You may remember that one of our first “covid projects” was installing faux board and batten in our breakfast nook. It totally changed the look and feel to that area! We decided to paint the board and batten gray, since the top wall part was a suuuuuper light/almost white color. This wall continued into the kitchen, so I opted to keep the top the same color so I wouldn’t have to paint all the walls, and just paint the bottom gray for more of a contrast.
Fast forward almost 1.5 years, and we are finally getting around to having the interior of our house painted! We chose a gorgeous light gray color for most of the house. The problem was… it leans more to the taupe side of gray, while the board and batten is more of a gray-gray. The top and bottom wouldn’t look right.
So, while the painters were here, I asked if they could paint the board and batten with white trim paint… and they did!
I put my thing down flipped it and reversed it. (Anyone else signing that Missy song now??) I kept singing that in my head all night. 🤪
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Well, guys… I have been busy over here, and unfortunately, not with fun projects to blog about! So my blogs have been few and far between lately.
This isn’t the most exciting post, but I did something this summer that I’ve wanted to do ever since we got this furniture! It was my husband’s childhood furniture, and we moved it to our house about 10 years ago. It’s that light/medium oak wood color, and it never seemed to go with any of our room colors.
BeforeBeforeThis is from 3 years ago, but you can see the bed and the night stand.
The furniture has been in my son’s room ever since he got out of his crib. My son apparently took out both his artistic talents and his aggression on his furniture… there were a lot of pictures and writing, as well as scratches (like he took a pen and went back and forth over a section over and over). 😉
So, I’ve been wanting to paint this furniture mostly to change up the color, but also to cover up his artwork!
I did have to photograph this one. It’s my name with a heart. ❤️
Nothing crazy happened with this change… I used my go-to Rustoleum Chalk paint in Country Gray. I used polyurethane on top of the paint to protect it. I used a navy spray paint to paint the knobs navy blue.
I painted the dresser with a mirror, the night table, and his headboard. Here’s how it looks now!
So much fresher and clean looking! I’m so glad I finally made this change.
There was one more wooden sign that was in my son’s room that screamed “don’t get rid of me!”. It was a nice, circular wooden sign that was designed to look like a baseball. It’s almost 3 feet in diameter, so it’s a great size! I envisioned turning it into a farmhouse-ish sign for my entry foyer.
Before I did a coat of white on the red stripes first.
I started off by painting the sign white… besides the coat I did on the red stripes, it took two coats of white chalk paint. I bought a small (~8 inch diameter) wreath from Hobby Lobby for $5, and cut it so that it was about 18 inches long stretched out.
I drilled a hole in the top center of the sign, and used white pipe cleaner to hold the greenery onto the sign. I used white pins to keep the ends in place. I used some burlap ribbon to tie a bow, and used white pipe cleaner to secure it in the drilled hole, too.
I used my Cricut to cut out “Welcome” and applied them to the sign.
And there you have it! This sign was made out of everything I had on-hand, minus the $5 wreathe. Now it adds a nice touch to my entryway!
When we moved into our house, my son wanted a sports-themed room. In 3 years, he’s gotten over the cute signs I got for him (😢). Instead of just donating them, I decided to try to be creative and change them up!
The first one I did was super easy. I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought I did, but you’ll at least see the before and the after. 🙂
Before
I bought some rustic binder clips from Hobby Lobby- they were 50% off, so I paid $2.50 each. They’re decent-sized, about 3 inches across.
I used the same paint that I used in the office (on the shiplap and the filing cabinet makeover)- it’s called Jack Pine by Benjamin Moore. It took 3 coats over the original sign to fully cover the letter outline.
Once it dried, I used 1-inch screws to attach the binder clips to the sign.
And that was it!! I hung it in the office, and now I have a way to hang “to do” items.
This blog post is a little out of my norm- I prefer to blog about fun and pretty things. 😉 However, my hubby and brother worked on something this weekend that I thought I would document- you never know when this info. might help someone!
Our family has a cabin that’s been around since the 1940s. My grandparents owned it, then my parents, and they all have done a lot of additions and renovations over the years. It’s a great house, but it definitely is a true “cabin”- the humidity keeps the house feeling a bit damp, little creatures are always visiting us, and it’s impossible to keep the dirt and leaves from being tracked in from all the walking around that we do.
The wood siding off the deck on the front of the house is positioned in the direct sunlight, and it takes in all the rain and wind. Because of that, the siding had begun to rot. And, unfortunately, the humidity and creatures I mentioned before have had a much easier entryway into the cabin! Luckily, the rotted wood wasn’t a structural issue, just a cosmetic one, so we came up with a plan.
Stephen said the base of this wood was like mush!
My mom and brother purchased hardieplank siding at Home Depot. It runs about $11 per 12-foot board. Stephen and my brother decided to actually just cover the existing (rotting) wood… some of it was still in decent shape, and they figured it would allow for a little extra protection from the elements, protecting the inside of the house more. If you have this issue and want to take the wood down, you would simply just pry off the existing wood until you have your blank slate.
With hardieplank, you always start at the base of the wall you’re working on. They began with a “starter strip”, which is a ~3 inch-wide strip that they cut to put across the entire bottom of the wall. This strip allows for the boards that will go above it to angle out some. Without this starter strip, the boards would sit flat on the wall and not have the typical angled look. They stripped the hardieplank board down to the 3-inch width using a circular saw.
They made sure to find the studs to nail these into.
To keep the height of the boards the same, they used a stick of wood that was the length of the hardieplank board minus one inch. They sat this wood at the base of the previous board and this stick showed them the height at which to put the next board. The boards overlapped each other by an inch, hence this wooden stick being one inch less than the height of the board. They used a level on each board to make sure they were lined up straight. They nailed the hardieplank boards down their lengths with a nail gun, continuing until they filled the wall. The top piece needed to be cut down a few inches, so they cut that down with a circular saw.
They did this on two sections of the front of the house.
My mom painted the boards the color of the house…
and… it is done! SO much better! This was a super easy fix to a rotting-wood problem.
In our house, we have an open “loft” area that we use for a kids’ area. My kids are probably a little too old for a “playroom”, but it’s where video games, a tv, legos and more are. It is almost always a disaster- this is what it typically looks like:
Stuff everywhere, little organization
One of my goals this summer was to get this room together. I first went through everything and made a Goodwill run to donate what we don’t need.
Then, I ordered some shelves from Target. I got two cube shelves for about $25 each, and I got two table shelves for $18 each.
The hardest part is finding a solid hour with a) nothing else to do and b) some motivation to put all the shelves together. 🙂 It took a few days, but I finally did it!
I painted the dark brown chest that was below the tv with gray chalk paint. I also painted the two table shelves- I would’ve left them white, but I accidentally grabbed off-white 🤪 and had already started putting one together before I noticed. So, gray it was!
Before painting…
I’m still not totally organized, but this system is SO much better than it was before! It’s amazing how some cheap target shelves and lighter paint can make a big difference!
After my first wallpaper experience (and by wallpaper, I’m talking about the peel-and-stick kind, not the official kind), I was sure I wouldn’t do it again. But… Amazon gets me. They have such dang great deals sometimes! I found this cute shiplap peel-and-stick wallpaper for cheap. I checked out the reviews and looked at the pictures people put of their purchases, and decided to go for it!
The back wall in my laundry room was where I envisioned this wallpaper going. We’re going to get all of our interior walls painted soon, but I wanted a little something different for that back wall that’s visible to anyone who walks by.
Before
I ordered 4 rolls of the wallpaper and paid about $24 total. I started in the top left corner of the wall, and worked from left to right, all the way down. I did my best to keep the wallpaper sticking in a straight direction… sometimes it’s easy for the wallpaper to trend on a slight downward slope! This was especially important with the shiplap look, since you don’t want the boards to look slanted.
You also have to try not to let the paper stick to itself! Luckily, if it did, it came apart pretty easily. It was easy to smooth out wrinkles and bubbles as well.
It ended up being really easy. When you ran out of wallpaper, the next roll picked right back up where you left off. It was easy to cut around plugs, etc. I also used an exacto-knife to cut the excess wallpaper on the edges.
I kept going until I was done! I didn’t wallpaper behind the washer and dryer, since no one will see that until we move them one day! This was a cheap and relatively easy (maybe 3 hour) task. I also added a couple of fun laundry signs from hobby lobby!
Are you a fan of the peel-and-stick look? Check out my shiplap wallpaper here at Amazon!
I’ve been doing some furniture “makeovers” lately, and it has been fun! These makeovers are really easy, and fairly cheap, both which make me happy. 😉
Oh, filing cabinets… they are very functional, but not very pretty. I kept seeing cute ideas on Pinterest on how to jazz up a filing cabinet, and I went for it!
Before
I went to the Dollar Tree and purchased four 8×10 picture frames.
I used gorilla glue to attach these frames onto the fronts of each drawer. I used clamps to keep them in place until the glue dried!
Once they were totally on there good, I started painting. I used the same green color (Jack Pine by Benjamin Moore) that I used on the vertical shiplap in the office.
I kept painting- it took 3 coats in total!
I spray painted the handles black.
I screwed the handles back on, did last-minute touch up painting, and polyurethaned the top… and voila!
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I love utilizing cube shelves in my house. I usually get them from Target for about $30-45 each. They’re an inexpensive way to organize really anything!
The only thing about them is that they are pretty basic looking. Normally, I have them in closets, so I don’t really care that much.
My son’s closet
We had a larger, 13-inch squared cube shelf with 9 cubes that we used in our garage to store shoes. I wanted to utilize it in my office, and replace the smaller (11”), darker cube shelf that was currently in my office with it.
Smaller, darker shelf…
Bigger white shelf that we used to hold shoes
I gave the white shelf a good cleaning- between my kids’ shoes, lots of dragged-in dirt, and birds that like to build nests near the shelf, this thing was pretty gross! Luckily, there’s not much that some Clorox wipes can’t help. 🙂
I measured the top (43 inches across) and cut some spare 2x4s into 45-inch lengths. I used two 8-foot 2x4s for this project. It took 4 of these 45″ pieces to cover the top (which is about 14” deep).
I used wood-glue to glue these four down onto the top of the shelf. I used random items to weigh the wood down so it would dry nice and sturdy.
I then stained the wood, using Minwax Provincial. It’s a great medium-dark brown color! I used a rag and rubbed the stain all over the wood, doing 2 coats. I had to spot-clean when I stained the thin sides of the boards, because some stain would get on the white shelves. Luckily… Clorox to the rescue again!
Once the stain dried, I put some matte polyurethane over the stain to help protect the top, since I’ll be putting things on the top of the shelf. The poly helps to protect the wood.
I ordered four pedestal feet from Amazon for $16 total. They didn’t have screws sticking out of them, which I did on purpose. I wanted a flat surface so I could gorilla-glue the feet onto the base.
It was super easy… I flipped the shelf upside down, put the gorilla-glue on the base of each foot, and stuck them into place. I let them sit like this for several hours, to make sure they completely dried. Those suckers were on there good!
We flipped the shelf back over, very carefully, as not to put any extra pressure on the feet. We set the shelf straight down onto the feet, and it sat perfectly!
I ordered some 13×13 black containers from Target to use on this shelf. I am loving the new look!
Check out the before and after:
I feel like these basic cubes are now transformed into something a bit “nicer” for an office!
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Do you like the look of rustic, distressed furniture? I’ve seen a wide-range of distressed furniture out there… some have subtle distress while others have more drastic spots of distress. I’m more of a “subtle distress” girl myself. It’s super easy to do, and I wanted to share what I did on a recent end table we made!
Stephen built a beautiful farmhouse “X” side table, like this one. Since we’ve determined that the stained brown top and white bottom is the most popular look, I went for it… but decided to try something different. Normally, I just paint the base of the table solid white with chalk paint. This time, I started off by staining the entire table brown (FYI: I used Minwax Provincial).
Once the entire table was stained and dry, I went back and painted the base white, on top of the brown. I ended up doing 3 coats over the stain. (By the way, if you need white chalk paint, my favorite paint is only $10.88 on Amazon right now! Hurry!)
Once the chalk paint was dry, I used a sanding sponge (like this) and sanded along all of the edges of the tables. It doesn’t take much pressure to do this- you start rubbing the sponge along the edge until you see some brown. It’s up to you to how much brown you want to have come through. I like the look of random distress, not matchy-matchy distress.
I will say that chalk paint, when sanded, leaves a lot of chalk dust. (Remember in elementary school when you’d bang two chalkboard erasers together?? Am I showing my age here? 😉 ) I would recommend putting a blanket or some kind of surface protector that you can throw away or shake off afterwards!
That is it!! The importance of staining the entire table ahead of time is so that the darker brown comes out from beneath the white (instead of a very light, natural wood color). If you like a more drastic distressed look, you can take sharper tools to anywhere on the table and carefully scrape some paint off. Or use a finer piece of sandpaper!
Do you prefer the solid look? Or do you feel like distress adds a little something extra?
