The rest of the weekend projects... and lizard girl

There were a few more projects from last weekend that I hadn't taken pictures of yet.

When Erika first moved in with us (earlier this year) I really wanted to try to make her room nice and know that we respected her personal space and needs. Of course, I was on a budget, though. Furniture was all Craigslist or from family and I bought THIS bedding set from Wally World.

The sheets that come with the Bed-in-a-Bag sets are not generally the best quality, so we didn't use those on her bed. I can't let good fabric go to waste though. I knew I wanted to use some blackout lining (bought with a coupon) as she gets a lot of sun in her room. My first attempt turned out pretty stiff because of the lining and didn't really hang nice. That was scrapped. Blog-surfing, I saw this tutorial and loved the design - feminine but not overly flowy - and knew that would work perfect.

The sheets had a wavy gray line on white, so I oriented the sections so the lines were horizontal on top and vertical for the bottom. I think they really turned out very nice. I'm sure the turquoise paint is not her first choice, but it's staying unless she wants to do the repainting.


Yes, the wavy lines on the fabric emphasize that my sewing skills are not perfect, but we tend to not look that close :-) The top section is shirred and is just slightly wider than the window and the bottom section (same width as the top BEFORE shirring) just slightly gathers. This was a LOT of sewing (all those shirring lines basted, then gathered, then sewn to the blackout liner) but I'm really happy with them and think they turned out great.

The curtains were in part for her birthday coming up even though I'd been planning them since she moved in. She's starting a college art program in the fall so I'd been watching Craigslist again to get her a nice drafting table for her birthday. Scored a really nice one for $30 but then she needed a chair too. Making the bench freed up a few of our mismatched dining chairs, so one of them got a makeover with spray paint and the cushion recovered. In my book - another successful project.

And then last but not least... Blake's been wanting some kind of chair or stool for his desk in his room. We got bunkbeds a few years ago when I was pregnant with Dean (knew they'd come in handy with 2 boys) and there's a built in desk at one end. Again, super tight budget... so one day driving to work there was a little stool sitting at the curb in the neighborhood. Yes, it was trash day but I'm sure a piece of furniture as fine as this would not be considered trash. I had to rescue it!!!

I took it apart, recovered the top and added lots of extra padding (it was really flat) and used this beautiful fleece that my Momma sent me - Thanks Mom! Red is one of Blake's favorite colors, so I painted the base deep red and the lovely fabric tied in both the red base and his blue walls. Excuse the mess under the desk... he's a boy.

He loved it! Yay! Another success.

And just for laughs.... here's Paige with a lizard she caught... and I guess she's doing a lizard impression?? Love love love those freckles :-)

All of these projects have been great! I find I actually have more energy when I'm trying to keep myself busy and motivated instead of just being a couch potato. I need to figure out the next project... and the next one after that. There's a second bench waiting to be built and then I'd really like to start on a low-cost Master Bedroom makeover. We've done so little with it since we moved in... it's the most neglected room in the house.

Another Furniture Re-Do

We were planning to move Paige into my recently-vacated Mother-in-Law's bedroom. We cleared out the room and painted it the same Vienna Turquoise that was in her existing room. She would move to this room (bigger closet and she loves the window seat) and we'd get Dean settled into her old room. Well... one major 'mistake' on her part later and she no longer gets the priviledge of changing rooms. She can stay where she is and we'll move Dean into this room.


During all of this, we discovered that both her large desk and large dresser will not fit well into the layout of this room - there's one small wall between the door and the closet and neither her bed, dresser or desk would fit there - meaning all three of those large items would have to crowd onto one side of the room.


I was on the hunt for a more narrow dresser and found this one on Craigslist:



It wasn't very pretty, but I liked the 'girly' lines to the top edge and the legs. So I removed the hardware, sanded and painted a nice chocolate brown (so hip with the turquoise these days!) I headed out after the painting was all done to get new hardware (just planned to use the existing holes) only to discover that the old hardware was a very non-standard size (2" hole spacing). I could not find any new handles at all to fit. Mark suggested I fill and sand the existing holes, but that would mean repainting AGAIN and I just wasn't up for that.



So I picked up some flat wooden plaques from the craft store, painted the edges brown and ModPodged some pretty decorative paper to them and used those to cover up the holes. Drilled some new holes and found some knobs I already had from an old dresser (just needed to spray paint them) and it was done!



So it's up in the new room (now Dean's room) and isn't very masculine... but maybe Paige will inherit it some day...


I've linked this over at The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday Linky Party and The Shabby Chic Cottage's Trasformation Thursday! Go check out some of the amazing projects!