Projects Complete!!

As many of you know, Daniel and I have been working diligently on sprucing up the downstairs portion of our house. In recent weeks we have completely repainted the formal living room, the dining room/office, the hallway and the kitchen. It's now all one color which makes the downstairs feel much larger and the flow is much better. The lighter color feels so clean and crisp. In addition to repainting, we re-purposed the dining room into an office/sitting room in order to free up more space in the bonus room for Claire's play area. We also did some extensive redecorating courtesy of IKEA, Hobby Lobby, and TJ Maxx!! Lastly, we took on the project of refinishing a piece of furniture that I bought on Craig's List for $20. Daniel actually did most of it and he really did an amazing job. I'm so happy with the way it turned out. I'm so thankful to have a husband who deals with all of my design ideas and my need to redecorate on a frequent basis. He reels me in when I'm being ridiculous but also helps me bring my ideas to fruition. Here are some before and after pictures of the furniture project.

To give you some background on the Craig's List find, this used to be cabinets in an old 1940's house. It was actually cabinets on top of cabinets and when the couple took them off the wall, they cut through the bottom three cabinets and took those doors off in order to use it as a buffet. However, the top was completely unfinished as you can see, and the legs weren't really intended to be used as legs. Here is what it looked like when we bought it.

So, we decided to saw off the legs and take the back piece of wood off. As you can see, the wood was damaged in the back.



Here is a picture of Daniel sanding down the area where he cut off the legs.



We then had to add a new piece to the bottom and we also used wood to frame out the sides in order to hide some of the damaged wood.



We also bought a nice piece of hard wood to put on the top and also some molding to finish it off.



Framing out the sides of the furniture really helped.




After some intense sanding by Daniel, it was finally time to prime and paint.



We also added new legs to make it look brand new!



We had a hard time deciding on new hardware but I'm so glad we went with the black.



Just a few baskets from Target make our $20 find look great!!





Here a some more pictures of the rest of the house that got a make-over as well.





We took down our blinds and added bamboo roman shades which really lightens the room.








We re-purposed the dining room a few months back but we have completely rearranged the furniture, replaced the chandelier with a regular light to make it look less like a dining room, and redecorated.



We plan on taking these blinds down as well and doing the same window treatment here that we did on both windows in the living room.



We also got Claire some great shelving from IKEA. I love how the bins in the shelves slide in and out so you can't see the junk inside.



This table and chairs and the paper dispenser is also an IKEA buy. She loves to pull the paper out and color.



The pendant light that we hung helps to separate Claire's space from the rest of the living room.






The canisters hold all of her crayons and they are currently out of her reach with is a must.