I'm a sewing..MACHINE!

CHECK THIS OUT!!! I now have my very own super cool totally awesome state-of-the-art brand new sewing machine (thanks to my one and only <3 <3 <3)!!!

Here's me...unwrapping my Christmas present waaaayyyy toooo early! I am such a child when it comes to Christmas...toatlly and completely unable accept the fact that I have to wait until Christmas day to open my presents. Lucky for me, Craig understands and accepts my "Christmas disease" and lets me unwrap my goodies early! LOL

YES, I really am this excited!



If you'd like to try to understand why I'm so excited about a sewing machine click here and view the product demo!

Kitchen Banquette

Building this banquette was so much fun. Honestly, I love this stuff!

 

It started with the idea...

We had a pub table in our kitchen with two chairs.

 

 

It was a nice setup, but I got to thinking that it would be a good idea to have seating for more than jus two people. A banquette came to mind! It really was the perfect idea, didn't think it would be difficult to build either. This would seat more people and also add some much needed storage space!

 

The first step was to take some measurements and to draw up plans.

Since this banquette is in the shape of an "L", we constructed two boxes. The boxes were built using 3/4" birch plywood. This is a diagram of the cuts we needed to make.

 

Many thanks to the nice man at Lowe's who made all these cuts for us!

 

We constructed both boxes in less than two hours. Piece of cake! 

Now we needed to go back to Lowe's for hinges and a sheet of MDF. It is very important to hold off on cutting the lids until the boxes are built!! I used MDF for the lids because it sands up really nice (and easily too) and I also wanted the MDF to trim out the boxes...this really added to the finished product! So, we attached the lids and all the trim pieces, and that was it...finished our banquette in one day!

 

Did I say that was it? Just kidding, we're not done yet...

 

The next step was to sand...and sand...and sand...and then sand some more lol! I spent hooouuurrrs sanding this bench, but in the end it was worth it! Thank goodness for my orbital sander, what a great tool! A summary of what I did: rounded the edges on the lid, applied wood putty to all the seams (so they all disappeared, seamless look is awesome), then sanded the seams, sanded the whole bench with 80 grit then 150 then 220. It looked amazing after all that hard work but one more thing had to be done to the banquette...paint. I primed the bench, sanded with 220 grit and then put two coats of high gloss white paint on it. NOW we're done!

 

 

Again, I had so much fun building this banquette...I think Craig might have enjoyed it as well! :)

 

For anyone who would like to build their own banquette, here is a link to the site with detailed construction instructions.

Photo Wall

I've finally moved on from decorating the living room/kitchen...to the home office. I've been thinking about what I should do for a while now, mostly because I really didn't have a clue lol. This photo wall is pretty much a combination of a bunch of ideas that have been rolling around in my head for a while now (they just didn't work in the spaces I was working with previously)...but all came together perfectly here.

I was at Hobby Lobby picking up the gazelle (on the right wall, I spray painted it white...I love these animal heads that are so in now...I just had to have one. Only $12.50 as compared to around $100 on the modern decorating sites!) and started thinking about what I was going to do on the wall around it. So, I've been wanting to do the fabric thing (on a wall somewhere in the house) and this turned out to be the perfect opportunity. I ended up getting yellow and grey, chevron patterned fabric. So, the plan was... mount the gazelle, make and hang all different sized fabric boards and hang different sized picture frames.

First thing was to create a template. I measured the area of the walls I'd be working with and "made" the walls in an excel doc. I found the center of each wall (for the gazelle and the plate) and went from there. Here's how I mapped out the placement of each object.

Left Wall

 Right Wall

 

 The white boxes are the frames, light grey for the centerpieces, yellow and dark grey for the fabric boards.

I cut plywood (we used as our countertops last year before we had the granite installed lol) for the fabric wall boards, in different shapes and sizes.

 

I painted each board white so nothing would show through the fabric. 

 



I then covered each board with fabric, securing it with staples. I put the fabric on the horizontal shapes so the pattern went vertical and vice versa fot the vertical shapes. Next was to place sawtooth hangers on the back of each fabric board for hanging.

The picture frames were purchased at Ikea. I also found a cool bamboo plate, while browsing Ikea's website, that I thought would be perfect for the centerpiece for the left wall.

I forgot to take a picture of the wall before the fabric boards went up but, what I'm trying to show here is that I made "paper frames" and taped them to the wall first. That way I could be sure that the placement of each fabric board would look good and correctly spaced on the wall...which they all did!

Another benefit of the paper templates of the frames is that hanging the frames was much easier. All I had to do was make a mark on the paper where I had to put the nail, hammer the nail in place and remove the paper...made hanging all these frames super easy.

Here's what the walls look like with everything in place. I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out!!! Just have to print pictures for the frames and it will be complete.

 

 

What A Find!

I was out shopping today for...nothing in particular really... just looking for something cool I guess lol. I found this at the salvation army for $3.99!

So, I have no clue what this object's purpose was or is supposed to be, but as soon as I saw it I knew it was meant to be an air plant holder! As you can see, it was black and pretty dinged up. It was a piece of cake to bend the metal back into place and then all it needed was some paint...I went with white spray paint this time.

How cool! All there is to do now is get some more air plants to fill in the empty spaces.
What a find!

Updating Old Furniture

This dresser was outdated, but just a couple easy changes and it's good as new! All I did was paint the drawer
fronts and change the drawer pulls.

Next are some chairs I did. I primed and painted the frame using spraypaint. The spraypaint gave it a nice glossy look. I replaced the old padding on the seat with new, thicker padding and then added some new fabric. Love the way these turned out!



Living Room Makeover

When we moved in the whole house was a smoke tinged beige color...eww. After a lot of cleaning and then priming (every wall in the house) we were finally able to paint. Since the front of the house is very open, we chose the same paint color, a dark grey, for the living room and kitchen. For contrast we painted the molding around the windows and doors bright white (they were originally oak, stained a dingy looking color). The ceiling molding and the ceilings got a coat of bright white as well.

The living room originally didn't have a ceiling light fixture, but thanks to Craig, my jack of all trades, it has an awesome modern fixture now!

We went with black leather for the couches and the chaise lounge (With my two eighty pound hairy dogs, there was no way I was doing any kind of fabric lol).

I bought the rug on sale from rugs-direct.com. I wasn't able to find anything I liked locally and this site has a great selection!

The coffee table is from ikea...it's my fav simply because it's on wheels. Need more room?...Just roll the coffee table over or out of the room lol! The corner table between the couches is another coffee table from ikea. I made new legs for it out of wood dowels so the table would be higher off the ground (A more suitable height for a side table).

I bought the corner box shelves from target. Filled them with cool accents.

My fav thing in the entire room is the awesome metal art on the wall. I got it on eBay and it was done by Brian M. Jones. Search for "metal wall art" and you'll all kinds of beautiful art pieces.

The pillows I ordered from pillowsandpillows.com. Have I mentioned that I love the color blue? You have to check this site out, they have a huge selection of different styles and sizes of pillows.

So how about those modern floating entertainment centers going for about $2000? Ya right lol, when your as DIY savvy as Craig and I you can pull this look off for under $400! I used excel to design the plans (I love excel!) and even all the cuts we needed to have made at Lowe's (What a time and headache saver getting all the cuts done with the huge saw they have!). So, it's constructed from MDF and painted high gloss white. We used wood glue, some dowels and a brad nailer to make each box. The brad nailer was again used to secure the top boxes dividers while small brackets were used for all the shelving sections in the side and lower boxes. With the tv mounted on the wall the whole thing really does look too cool! <3 I'm so happy it turned out this awesome...so happy the living room as a whole turned out so awesome actually!