The Fabric Floozie

Quick, as soon as you are done reading this blog post run, don’t walk, to your nearest Hobby Lobby. Well, actually not your nearest. Go to the nearest BIG Hobby Lobby near you. I have a HL near me and it’s small and cramped and doesn’t seem as well stocked as the one by B’s preschool. So I went to that one today for some jars for my kitchen and ended up leaving with a cute piece of decor for my back yard.

They have all of their Garden Decor on sale for 80% off. That’s right. 80%. You can say it… I sure did. “HOLY CRAP! That’s a big discount! ”

This location had 2 rows full of 80% clearance items, which included yard signs, welcome signs, wall hangings, iron decor and more.

I found some adorable little gardening tools that looked all rusted and vintage for $1.40 each. I snagged one of each style and went over to where they have hooks and knobs. I found a 3 hook panel that had gardening designs on it, and hung the tools from each hook. Perfect! All the hooks/knobs/etc were also 50% off, making it only $6.49!

So my entire decor piece for on my back wall was $10.69 + tax. Not too shabby!

(Side note: Glassware was on sale for 50% off too, so I snagged several airtight canisters for my kitchen at only $2.24 each.)

Hello everyone!

I’m back from Vacation. It was a 2 week trek back home (up north) for my best friends wedding. YAY! We also saw lots of family and had a great time, but it really put a halt to all the projects we were working on.

So today we dove back in head first on finding great deals to help us improve our home.

And by the way, I found one heck of a deal that I didn’t get a blog about before we left town… I’ll be sure to share that one with you soon enough though. Just a hint? It’s a $2,000.00 deal. No joke.

But today my deal is a $70 deal.

We went to Lowe’s tonight to get some cement board screws to hang up some outdoor decor I purchased (also a deal, but will post about that tomorrow) and while there we saw a rolling rack with light fixtures that were clearanced. I found what appeared to be a display model of the Mitchell Vanity Mirror. It was in great shape! I told my husband that it would be perfect in our downstairs half bathroom which is very plain and booooooring right now.

In this boooooring half bathroom we have a totally basic frameless mirror, a pedistal sink, and one of these fugly temporary lights

Not very stylin, huh? So we snatched that pretty little light up and headed right home to install her!

Here are my horribly blurry, not color corrected quick photos I took after dark. LOL

Not a bad change for 18 beans huh?

Tell me about the best deal you’ve found recently for our home or crafting!

If you’re my husband, you can build an entire tool bench with $23.00. Including tax.

Yup, that’s right. He’s the man! I’m a pretty creative lady myself, but dude has impressed me this week.

This tool bench is ALL GREEN, ALL THE TIME. Every single piece of wood in this piece was salvaged lumber from another project. How great is that? No extra waste. No extra expense. The $23.00 was the cost of 2 casters, 8 bolts (for the casters) and a box of screws. We are going to paint it to get all the wood uniform, but we are waiting until another weekend to tackle that. In the meantime, my hubby has his first tool bench

You’ve all probably seen Lily’s room in all of it’s pink and bead-boarded glory, but most of you haven’t seen Brendan’s space-themed bedroom.

For starters, Brendan is nearly 5 years old, and is obsessed with all things space and astronaut. When I say obsessed, I mean OBSESSED.  He was an astronaut for Halloween. His chicken nuggets are rocket ships blasting off. In fact, he’ll pretend ANYTHING he can get his hands on is a rocket ship… from toilet paper rolls to stacks of Legos, to spools to thread, to Tinkerbell dolls.

So when we were ready to do his room, the theme was a no brainer.

We started with a small-ish and very plain bedroom

To help you get an idea of room size, this is what the previous owners had in this room:

First things first, I knew Brendan needed a chalkboard wall. I also knew that chalk board paint is significantly more expensive than regular black paint, so I taped off the wall about 3.5 feet up and painted the bottom half chalkboard and the top half black

If you decide to paint using chalkboard paint, be sure to follow the curing directions to a T.

I also knew I wanted the top half of the wall to have some sort of space theme to it. At the time, Brendan was *really* into space ships and blasting everything off, counting backwards. So I googled rocket ships til I found one I was confident I could replicate.

Then I headed into his room with red paint and a tiny brush

Once the chalkboard paint was dry, I used 2 1×2s and painted them red, then attached them similar to chair rail over my tape line. This separated the two types of paints and well as provided a resting place for the chalk.

I had previously contacted Samantha of Goin’ Vinyl to place an order for the numbers “1″ through “10″ and the word “Blast Off!”

I had purchased coordinating bedding from Ikea on the cheap, and purchased matching colored fabric from Joann’s to recover some blue pleather ottomans i’d had for work.

While at Joann’s, Brendan spotted some space themed fabric which I knew he needed a pillow out of

And we hung the ikea circular toy net in red, and an ikea angled bookshelf in red

So here was his room at that point

This week, however, we made some changes.

After we added/moved some stuff:

For starters, let me address some of the space decor in the room.

The space stickies above the window are from Dollar Tree. Santa put them in Brendan’s stocking
The wooden space shapes above his bed are prepainted from Hobby Lobby.
The space patches on Brendan’s wall by the door are from TheSpaceStore.com
The globe is from Toys R Us.
The telescope is from Toys R us and I DO NOT recommend it.
The astronaut bear on the bed is from Hard Rock Cafe – Houston.
The letter B was purchased at a Burlington 5 years ago when I was pregnant with B by a friend of mine. I painted it to match his growth chart….

Which brings us to the growth chart itself

I, of course, made it the same way I made Lily’s. You can see my tutorial here.

The back of it was painted with leftover black paint from his wall (the top half). The rest was painted with paint pens from Hobby Lobby, excluding the earth which was painted with a brush using paint I had on hand. I recommend splurging on the paint pens (about $3.00 per pen) as it will make your life SO much easier, and it will give you a much smoother, more even layer of paint.

I do have more vinyl on the way for some canvas like panels to go over his dresser, and we do plan to eventually re-finish his dresser black. But that’ll be a while

So that’s Brendan’s room. Now you’ve seen both
What is your favorite room you’ve decorated recently? Do you have a bathroom that you’d love to hang out in? Or is the office your calm space? Include a link if you can

I guess about 2 weeks ago, my husband headed out to Vegas on a work trip. I was really upset at first because as much as I hate to admit it, my husband and I are a little codependent.

Okay, fine. I’m a little codependent. He’d probably fare just fine without me (although, he is visibly worn down and relieved every time the kids and I come back from a vacation without him), but I always get very upset and lonely when he’s gone.

With 2 kids to worry about, a house to prepare and a birthday party to do final planning for, I didn’t have time to be lonely. You see, my husband was flying home on Friday night at 11pm. At exactly the same time his mother was flying into town for our daughters birthday. So when he got home, he’d have his Mom with him. Which meant ALL the cleaning/organizing was left up to me, to be done before his arrival home. On top of that, on Saturday morning, our home would welcome a dozen family and friends to celebrate Lily’s 2nd birthday. Yikes. So much to do!

Along with the normal “clean bathrooms, vacuum, mop floors” to-do list that is inevitable when you have a get together at your house, I decided to give myself a few fun jobs to do. Things I’d WANT to accomplish, but also really needed to be done.

One of those jobs was to redo the kids bathroom. Their bathroom is a nice sized room for a secondary bathroom, and includes a tub/shower and single sink. It’s nothing amazing, but it is roomy and it had potential if we could just pull it from the clutches of the builder basics that held it hostage. Beige walls. Plain cupboards and counter tops. Big cheap mirror and ugly light fixture. Don’t get me started on the brass doorknobs (those will be the death of me in this house).

So I headed to Lowe’s, armed only with a shower curtain I already had on hand for that room, and 2 screaming children.  I picked out a color by Olympia called “Turquoise Mist” and grabbed a new pack of roller heads. On the way  home, my 2 year old informed me that not only am I mean, but I’m “not da boss”. Can you say “nap time”?

So we headed home, I tucked the kids into bed for naps, and I tackled the bathroom.

After painting all the walls turquoise (half of a $24 gallon), I rehung the shower curtain and liner (Curtain: Free from a friend who didn’t need it anymore. Liner: Already had on hand, from Ikea $3.99. Rings: Already had on hand, from Home Depot. $2.96).

I also applied some fun Vinyl I’d picked up at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale.  It went up okay, but nothing compared to the easy applications I’ve gotten from Samantha at Goin’ Vinyl (BTW, if you place an order with Samantha, tell her you heard about her through TFF).

Hit up the towel closet and picked out a mixture of bright towel colors that I had from my college days. LOL

Then I grabbed a green plastic bucket I got years ago filled as a gift basket, cleaned it all out and filled it with some basics for our house guests.

And Ta Da! The bathroom is done!

Overall, it cost me $34.00 to redo the bathroom, and I still have paint left over for other projects. Not too shabby The hubby was very impressed.

Thanks for following along!!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to enter this weeks giveaway! CLICK HERE to read all about it.

Last week my husband went out of town for several days, and I got a wild hair to make a toilet paper holder while he was gone. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know if it was a serious lack of anything better to do with my time (could that possible be it?), or maybe my inability to focus on projects I SHOULD be doing, when there are projects I COULD be doing… or it possibly could have been the anxiety i feel when I’m digging through stacks of toilet paper under the sink in any of the 3 bathrooms we have in this house. Ugh. Yeah, it was probably one of those things…

Anyways, this toilet paper holder can also be used to hold paper towels if you’d like to make something fun that matches your home decor.

My plan started out at Home Depot which, while functional, did not produce something as pretty as I’d hoped for. Nor was it easy finding what I wanted.

First I purchased a dowel to use as the actual holder. The dowel I purchased was 1″ in diameter (perfect size) and 3 feet in length (also perfect size).

I then purchase a 1×6 piece of wood, and utilized some 1″ wood trim I’d had left over from a recent project.

**see below for how to make this without 1×6 and trim**

First, cut a square off the 1×6. My husband says that a 1×6 is actually 5.5″ wide, so in that case, make it a 5.5″x5.5″ square.

Using a Miter Saw, cut trim that will fit around all the edges (this is just for looks). Using a nailgun, attach the trim pieces along all 4 sides.

Cut the dowel to a 12″ length (I cut mine into 3rds so I could make 3 of them).

Paint dowel and trimmed square.

Using coordinating scrapbooking paper and mod-podge, cover the top of the base and the entire dowel with paper. Consider spraying with Rustoleum Gloss Coat when it’s dry, to stop any tackiness the mod-podge might have. Using a 2″ (or longer) screw, and the coordinating drill bit, drill a hole into the center of your base and into the center of the dowel bottom. Run screw up through the base from underneath and into the dowel. Tighten down. I predrilled a little too much on mine, and it was still turning and not quite getting tight. If you have this probablem, a dab of wood glue onto the threads of the screw and onto the bottom of the dowel will help.

Apply no-slip sticky furniture pads to the bottom of the base to keep it from getting dinged up, or dinging anything else up.

All done! Just slip on some TP or Paper Towels and enjoy the decorative holder you just made for under $5.

Lemmi tell ya, that’s HARD. TO. FIND.

* as a side note, if you care to bypass the wood cutting, just hit up your local Hobby Lobby and go to the wood section. You can get decorative circles or squares (with pretty curved edges) for under $1.50 each. I went and got 2 to use on my next 2 I’ll be making, b/c the trim work was more than I cared to do for something so small

And totally off topic, and a little personal, but I’d like to ask my readers to say a little prayer for my Brother in Law as he prepares for a 6 months deployment.

After our minor derailment during phase 1 (weather related) the dresser is finally complete. After the last post about it, all I did was clear coat the rest (What I could given how cold it was), attach hardware, pull the beast up a flight of stairs (I still think I got the hard part of that job, babe. I’m just sayin….) and insert the drawers. Decor on it is temporary (the vase is borrowed from my dining room) until I find what I have in mind for on top of it.

So without further ado, here is the before

And here is the lovely after:

Watch the transformation process HERE.

A friend of mine posted recently about the decorative letters she made for her 2 boys, using the tutorial I’ve posted. Check out her blog post below.

So, I have this friend, her name is Jackie. I’ve never actually met her in person, but we met through the mommy board we both joined before we had our first children. The funny thing is we both had our boys on the same day of the same year, and actually just hours apart! Anyway, I ended up buying my first DSLR from her, and learning alot about photography from her. She’s a kind person who’s always been willing to help anyone, really. So anyway, she’s amazingly crafty. She repurposes things, sews, paints, you name it, she does it. We don’t get to talk much anymore as we are both so busy, but I do keep up with her on her awesome blog. Yeah, you’ll want to bookmark it, so just do it now! I”ve been wanting to do the boys letters for their names for the walls for quite some time, and she has an awesome tutorial on there for the letters! She has a lot of awesome tutorials for lots of things I want to do. I must get a sewing machine, and SOON!

SO..back to the letters.. I bought some inexpensive wood letters from Hobby Lobby, and painted them white. When they were dry, (and actually like over a month later because I had holidays in the middle of doing this) I traced out the letters onto scrapbook paper, and outlined 1/8 of an inch from the edge just like Jackie shows in her tutorial.

Can you see I had a little helper?

Then I put a layer of mod podge on the letters and carefully put the paper on top of the letters, and tried my best to keep them smooth and without bubbles! After they dried, I put a layer of mod podge on the top, and voila! They are done!

Now, I just have to add brackets to the back so I can hang them! Then I can finally show the before and afters of the boys room since we moved here! So look forward to that.

You can look here to see the amazing transformation she did in her little girls room! Thanks for the inspiration, Jackie!

As you all saw a few weeks ago, we picked up a really cool, ornate dresser on Craigslist.
It was a steal and I knew it would be beautiful in our Master Bedroom.

The first step in restoring this beast was to remove all the drawers, and then all the hardware

Since the back panel of the dresser was damaged, we tore that off too, prying out all the old rusted staples.

The hardware was looking less than awesome, but the style was imperative to the design of the dresser. So I knew I had to work with what I had

Using equal parts White flour, vinegar, and salt, I made a paste, scrubbed the hardware, and let it set for over an hour.

Once you rinse it all off, the tarnish should wipe away as well.

After that it was time to start on the wood. I had to sand/buff out any rough areas on the drawer fronts to make them smooth, and ready for primer.

As always, my primer of choice in Zinsser Primer’s Cover Stain as it works on glossy surfaces. You can purchase it at The Home Depot.
First coat went on nice and easy

2nd Coat as well.

Now it was time to tackle the issue of ugly hardware. Brass goes with… well… NOTHING in my house. So I knew it needed a facelift.
I picked up one can of Rustoleum’s Metallic Spray Paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze and 2 cans of Rustoleum’s Ultra Cover Clear Gloss (Since I needed it for the dresser too) and went to work. Ladies… Don’t ever think these projects are too big to tackle, b/c if you find the right product that works, it’s a breeze.
Just give the hardware a few very light coats of paint and you’re good to go until it’s dry.

Since the hardware had to dry, it was time to start prepping the dresser body for priming. It started with tearing off the trim (which was missing a side piece)

and finished with sanding down any rough/scratched areas on the dresser body. Not realistically, this is a refinished piece of furniture… it’s not going to look AS smooth as a brand new piece of furniture unless you are able/willing to take the time and energy to sand the entire thing down to it’s bare bones. And even then, this piece probably wouldn’t have looked brand new b/c it was covered in a laminate veneer.
But since I like the look of a vintage, refinished piece of furniture, I’m okay with that.

Priming time

Then I did 2-3 coats of Rustoleum’s UltraCover2X White Spraypaint in Semi Gloss on the drawers to get them good and even, followed by 2 coats of clear

I then laid out the hardware on a clean surface and covered them with 2 light coats of Clear.

Look at those beauties

In an effort to keep costs and material waste down, we went through our stack of scrap materials. We found some previously used Luan from a booth I built for a Expo I’d participated in a few years back. One side is painted dark grey, the other a cream color. We opted for putting the cream side out (since the drawers will block the dark grey) and chose not to paint it since it won’t be seen anyways.

We purchased a few feet of a rectangular trim to place where the old trim was. Once we started cutting, we decided we liked the look of the bare sides better, and decided to only trim out the front of the dresser.

We topped that trim with another piece with a rounded face. We’d wanted a rounded face to begin with, but none of the rounded trims were tall enough to use on their own.

And then it was time for a full coat of white

At this point, the start of an Arctic Freeze heading into Dallas put a damper on our plans. Since our garage is our only workspace, it’s obviously very cold at night in December/January. This wasn’t a problem until it got below freezing and started compromising the finish of the paint I was using. One drawer had to be sanded down and repainted (the broken drawer. The face was sitting on the concrete and the freezing cold seeped up through the concrete floor and into the wood, causing the paint to scale) but that didn’t put too big of a crimp in our plans.
Check back later for Phase 2: The completion!

Well, Hello my pretty…

I’ve been waiting for you…

I have big plans for you.

This is going to be too much fun.

Follow this project on flickr via vintagedresserredo@TheFabricFloozie