August 24, 2011

Our Newest Family Member

We are happy to introduce our new family member!! Meet "Slick"....our brand new Graco XR5 Magnum Paint Sprayer! Yeah baby!! Let's get some paint on!!!!





August 21, 2011

{New Projects} A Table and a Hillbilly Chair

Yes, our project "wants" are finally coming together! We ventured to a BBQ in Greenville, SC this weekend and brought back some awesome goodies! First, let me introduce you to the Hillbilly Chair. As you can read at the top of this blog "everything has a story" so here's the dish on this chair, seat, couch, call it what you will.

Our friend Drew, a.k.a. "Lamont", found this old couch during one of his picking trips at a school salvage sale. We have speculated that it was probably in a principals office and many a young butt have sat on it waiting for their lashing. Can you feel the history people?! We were first introduced to this treasure back in May when we took our annual "Hillbilly Thaw" camping trip. A group of us friends get together for a weekend of lake camping and we've started a tradition of seeing what new hillbilly antics we can come up with. Drew raised the bar when he brought out this couch for lounging. I.....fell in love....with the couch. It's surprisingly comfy and sturdy.


You can see that we really did use it. As of this weekend Jason and I are the proud new owners of the hillbilly couch and we're scratching our heads trying to figure out just what to do with it. We need your help. What do you suggest we do with this awesome piece of history that has had such a great introduction into our circle? Paint, stain, recover? Leave us your comments.

The other great piece that I am T-TOTALLYTHRILLED with is the kitchen table I've been longing for. Ms. Carolyn (Drew's the crew's mom and an amazing lady) happily handed over her old table for some TLC. All three boys have memories of meals they've eaten at this table and I feel privileged to know that we now possess such a great piece of  furniture associated with so many stories. We're planning to serve many more meals on it ourselves.


Here's the before.....I absolutely can't wait to get started on this and reveal the after! Stay tuned.....
As always, thanks for reading!







August 15, 2011

DIY Should Be DEY For Us

I'm pretty sure most DIY'ers would agree that you don't always do some things yourself....you do everything yourself. I happen to be married to a jack-of-all-trades and this post isn't about furniture or home renovations, but an automotive project. You just never know what you're going to find here. Jason is a regular shade tree mechanic and loves cars and doing car truck stuff. I'm just so impressed that I thought this DIY project was worthy of a little attention.

Anyone who owns a truck is familiar with bed liners ~ a protective coating in the bed of a truck that prevents scratching, rusting and dents. Plus, they make the truck look better. Truck beds without liners look nekkid to me.

Now, sometimes you can have the dealership spray a liner as part of the purchase deal, or you can go to a auto shop that specializes in customization and have them do it, however, you're looking at about $400 easy. We're cheap. Jason bought a DIY kit for $50 and recruited a buddy for a "fun" Saturday project.

They removed bed bolts, taped and masked, sanded (messy), poured sweat (hot & humid), prepared the liner {it's basically a mix of poly coating and rubber granules that form a tough finish}, stopped for lunch, then rolled on the liner. It took three coats. Thanks goodness they taped because Jason is a MESSY painter!

Voila! Brand new bed liner that cost $50 and a day. That's some Do-It-Yourself goodness right there.


Hats off to my handy guy and a special thanks to Charlie for donating his day to help and his kid for a great day of play!





Thanks for reading!!




















August 7, 2011

Project Unexpected: Kitchen Faucet

Wouldn't you know it. When you least expect it there is going to be a project that requires your time and budget and it isn't planned. Ours was the kitchen faucet today. We've had problems with our dishwasher and have determined that it can't be fixed, because a new dishwasher isn't in the budget, we are kicking it old school and hand-washing. I know, archaic! We thought that because we stopped using the leaky dishwasher that the musty smell that had developed around the sink would go away once things dried out. Guess what...it didn't. So today further investigation proved that our faucet was broken and little by little water has been leaking under the sink causing the funk.

Unfortunately, there was no fix. Because the leak was getting pretty bad we had to bite the bullet and buy a replacement faucet. Ouch! That $100 expense was not in the project budget.
A good tip when deciding on these types of fixtures - read the product reviews. Lowe's has them on their website and they are helpful in navigating through the really crappy ones to the decent ones. We decided that since we were going to have to replace the faucet that we might as well get what we want. Something taller with a pull-down faucet. Lemons into lemonade!


Pictured above: The original, traitorous faucet that only lasted about four years. I guess having kids pulling on it from behind (a pitfall of not having a sink against a wall) and us having to lift it up to fit large pots and the doggie water cooler just did it in.

Might as well take advantage and get a good scrub in.

Installation of the new: Read, read, read the instructions. Jason is a super handy guy and can pretty much fix anything, but he does not like plumbing projects and defers to the manual every time. It's also helpful to have a helper for a job like this. Once you're on the floor and in the cabinet, it's kind of a pain if you need a tool or something. I'm the helper.

You'll see in the photo below that we have bowl under the sink....the water cut-off valves are prone to leak (ours did) so the bowl catches the excess water, making your drying out process a lot quicker.


Once the new faucet was installed, nuts and washers super tightened and some additional silicone rubbed around the PVC fittings (for extra assurance)....it was time to get our drying on. I'm a lucky girl because my hubby has all sorts of cool toys. Need something dried out quickly? Use a heat gun.

Finally, after the headache of an unwanted, non-budgeted for project....we have a cool new faucet. Bonus for our troubles.....a little soap dispenser that mounts under the sink.

Project One: The Dresser

It's done! We're as happy as birds with a french fry {I saw that on Pinterest}. Anyhoo, our first "official" project has been completed and we're glad to have it out of the garage and placed happily at my office.

It started back in July when we went to the beach on vacation. Even while traveling I can sniff out a thrifty deal! We found this dresser at the Habitat Restore and they only wanted $15 for it!! Needless to say, we immediately loaded it up {luckily we traveled in the truck}. We picked it up on Monday and it rode around in our truck for the entire week of our trip. We're serious about a great deal.


For the most part it was in great shape. The backing was warped, two drawer bottoms needed replacing and the center cabinet door was broken....nothing that couldn't be fixed. Focus on the potential of the imperfect!

Here's the work getting started. Because there were some pretty deep gouges and scrapes, we decided to go with it and used chain to distress the top even more.



Now, our first "whoopsie" was our decision to stain it versus painting. Put simply....I HATED it. So we painted it instead. The worst part was going through all the trouble of sanding and prepping it for stain, only to use paint. Oh well...live and learn.


Here's a shot of it being primed {Zinsser BIN - awesomely quick drying} to cover up the stain. We had our primer tinted gray for ease in covering.

So, with the backing replaced, the drawer bottoms replaced and several other fix-it's taken care of....we added new pulls that we picked up in a contractors pack at Lowe's. I wanted to use the pretty clear acrylic knobs, but at $6 each, I couldn't justify the expense for a $15 piece of furniture. I did pick out a super pretty knob for the center door.

 Can I just say....I LOVE IT!!! It looks amazing in it's new space.


What do you think??!


August 5, 2011

Shout Out! {From Gardners To Bergers}

I must give props to the awesome and most helpful blog by Becca ~ From Gardners To Bergers. Her tutorials on "how to" basically not loose my freaking mind while trying to do techie stuff that I'm in no way trained for are sublime. If you're trying to figure out how to get those cute little buttons to work, I'd highly recommend you check her out.

Thanks Becca!! You're my hero!




August 3, 2011

{We must start somewhere} Huge Roadside Mirror

Okay. We're diving in! As we work to finish up a new project {the project we attribute as the inspiration for this entire new endeavor - more to come} we decided that we have many past projects that we can pull from to get this thang kicked off.

The amazing part is, we actually have pictures! Good thing I take random shots and save them. Don't laugh or pick at the quality of said photos {or don't admit it}, I'll never claim to be a photographer with a grand camera....well, not today anyway.

Soooo, not too awful long ago we found this big ole' mirror sitting in someone's front yard with a 'For Sale' sign on it. Initially, my friend Erin pointed it out and Jason and I went back and got it for her. Alas, she really didn't like it so it became ours. I'm pretty sure it weighs about that of a baby elephant!

Unfortunately, my crystal ball was broken and I couldn't foresee that we'd one day use these pics and projects to build a super fab DIY blog, therefore, I don't have an actual before-before. This will have to do. As you can see...it was fugly. It had this funky metallic thing going on and looked like someone had attempted to paint it themselves. Blech!

So, we pulled out the saw horses, taped it all up and grabbed our spray paint. {I wish I could remember what color} I was surprised by how much paint it took, ohmygoodness.

Here's a "during" shot, but we actually changed up the color after this coat.

Now, here's a shot of our living room wall way BEFORE the elephant mirror entered our lives. I think I just generally lacked inspiration for some reason.


And here is the wall AFTER the elephant mirror.....


MUCH better {I hope you agree}. Once we got the antique white mirror hung without the sheet rock falling off the wall from the weight and felt safe that it wouldn't fall on our heads and kill us instantly, we decided it was a bit stark, so....Jason being the clever guy he is, added a little bit of Minwax Mahogany stain with a rag to the corners and crevices. Just what it needed! That's why he's 'The Man'.





Whew! That beast is tied up! I mean the first real blog post, not the mirror...although we were glad to have that done as well so I could get my car back in the garage. Now it's out in the elements again as our new project sits in it's place.

Thanks for supporting our new adventure and I hope you'll visit us hourly a lot more. Oh! and PLEASE, please leave us a comment or ten. We're feeling a little vulnerable right now. Thanks!

August 2, 2011

Working Out the Kinks

It is definitely a process to set-up a blog that you actually want people to look at. My personal blog is just a space in space where I type out all my craziness. This blog, however, is different. I want people to like it. I want people to love it. I want people to join and send their friends. I want to ride in the back of a convertible in my own personal parade....ahem....back to the point. I'm learning a lot in this process.

Project posts coming soon!