My attempts at soft khaki and complementary green actually looked like the colors of mustard and relish. Granted those 2 things are TOTALLY complementary... To a hot dog. And ladies and gentlemen, my bedroom is not a hot dog.
Here is a close up of the corner:
(blech).
After 2 weeks of painting hell Mike and I both told each other we liked it and went about our business. In reality coming into that room after a long day of work was downright depressing. When I mentioned to Mike that I was thinking about re-painting it what I got was "Thank god... That room reminds me of boogers". And so I made it my mission in life to start the bedroom off on the right track. After weeks of deliberation the color I settled on was Antique Silver by Glidden. I love Glidden's color wall, mainly due to the fact that it is completely NOT overwhelming. They also offer those nifty little tester bottles (which come in handy for touch ups down the line). It took me 8 hours to prime and paint this ENTIRE ROOM (which was a long way from our first 2 week fiasco)!
Here is my end result:

I'm going to have to snap a photo in the daytime. This was taken immediately after the bed was put back into place (I couldn't help it, I was giddy with excitement). And don't get me wrong this room is far from finished. Our big plans include crown molding, some wall art, fancy window shades and plans for a DIY floor mirror in there to bounce some light all over the place.
Thanks again for stopping in to check out my spaces and listen to me rambling... up next my attempt to take a free(!) dresser I scored on craigslist from broke down and scary to my favorite piece in the house...

Whoops...

I have to admit that I got lazy. In fact, I didn't even tell anyone that I had started blogging back in September because I didn't want my friends or family to actually try and follow me in blog world. I had a feeling blogging was going to go south quickly, considering our wedding was coming up fast.
Our timeline went something like this:
8.08 - Get engaged!
8.08 - 6.09 - Sit around, eat bacon and cake, and procrastinate wedding planning.
7.09 - Decide on a whim to have a wedding in 6 months.
9.09 - Realize we haven't actually done any wedding planning. Crap.
You can imagine the madness that happened after this. Long story short, to date we have made it through 3 whole months of wedded bliss. I consider that a success.

We shall talk more about wedding things later, but now, back to our house. One of the major selling points of our house was a huge great room with cathedral ceilings. The combination living/dining area lured us in and had us at hello. The first issue we had was painting this bad boy. When we first moved in I was convinced we needed to go bold. This ultimately led to some scary choices for paint in both the kitchen and the bedroom. Think bizarre accent walls and pea soup green. I'm still scared thinking about it. Luckily for the great room I took my time and did my research on keeping things cohesive with paint. Our original color scheme in the house included a yellowish brown color in our mediocre great room. The rest of the house hadn't seen a paint brush since the dry wall was covered up with basic white. It was around the same time that I was doing my research that I found out about Glidden's big paint giveaway. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen to me since I discovered loaded baked potatoes. After careful selection I decided on 'soft suede' for my free color. In the neutral family, it looked dark, but not too dark. After living with a giant square on my wall for a few weeks I decided to go for it. We picked a complementary color for the ceiling, although now I kind of wish we'd gone darker. Feel free to let me know what you think:

Here is the view from our front door towards our gigantic room... (the color doesn't look so bad, does it? That may have something to do with the minimal amount of light we get up here. It's almost cave like. I'm pretty sure I saw some bats flying around once...)

Here is my man slave getting down and dirty with some spackle in the living room area of the room.

Is that a church or my house?! Here is the white ceiling in all of it's ridiculous glory. It draws the eye up, and not in a good way. I'd love to eventually throw some beams up there and call it a day. And don't worry, the ceiling fans will eventually be a thing of the past. But onto the painting...
After recruiting the fam for a day to help me paint...


And the end result:

Not too much darker, but enough to make a drastic difference. In all about a million times better than what it was. We are going to have to see how it contrasts with our dark wood floors, which will hopefully soon be installed. I'm not opposed to changing it up if we can find sa color we like better. For now this will have to work. Up next? Our booger green accent wall bedroom makeover. Stick around, you won't want to miss that fiasco.