Before/After {The Guest Bedroom}

so i mentioned on Friday that we were expecting company this past weekend and the bedroom they were going to be staying in looked like this~

This is the bedroom that no one ever sees…until now…

the one where the door is ALWAYS shut…

the one where we tend to DUMP…

the plan was to freshen up the room using only things i had around the house.  i sort of started to collect flower still life paintings.  some i’ve bought at the dollar store just to fill the walls when we first bought our house, while others were painted by my Grandma. i’ve always wanted to do a big collage wall of them but wasn’t sure i could live with it and look at it every day.  i thought this room might be a good place to try it since it’s not a room we visit everyday.

this is the after~

the quilters hoops were taken out of little man’s room.  i’m trying to transition his room to a big boy room so these were definitely going to have to go.  nothing say’s “i’m a big boy now” like grandma’s quilters hoops!

and have i mentioned how much i miss my lens to my DSLR? I have? oh sorry…well i miss my lens! these pictures are just terrible…

ok. back on track. here’s more of the room~

This is the display of odds and ends on a cabinet

and that’s it!  one of these day’s i’d like to paint the room and do a few other things like replace the little light fixture. but it will just have to get added to the long list of other things that need to get done.

has anyone else tackled a before and after using only things you had on hand?  please share, i’d love to see!

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The Kitchen Island {before and after}

I hope you all like before and afters, I know I do, and you’ll be seeing them for a few weeks! We recently went under a renovation. We opened up our kitchen, added hardwood floors through out the main level, and updated the 1/2 bathroom. Luckily, it only took 3 weeks but it was the LONGEST 3 weeks of my life! Anyway, I’ll be sharing the before and afters over the next few weeks as I get rid of the dust bunnies get the pictures ready.

I found our kitchen island in a consignment shop. We knew we wanted something unique, something that looked more like a piece of furniture rather than a typical kitchen island. We really weren’t too picky other than the piece needed to fit our space. I was open to painting the island or leaving it as is.  I decided to paint this piece for several reasons.  The finish wasn’t in that good of condition in some areas and in other areas it had some nice wear to it that i thought would show nicely once the piece was painted.

I believe this piece used to be a sideboard in another life. The size was perfect and at 50% off $300 was a steal! After inspection, I new it would need a little bit of work. One of the doors was falling off it’s hinge, and the two top drawers were sticking. I knew these could easily be fixed, my dad is a woodworker and would be able to help me. So I asked the manager if she could knock off more on the price since it needed a little work. To my surprise, she took and additional 25% off!!!!! That’s right. My new kitchen island only cost me $112.

After getting it home, my dad came to take a look at it and realized it might need a little more work then I had originally thought. He reattached everything as well as reinforced the legs, replaced the bottom, evened out the drawers for a smoother glide, and rebuilt the actually slides the drawers slide on. It didn’t cost me anything extra (yeah!) since he had all the materials on hand in his workshop, but he basically rebuilt the hole piece. He spent slot of time on it and I owe him big. So a big THANK YOU goes out to him. Oh wait. He doesn’t read my blog. I guess I’ll have to thank him some other way!

The After~

I painted the island a light shade of green but didn’t like it once it was finished, so I painted it a dark gray instead and then used several different methods of antiquing the piece to achieve the look. I decided to leave the knobs the original wood to help tie it into the island top.  All that’s left to do is add a new light fixture and have it centered over the island.

A friend made that gorgeous butcher block top! I couldn’t be happier with it.

We added the bead board panel to the back and painted it the same gray and to finish the whole thing we added the large corbels.

I stained them with a cherry stain and made sure to get more stain in the carved parts to help them stand out.

now all we need are bar stools to finish it completely.  I’m loving these but at that price i’ll have to think of something else…hmmm…do i smell a DIY coming????

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have a great day!

sarah

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