Gold Ombre Dresser- the process

I took it over to my father-in-law's house so he could help me.  We sanded it down and picked out paint and stain.  Because it was laminate, it needed just a little sanding.  It also needed a lot of re-gluing on the dresser and the drawers. First we tried regular stain, which didn't work at all.  So we tried the stain with the Poly already in it.  You don't have to rub it on, then wipe it off, you just brush it on.  The regular paint brush left really bad brush strokes. So we had to use sponge brushes. We went through quite a few, the stain destroys them pretty fast.  Good thing they are like a buck a piece.

Here is the crappy before picture of when we originally got it Labor Day weekend 2011.  Only $15! (the arrow is to show you the awesome 'peeks')

This was my first attempt at the 'ombre' look.  This is something that is all over pinterest. My first attempt was too big of a difference from top to bottom.  I wanted it more subtle.  I had to blend and blend and blend to get the final colors I wanted and I'm extremely happy with the results.  They also got like 5 coats of poly- we have a two year old after all.

So, I have mentioned many times before that I get all sorts of weird samples from work.  These are screw on lids to a funky glass water bottle we tested.  Matt turned them into the feet for the dresser! 

The entire bottom had been damaged and had to be rebuilt.  These feet actually fit the dresser better than the original ones I think.

Matt, doing his thing and being a total beast and re-doing the whole bottom for me.  I couldn't do these things without the men in my life!

I'm obsessed with the little 'peeks' where you can see the dark stain.  I LOVE it!!

Dresser Reveal!

With my old computer down, I don't have access to the original 'before' picture, but here is a zoomed in, crappy picture of the dresser.  I got this in Mayberry at the 60 mile long garage sale over Labor Day weekend 2011. Yep, it's taken me that long to finish it.  It was part of a three piece bedroom set.  The lady didn't want to separate the items, but I talked her into it.  It has these little peek holes (arrow) and was a great piece of mid-century awesomeness.  It was a whopping $15

Here is the piece after the sanding.  As usual, I couldn't have done this without tons of help from my father-in-law and my husband.  Pat helped me with the sanding and staining (we had to get a little creative because the piece is laminate)  And my husband had to pretty much completely rebuild the base and built awesome feet for it that actually fit the piece way more than what it had before

I will post the details of the makeover tomorrow. 

Carving Pumpkins

Aunt Melinda and Elise picked Charlie up a pumpkin when we were up visiting this weekend, so we carved it last night.  Halloween is Wednesday, so we better get on it, I guess

As you can see in the above pictures, Matt has been playing with pallets.  He found a bunch at work that are all oak and snagged him.  He made this oak box in about 4 minutes last night.  We have been over-run with our gourds we needed a place to put them all!

Mummy Door!

B and I made the front door into a mummy, I'm a big fan of basically free decorations....

If you remember, last year E and I made a Frankendoor
What are we going to make next year??

More Bedding

bedspreads 3 by molliedivine on Polyvore

Retro Clock Percale Bedding - Garnet Hill / Madras & Curious George™ Bedroom | Pottery Barn Kids / Taking Flight Bedroom | Pottery Barn Kids / Owl Percale Bedding - Garnet Hill

Well, still waiting on my camera....such is life. I'm surprised how much by blog just stopped without a camera!  Reminds me how picture heavy and content light my blog is.  But that's what I like in other's blogs, and that's how I blog, so tough nuggies.

Well, I've been snooping around for more bedding, most of these are out of my budget, but the top left Curious George sheets?  If you remember, Charlie has a small obsession with his Curious George and as opposed as I am to character decor, they seem to be well done, and I love the plaid bedspread paired with it- love it. 

The others are more just for fun, I love the plane one, but I love old vintage looking planes.   The owl one is cute, but he would grow out of it pretty quick. Those are definitely more for mom than for Charlie.

And if you know my taste at all, it's no surprise that I'm pretty much obsessed with the clocks.  They are from Garnett Hill kids, but I don't care.  So, how much bribing am I going to have to do for my husband to agree to them?  Probably never going to happen. 

New Kitchen Table

First, our other table.  it looks very similar to the new one but is very small.  We had a hard time, all five of us, even fitting around it.  And company was out of the question.  The lighting in this picture is terrible, but you get the general idea.  We'll be keeping this table somewhere, it will make a great first apartment table for B or one of the other kids.

tsk, tsk, Matt's dad didn't take a picture of the original, but here is a picture of it all stripped and sanded

God bless my father-in-law for doing the hard part!

I have to say, and I know you will read this Pat, my favorite part was getting to spend some one-on-one time with my father-in-law.  I had such a good time with him and learned a lot.  Love you to pieces Pat.

I picked out this stain

And it was bright red!  This picture does not show how truly red this stain was!

We ended up putting two coats of this one over the red and it turned it into a beautiful, rich red/orange color that I loved, thank goodness

Much better....

Paint for the bottom half

I had this paint already.  I have no idea what I bought it for.  It's exterior which I thought would be good for table legs.

I loved this blue, but it was, WOW, bright blue.  So I needed to tone it down.  I took the Early American stain and rubbed it on the paint

Pretty heavy like this, and then wiped it off really well.  It didn't really change the color, just took it down a notch.  The best way I can describe it was that it looked like a shadow was on the paint.

The one in front doesn't have the stain.  I took 15 pictures trying to show the difference between the stain and the non-stain.  This is the best I got and you still can't really tell.

Put 3 coats of this on the blue and 4 on the top, rubbing it down with steel wool in between layers.  It worked really well.  Thanks to the hard work of Pat, the top feels like butter

Screwing the bottom back on, almost done!

In the garage, ready to get on the truck to go to it's new home

This project took a week, but most of the time was used letting coats dry and cure completely.  Charlie was in heaven getting to go see Grandma and Grandpa almost every day

The boys getting it in the truck- this thing is heavy!

Toddler Bomb

I've written before of my hatred for these chairs, but they will work for now.  We are headed to Mayberry to see Matt's sister for the 60 mile garage sale.  Hoping to find some new chairs and Matt will probably make a bench for one side

It can easily seat 6 and if we do get a bench, three kids could fit comfortably on one side. Thoughts?  I would love to know your opinion on it

My Corner

Follow up to this post on the pillow poll.  The shamrock won overwhelmingly (the votes on the post are not all of them, I gave up after a bit- it's a pain to edit your posts!)

Anyway, I'm happy because I LURV shamrocks, and it was my favorite, but didn't have the color scheme. But you all convinced me it was all good.

And now I have it and I'm happy- and it's way better quality than I expected. I bought it at this etsy shop.  Head over there, she has some other cute stuff.




before - to review: Aunt PJ chair, Grandma Margaret's sewing table, the mirror from our 5th Ave house, and my favorite, the jewelry box from my mother.  (I'm realizing there is a great story there, I'll post about it later)



after (I got my drawer pushed in, but now you can see my unmade bed in the mirror.  Dang it!!! I can't win, my secret is out, I'm not totally tidy all the time...)

I also hung these two pictures that were handed down to me from my Grandma Divine.  She told me they were painted by her neighbor, but looking at them close, I don't believe that is where she got them.  I think they are just mid century home decor, which is fine by me, I love them.  They haven't been hung since I moved into this house and I was glad to find a place for them.  Only when I did the pillow poll and saw the picture of the plain corner did I realize they would go well up there.

Light Fixtrue a la Restoration Hardware

This is what I was going for - I love all these caged lights that I see around.  I got the idea from here
This retails for $595 at Restoration Hardware.  Mine cost about $15



It's hard to see, this was a picture from when we first moved into the house, I'm unpacking and loading the cupboards.  This is the hallway off my kitchen.  It was a lovely brass piece of hideiousness



I bought two planters and spray painted them with Rust-Oleum anodized brass spray paint

took apart the whole chandelier and spray painted the bones too- make sure to wrap the electrical (I used painters tape because it was the first thing I found)

I inverted them around the chandelier.  I connected them with  clips that originally held them to the chains



Matt helped because he's much better at solving problems like - how do we attach the top to the lamp to the planters?  'I'll just used a couple of pieces of chain link.  I'll bend them with my super human strength cuz I'm all manly and stuff'