Upcycled Transformation

Every fall our chuch has it annual parish festival. It is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and it is next Saturday.

Many years ago I started a "silent auction" as part of this event.  Calling local businesses and other parishioners asking for donations and organizing the entire event.  I am no longer in charge of it (by choice!) but I always dontate something to it, 

Here is my donation for this year...

 


It started out as these bits and pieces... 

... an old school desk that was originally in our parish school.  The school sold these for $5 each a few years back.  My neighbor was done with hers, she put it in her trash - and I took it! 

I am not too proud to take something out of the trash for a good cause!

... this stool, that I picked up at a local thrift store for $1 yesterday.  It was covered in rust and quite dirty, but I saw it had potential as a chair for my little desk.

... metal desk accessories, I found at Dollar Tree for... you guessed it... $1 each.

... some regular yellow pencils I covered with oragami paper (had both of those things too!) based on this tutorial I found Omiyage's blog (you can check it out here) ...

... some cute school supplies,
... a couple cans of spray paint (half of which I already had in my stash!)...

... some buttons and magnets (once again, I already had these too!) to use to hang paper and what-not from the metal sides of the desk...

... some ric rac around the bottom of the legs (had it)...

 ... and some fabric and batting (guess what... I had those already too!)...

Total out of pocket cost for this project:  $19!

I think it turned out quite cute!  

I hope that it will find a home and bring in some much needed cash to our church and school!  

 

What little girl wouldn't love doing her homework at this?

Before and After... Well, Really During!

This is the front of my house.  It really needs a new look.  It has 30+ year old aluminum siding that has chalked and faded in stripes (look at the second story - that is not shadows, that is siding that has changed color, but only in some places!).  The whole thing really needs resided or painted.  Neither of which is in the budget for this summer.

It also has a reddish roof (which I have always hated) and a hard to color coordinate - almost white washed - brick on the front lower center section.  It had, I say, "Terracotta", most say "peach" color shutters - which I never really liked, but they were suggested by the landscape architect we hired to design our front gardens and porch addition, and they matched the brick and roof.  So they have stayed for the past 13+ years!  I guess I needed to get my money's worth out of that suggestion we paid good money for!

So, in light of all of its challenges, I have and decided to make the best of it...

The easiest, quickest and cheapest way to change the look of a house... shutters!  I got on Benjamin Moore's website and uploaded a picture of my house and played around with different shutter colors.  (warning - this can be addictive!).   I have kind of gone out on a limb with the color, but I was so tired of the "matchy/matchy" color we had, and it really did look the best with what I had to work with.

Can you say... "purple shutters"!  I know it is quite a statement!

But they really do look good against the brick, and they make the roof look redder than it actually is and I don't hate it so much!

I still have the problem with the vertical siding fading/chalking on the second story, which my hubby says he is going to paint this summer - just that section - we'll see how that turns out!  I guess it really can't look worse than it looks now, so "what the heck" - a couple gallons of paint - just don't fall!

But all things considered, I really do like the change!  I can't wait to have it all finished.  I have shutters on every window of my house, and the front door.  26 shutters to be exact, and right now I only have 12 finished!  And to make matters worse, most are really tall - like 6' tall shutters!  I still have a ways to go, but will be happy when it is done!

Now I need some suggestions for a new door color and maybe even something for the garage door.  If you have suggestions, please leave them in a comment!  I really am stumped on these 2 items and need some help!

The shutters repainted, a new front light fixture and some new house numbers to be installed, hubby painting the upper portion of the house and I will call this "make-over" done for this summer!

I'll post more pictures when it is done!

Chair Before and After

I got this pair of chairs a while back. I decided today that they would be perfect for our office update. A couple cans of black and white spray paint, a little red craft paint, some sandpaper and a fabric remnant.

  Easy as pie! Quite a difference, don't you think?!

A Sneak Peak at My New Bathroom Mirror!

I have completed the mirror for our bathroom re-do.  The mastic needs to cure for 48 hours before it can be hung.  

I can't wait another 24 hours!!!.

This project is extra special because it went from purely a vision in my head to a reality.

You will have to wait until it is hung to see the full piece in all its glory!!  

Sorry!

Come back on Monday - it should be hung by then...

This post is being shared on Miss Mustard Seeds Furniture Friday Linky Party

PB Inspired Table Lamp

(image courtesy of potterybarn.com)

I saw this lamp in the Pottery Barn Catalog, and loved it, but not the price tag - $105 + $39 for the lampshade.

Then on one of my "junking trips" I found this lamp...

 

Can you see the price tag?

Yes, a whopping $2!

Well, removal of the brass feet (free), 1 can of white gloss spray paint ($2), and one Wal-Mart lampshade ($15) later here is how it looks.

I think I am going to repaint the base in a satin or flat black, but other than that, I really like how it turned out!

Total Cost of PB Lamp and Shade - $144 + shipping

Total Cost of My Lamp and Shade - $19!

This is going to go in my office that I blogged about here where I am also "borrowing" some of PB's ideas!

I am also working on a great chandelier that I will show you when it is done.

I'm participating in DIY Day at ASPTL,
And in the PB Knock-Off Party at Homebody!

Bathroom Re Do

I wanted to share the progress on my main floor bath re-do.  This was suppose to be one of those quick and easy projects that I would have done in less than a week.  Well a week later, it is not done but I will show you the progress anyway...

This is what the bathroom looked like last week.  I re-did it shortly after we moved in 13+ years ago.

Well, here is what I have complete so far...

I finished painting and distressing the vanity and the medicine cabinet, and got all the wall paper stripped.  We were using DIF to strip the paper, which works great!  However we were afraid that the DIF might mess up my newly painted cabinets so DH put some painters tape around the edges where the cabinets butted up to the wall paper.

All was good until I took the tape off yesterday afternoon (he only put the tape up yesterday morning, so its not like it was there for days and got "too stuck"), and no only did the black paint I just did come off, but so did the primer below that, and the white paint below that, and the original primer I put on before painting the cabinets white (13+ years ago), leaving the original 40+ year old yellow/gold paint along the edges of the medicine cabinet...

There was only one small spot where the tape took paint off the sink cabinet, but pretty much took all the paint off where it was put on the medicine cabinet!

So now I can't decide whether I can just reprime and paint the areas where the paint has come off, or if I need to do the whole thing all over again... I am thinking I am going to try to just do the 2 areas... what do you think?

I've decided to take a break from this project today - a little too frustrated right now.  Plus, DH has to move the light location and patch the hole where the existing light will be so I will wait till he finishes that before I go back in and work on the medicine cabinet!

To see, more creative DIY projects, visit A Soft Place to Land's DIY Day...

In honor of taking a break from this project, I decided to have a giveaway...  You can win this...

 

The post about the giveaway is here... please take a minute to enter!  You can get up to 3 entries - good luck!

Transformation Thursday

I decided to join in on Transformation Thursday @ "The Shabby Chic Cottage".  I didn't have any recent transformations,so I decided to show you some of the past things we have done at our Cottage.

For those of you who don't know, we have a small lake cottage about an hour from our home that we totally enjoy in the summer.  I have decorated it on the utmost cheap budget.  Most of what is there was either left by the previous owners, found a thrift stores, resale shops, garage sales, clearance sales or given to us by family and friends.  All of this scouring, finding, gathering and repurposing, has left us with a cozy little place to enjoy in the warm months (and sometimes even in the cold ones), where we can spend time with friends and family.  Some of these things you may have seen on my blog before, but just wanted to share a few of my favorite things that have transformed our cottage into what it is today.

 when we first bought the cottage

 

New outdoor colors... 

 Sorry for all the construction debris in the front yard of this one, but it was the only one I could find of the front right now...

We have 2 small attic type rooms upstairs that we use as the kids rooms.  We transformed on of them  from this...

... to this.  Here is the girls room.  Couldn't find the pics of my sons room right now, will show you those another time, but love how the girls room turned out.  The bottom is a wide 3'+ border that I had the paint for the walls and ceiling color matched to.  Added the clouds, and even some glow in the dark stars that show up at night.

  

An old windowpane and vintage post cards from the lake - most 1920-1930 that I aput on the back of the glass with clear scrapbook photo corners - this is one of my favorites because it has so much history!

 

My vintage enamelware pots - most I can and do use - others are too damaged, and just hand there as decoration.

 

This is one piece of a 3 piece set of vintage aluminum patio furniture I got at a flea market for $80 and included new cushions that I just recovered - they were butt ugly.  The other 2 pieces include a rocker and a couch that folds down into a daybed.  When the girls have friends at the lake they love to sleep on it in the screen porch!

 

The only before pics I had of this table were on my cellphone that died before I could download them.  It was an ugly very dark 70's walnut type finish.  I first painted the table all red (same color as the chair on the left) and the top white.  It looked great in my mind, but the reality was completely different, so I had to go back to the home improvement store and rethink my strategy.

I sanded the top to remove some of the white paint, then added a royal blue stain to it and several coats of polyurethane.

 I painted over the red legs and base with white, and then sanded it to distress it and reveal the red underneath.  Then added several coats of polyurethane to it to keep it from distressing too much more with use and to keep the white paint white - it is a lake and lots of bare feet resting on the base if you know what I mean...

 One of our biggest projects was the construction of the tree house.

 

 There is a big long story about the tree house if you are interested you can read my blog post about it here...

 

I also couldn't find the pics of it finished - we painted all the railings and support pieces to match the house, and painted the whole inside white.

My cousin Lori painted the name of our lake on this old oar we found at a thrift store during one of our annual "junking" adventures!

There is so much more I could and will show on upcoming posts...