Blog Archives
Our House: DIY a Folding Screen… twice!
Several years ago I hastily made a folding screen… but I just re-did it:
The folding screen is in the family room at ‘Our House’ which I’ve been sharing with you how I’ve been re-doing that space a little bit.
Here’s how I re-did the screen: click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: Lower Level Hallway Walls Get a DIY Faux Leather Treatment
In the hallway of our lower level, I wanted to create some interest on the walls without adding pattern.
My answer was this:
This shows the wall where the DIY vintage looking sign hangs. See how the wall is a wrinkled leather finish? Well, it’s not leather, it’s click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: Re-Doing the Family Room… One Section (al) at a Time!
Over the past few months, I’ve been working away at re-doing the family room. Previously, it was a colorful, cottage style space, with lots of color contrast…
Where the walls were green on the far right side of the space, I painted them click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: Family Room Game Table Re-Do
So last time I showed you how I did the game chairs that go with this game table… I bought the set from Craigslist, purposely looking for a ‘project’ set, so that I could inject my own personality into it…
(and, like I told you with the chairs, darnit, I totally forgot to take a before picture of the set, but it was a 1980’s golden oak with brown vinyl seats)
Let’s pick it up from where I left off with the chair project…
The chairs I painted black, applied oval numbers in white and black and the seats are recovered in a dark brown and cream colored houndstooth fabric. (so, I just wrote that really fast, but the actual decision making wasn’t nearly so quick… once I had the chairs done though, I needed to figure out how I was going to paint the table to ‘pull’ it all together, and look like a set… it took me a little bit of creative thinking…)
I knew I wanted the top to be something special, click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: Family Room Game Chairs Re-Do
This winter I decided it was time to do a major overhaul to the lower level family room at ‘Our House’.
Part of that change was completely flipping around, from one side of the room to the other, the TV viewing area, which now left ½ of the room basically empty. In that empty part, I had plans for a game table and chairs, (and will be installing a wet-bar soon too… future posting alert!)
When I started shopping for game tables, I decided I liked the vintage ones better, so I focused my shopping on Craigslist…
The chairs needed to have casters for easy moving on the carpet. I wanted something that was a project, so I could inject my own personality into the finished look. And I didn’t want anything that was too big… or too small… but just the right size… I guess it was kind of like Goldilocks looking for a game table set… But I found it on Craigslist and it was perfect. After a treacherous drive to the other side of the cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) on what started out to be good roads, but quickly turned bad, we scored this set: click here to read the rest of the story…
Ugly Frame and Canvas Painting Transformed into Vintage Bike Advertising
I had this ugly painting hanging in my storage room not because I thought it looked good there, but because I’ve been holding onto it to make something of it… sometime… well I’m glad to say that after, oh about 5 or 6 years, that time has come!
I have been working on transforming the family room in the lower level of ‘Our House’ lately, and needed some art, so I took that framed canvas and re-made it into something.
Isn’t the painting in the ‘before’ so ugly? It looks like a big tree in the background crossed with a mushroom cloud and exploded on the canvas… I have no idea where the artist was going with that, but as you can see on the right, I drastically changed the way it looked.
Here’s how I did it: click here to read the rest of the story…
Little Brick Cottage: Radiators Before & After
In “The Little Brick Cottage” we have a boiler with old radiators for the heat source. They work great, but when we bought the cottage they looked a little homely. The two bedroom ones were each painted the same color as the walls, so that would be one was a bright orange and one was a pale lavender. The rest of the rads in the main rooms of the house were painted a dark brown. All the radiators had chipped up paint and all-over dingy-ness, so I knew I’d be painting them.
Here are some before and after pics of the back bedroom radiator…To cover the orange you see on the left took 3 coats of white paint and a lot of patience getting as far in the ‘fins’ of the radiator as I could.
I did the same white finish in the other bedroom, but when it came to big radiators in the living room, dining room and kitchen, I wondered if they might actually look better in a Read on…
Our House, Master Bathroom: The Whole Picture, Chapter 4
Continuing with the master bedroom tour in “Our House”, (now, back at the entrance from the master bedroom door) upon entering the bathroom from the bedroom, to your left is this stepback linen cupboard.
It is directly across the room from my vanity. Previously, this was basically the same spot for Read on…
