Did Someone Say Turquoise Door?

I have begun to think that the items on the “To-Do list” will never get scratched off. This is mostly due to me getting side-tracked. 🙂  Such as painting the back door!  But it was so ugly…and yucky…and black. And what you can’t see is the previous paint job was not good. Not good at all.

And since the weather was so nice over the weekend, we had the doors open. Therefore, here was a yucky, black, bad paint job door in my bright and cheery kitchen. So….we painted it!

Mr. taped it off and we primed it. It already looked better just with the primer, don’t you think? (We’re only painting the outside of the door. The inside will stay white to match the trim work.)

 

Two coats of both primer and paint later, and I have a “new-to-me” door in my kitchen! 🙂

And here it is from the outside. I love it!

My Happy Little Buddha Man

Good Monday morning everyone! Hope y’all had a great weekend. We spent all weekend outside, as it was absolutely beautiful here. And for those that don’t know…our here is the Houston area. We totally massacred a couple of  flower beds! They had become overgrown and wooly over the summer, due to this being the first summer in this house and we wanted to see what would come up and then decide what we wanted to keep for next year. The previous owner planted lots, and I mean lots, of evasive plants that took over the entire flower bed if not careful. We hope to finish next weekend and spread the last bit of mulch. I’ll be sure and post pictures when finished.

I also redid one of my little Buddha statues that sit out by the swimming pool. I absolutely love these little statues. They make me smile every time I look at them. When we were in San Francisco last month, we visited a store in Chinatown and they had several Buddha statues and people had left coins all over the statues in the store, which we found interesting. Anyhoo, one of mine was beginning to show some wear and the paint was cracking.

Sooo, I did what any girl who paints just about everything that comes into her house and yard…I painted it. And not just back to it’s original dark color. I painted it a vibrant color, as I LOVE color around me. I painted it Valspar’s Pantone Universe Cabaret.

I think he looks so much better now. And I think he is a perfect match to my Adirondack chair, don’t you think? The only thing is I love him in this new color so much that I’m seriously thinking about bringing him into the house to live! I may just have to buy me a new one to sit out by the pool.

Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend….

…unless they are dark green ceramic tile diamonds! Or maybe they’re suppose to look like an argyle pattern. They’re just not as cute as an argyle sweater or socks! And they sure weren’t cute on my kitchen backsplash. When we were looking at houses, we looked at a couple of the builders houses who built ours and almost every house he built in the 90’s, had this pattern in the kitchen. And for some reason, no one has updated any of them!! We will eventually…as soon as I can decide what I want. Until then, I painted them!

My mom has previously AND successfully painted the ceramic tiles in a bathroom, so I decided if the paint could hold up in a bath/shower area, it surely would hold up on a backsplash. Figuring out what type of paint was the biggest question. I had decided that I wanted to go with a silver/grey color and maybe something with a shimmer to it, So I was off to Hobby Lobby to check out what they had. I had it in my head that I wanted to try some type of leafing, but wasn’t sure if it would stick to ceramic, as I had never used leafing before. This paint stated it would, so home with me it went! I really lucked out in discovering a paint that did the job on the first go-round.

I know a lot of people will tell you that you need to rough up the surface if it’s slick, but I normally don’t. (I like quick and easy makeovers!) I always check first to see how well the paint covers and I go from there. And besides, this is just a temporary fix, right? It did take several coats to cover, but I think part of that was due to it being dark green. This paint adheres great to ceramic, as once it dries it DOESN’T COME OFF! I got a few specks on the white tile and it’s still there! You can’t even scratch it off.

I ended up using a little over two jars of paint. But I used my Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon, so it cost me less than $10 to makeover the tile! As you can see, it looks much better now than it did before. Money well spent!

Funky Little Octopus

I’m trying to finish up the kitchen this week, as my mom and two of her friends will be visiting next week.  It will be the first time for them to see the kitchen in it’s fresh, new look! I still need to paint my kitchen chairs and put a protective wax on my table that I just finished painting.  I’ve bought a new clock and a fish vase from Home Goods, a picture from Bed, Bath & Beyond, and this quirky octopus from Z Gallerie.

It’s cute like this, but I thought it would look so much better with a little color!! I mixed Folk Art Enamels Amethyst Metallic and Magenta together to get this funky color.

Here he is hanging out by the sink in the sun!  What do you think?

Embrace the sink!

The makeovers have begun!  The kitchen is almost finished (minus countertops and a sink which will come later), but the guest bathroom is finished.  Well… not exactly.  The seashell sink is still hanging around!  We plan on replacing the countertop/sink in the bathroom when we install the countertops in the kitchen.  But in the meantime, I absolutely love it!  Or should I say, I love the color turquoise… and anything beachy or coastal.  So really, the seashell sink fits right in.  Therefore, I shall embrace the sink until I no longer can or have to!

      

In case you have forgotten what the bathroom looked like before, here you go.

I know!  Hideousness at its finest, right?

This makeover was really simple and quick.  You see….I just painted over that hideous wallpaper!  The wallpaper in this house was glued on when the house was built in 1993 and it’s still glued on!!  That paper-beast was not going to come off without damage to the sheetrock.  Believe me, I tried!  So, I took the advice of the kitchen expert at Lowe’s and painted over those ugly flowers!!  :0)  I primed and painted the cabinet one day and the walls the next.  I also put cheap, stick-on, vinyl tiles in the bottom of the cabinet under the sink, as there is some type of damage or stains in the bottom of every cabinet in this house.  Mr. replaced the faucet and cabinet hardware, changed out the light switches (all of them in the house are NASTY and are in the process of being changed out),  installed a new paper holder & towel ring, and helped me hang the “new” mirror.  I then hung the picture and yellow, towel holder.

What a difference a little paint can make!

The House was Just Extra!

Since I last posted (six months ago!), Mr. Husband and I have moved from Tulsa to Houston!  He was offered a promotion with his company, but that meant moving.  Again.  Therefore, we bought a house.  Again.  To be honest though, we bought an absolutely great backyard with a swimming pool.  The house was just extra.  It’s a really nice house, but is in dire need of some updating as it still has wallpaper from the 90’s and seashell-shaped sinks!   SEASHELL-SHAPED SINKS!!  But the backyard….

See?  Now you understand why we bought it, right?  The house on the other hand…

As you can see, there will be lots of redo projects in the near future for Mr. and I.  Just call us a couple of DIY dorks who have no clue what they’re doing.  It’s all hit and miss, learn as we go with us!!

In the meantime, all the second-hand furniture that I had bought and planned to redo (before life changed and we moved again) is stored in the garage, just waiting for a little TLC and a fresh coat of paint.  Although, I do have plans to put one of the tables I bought at an auction in my living room.  So hopefully, we will have the garage cleaned out very soon so I can start painting again.  I did finish one project over the winter that I had started for my mom before we moved.  It was the bottom half of a china hutch.  My daughter took the top half, painted it, and made a bookcase out of it for her office.  I turned the bottom half into a bench/quilt storage.

Before…

during…

and After!

 

I painted the cabinet Valspar La Fonda Spice and spray painted the original hardware a bronzie-brown.  Mr. cut me a piece of lumber to fit the top, I covered it with some padding and material,  and we attached it with a piano hinge.

Viola!

I shouldn’t be allowed in Mathis Brothers!

Once again, Mr. Husband went out of town and left me alone….unsupervised….and bored.  One other time when he was gone, I painted one of the walls in the living room green, which I still love (check out “So over the safe beige” post).  This time I painted the living room coffee table & side tables AND bought new furniture!  But not in that order.

We have this absolutiful and wonderful furniture store here in Oklahoma by the name of Mathis Brothers.  It has everything a woman could want to decorate and furnish her home.  I went with my mom to look for a chest of some sort for her bedroom sitting area.  We walked out 30 minutes later with a chest and a chair for her sitting area.  We also walked out with a new sofa and chair for me! THIS IS WHY I SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED IN MATHIS BROTHERS!!!  Especially when Mr. is out of town.

Now once I got home, I realized that my tables just wouldn’t look good with my new furniture.  The setting at the store had these really cute white tables.  Mine were a very dark cherry wood, almost black.  I just had to have white tables to go with my new yellow sofa and flower chair.   After some thought about what to do, I decided to paint them!!

I primed and sprayed painted them with a glossy, white enamel.  I think they look 100% better now than they did originally.

Here are my tables with my new yellow sofa and flower chair.

p.s.  I didn’t tell Mr. while he was out of town and surprised him with what I had done.  My wonderful Mr. wasn’t concerned with the fact that I had bought a yellow sofa and flower chair.  He said that was what he gets for leaving me alone…unsupervised…and bored!   I’m a lucky woman!

Add tassels? I don’t think so.

I’ve been looking for some pillows to add a punch of color to my sofa and love seat, but haven’t found anything I just can’t live without or want to dish out $$ for.  So two days ago I decided to sew myself a new pillow.  Now, what you have to understand is….I dont’ sew!  I attempt to sew, but I will be the first in line to admit, “I don’t sew”.  I made a short set for my daughter YEARS ago when she was about three.   She loved shorts and pants with pockets (she still does), so I even sewed pockets into the shorts.  I bought a pattern and followed it very closely.  Or so I thought.  As she was modeling her new outfit, she stuck her hands in her pockets and I about fell over.  I had sewed them in backwards!  Instead of her hands going to the front of the shorts, they went to the back around her butt.  She could have cared less.  She wore that that short set time after time.

So once again, I have decided to try my hand at sewing.  I own a nice sewing machine, which I have used a total of once.  Mr. bought it for me for Christmas several years ago and and I made scarves for a craft show.  That was the end of my sewing.  Haven’t had it out of it’s case since.  Until Monday.  My mom and I ventured to the local Hancock’s (which isn’t very local, as we don’t have one in our quaint, little, industrial town that doesn’t have much of anything except an Atwood’s, Tractor Supply & Wal-Mart).  Anyhoo, I found this great scrap of material for only $2.50!   It has the same yellow gold color of my lamp.  I was really excited.  My mom on the other hand thought it was pretty ugly.  At least she’s honest! ;0)  The lady behind the counter told me that I should add some tassels the same color of the bird to it and how great they would look.  I told her, “Yeah, but I don’t sew“.

After digging my sewing machine out of the downstairs hall closet, I set about sewing me a pillow.  It only took me a total of two hours and $10.00 to make this bad boy!   I think it turned out pretty darn good, since I didn’t have a pattern and really had no clue what I was doing.  (Tassels would look good, wouldn’t they?)

So over the safe beige!

We moved into our new house a little over two years ago.  The walls were painted a soft khaki-beigy color.  I thought “this is good.  It will go with everything”.  Yeah, except my living room furniture is the same safe, boring, blah khaki-beigy color!  So for two years, I have sat and hated this house and how boring it is.  It’s really a pretty house, though.  I finally decided if I have to live in it, I’m going to liven it up!  So about two months ago we painted an accent wall Apple Orchard in the living room.  I sat and stared at that color for two weeks!  One word….yuck!  I wasn’t too upset as it was free paint.  Ace Hardware was doing their free quart promotion and I took them up on it.

So while my Mr. Husband was out of town I head back to the paint store.  But this time I head to my trusty Lowe’s store.  (my favorite store in the whole world)  After much deliberation, I’m back home with samples of two colors.  What a great invention…little jars of sample paint!   I paint two more different colors of green on the wall and stare at them for a day.  Finally, I choose  Jekyll Crane Cottage Green.  Back to Lowe’s!  I decide to start painting at 8:00 that night. (I get bored when Mr. is out of town) I have everything ready to go…drop cloth, base boards & stair case taped off, ladder, brushes and rollers.  No wait….I can’t find any rollers!  I search the entire garage, opening every cabinet and looking on every shelf for one roller.  No luck!  So instead of waiting until morning and head back to Lowe’s, I decide to paint the entire wall with a brush.  A 2″ brush, no less.  I didn’t think this through very well, did I?  I finish painting around 12:30 am.  It takes awhile to paint a wall with a 2″ brush. ;0)

But here is my Jeckyll Crane Cottage Green wall.  I love it!