Bookcase for my office

I needed a small bookcase to sit next to my chair. Something that would hold my Bible study books and be close at hand. Here is what Tom made me:

Just the perfect size!

Love it! Thanks Tom!

Tom's project

This is a project that Tom worked on last week. I mentioned that we needed a place to store Amelia's toys. The livingroom was getting a little cluttered. He came up with the idea of building a movable shelf in the space under our stairs.

First he built shelves to put all our paint supplies,

next he built a shelf on wheels

that can roll out when we need to get to the paint,

Then he helped Amelia put her toys on the shelves.

Pretty neat! No wonder I call him my handy man!

chandelier

This is one of our latest project. We have wanted a chandelier for the dining room. We had taken down the old fan-light and it was just waiting for a new light.

Tom and I had looked at a couple of places that had chandeliers. Mostly what we saw was too ornate, large, and costly. Then I saw a post of someone who had ordered on line from herehttp://www.gallery802.com/productlist.aspx?Category=2, it wasn't expensive, the order came quickly, and she was pleased with her chandelier. Sounded perfect to me. The dining room isn't very big and has only an 8 feet ceiling so I went on line and found what we were looking for. We ordered it on Monday and it arrived on Thursday.

The only downside is that we needed to do some assembling(which we knew before hand) and of course wiring to hang it up. There were instructions, but they didn't have a lot of detail on them. Love that they included a glove, so that you wouldn't get fingerprints on the crystal...too funny!

We did figure it all out and got it hung up in less than 2 hours. The hardest part was for me to hold it up while Tom did the wiring!

Our dining room furniture is large, so now we are trying to decide if we needed a bigger chandelier. We will live with this for a while and see what we think. If we do decide to go bigger on the chandelier, we will just move this one some place else... because I love it!

D.I.Y. Projects

No more do-it-yourself projects for this girl! My club chair and ottoman have been showing their ages. I bought the set 18 years ago. The material is getting a little thread bare and there are actually a few rips. For several months I have been looking at material to reupholster them. Last week I fell into my somewhat crazed D.I.Y. mood and realized that I had 2 sets of curtains that I wasn't using. The curtains have small blue flowers on a white background. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but hey, I had the curtains and it wouldn't cost me anything.

You may be asking yourself at this point if I have ever reupholstered anything before and my answer would be no, but I've thought about it a lot. That should count for something, almost as good as staying at a Holiday Inn Express, right?!? I decide to start with the ottoman--it

should be much easier than the chair..

The first step was to take off the old material. It would have been easier to leave the material on and just cover it, but since the old color was burgundy and the new color is white I was afraid that the burgundy would show through. No problem, I jump in with my handy dandy seam ripper. The material was stapled on with about a gazillion staples, so I have to cut the material around the staples. This will leave a mess underneath the ottoman, but who will see it? About this time, I had my first real doubts about this project, but there was no other choice other than to proceed on.

The second step was to put the skirt around the base of the ottoman. The matching valances were about the perfect size, so it was just a matter of gathering them a bit before stapling them to the base of the ottoman. Did I do the sensible step of sewing the gathers in place--No, I don't want to take the extra time to sew this, so I decided it would probably work well

enough just to pin them in place.

For the third step I needed Tom's help. He got his handy dandy staple gun and was ready to get to work. Unfortunately, there were metal stays in the way, so he had to staple around them. Because of this, he missed a few of those gathered areas. But, I figure that once the pillow top is stapled on the base you won't be able to tell that there are a few gaps.

Finally, he had to stapled the pillow top on. Here again we ran into the little problem... he had to staple it from an awkward position, plus the material was just a smidgen too small. So we basically did like we did before, he stapled where he could. We ended up with the same result as before--some of the gathers didn't get stapled.

Now, is where the real problems began. I have a white somewhat upholstered ottoman. I know that there is no way that I can reupholster the chair to match. I have no money to buy more material and have them professionally done. So it looks like I am stuck with a burgundy chair and a white with blue flowers ottoman until I can save up to have them both redone!

Even Cocoa can't make the chair and ottoman look good together. Now you can understand the declaration that there will be no more D.I.Y. projects in my future! If I can't afford to buy something, I'll wait until I can. I believe it is called patience and self-control!

Our bedroom

I was showing my friend Robin pictures of our home and realized that I hadn't really taken pictures of our bedroom, and it is really one of my favorite rooms. So here are some photos. Robin take notice of the desk by the window... it is the one you gave me a couple of years ago. Doesn't it look perfect?!

Thank you so much!

painting

I posted yesterday about the most recent painting projects that I had finished... today I want to tell you that I hate painting!

Tom has always hated to paint. He will gladly do any do-it-yourself project, unless it is painting.

That doesn't mean that he hasn't done more than his fair share of painting over the years, but he hates to paint so much that we actually paid painters to paint the inside of our house before we moved in.

Me on the other hand, I had liked to paint. Sure it's messy and time consuming, but it is an economical way to change your decor without replacing everything. It also had the added

benefit of giving almost immediate gratification... I could see the difference I was making right away! As a stay at home mother that's not something that happens a lot. Sure you do the laundry, but by the time you are finished--there is more to do; you fix dinner, but by the time you clean up--everyone is ready for a snack; you clean the house, but by the time you finish--the first rooms that you cleaned are already showing wear; then there is the whole waiting at least 20 years to see how you did at the parenting thing. But I digress, my real point was that I actually enjoyed painting. That is not saying that I was very good at it. It always seemed to take me twice as long and twice as much paint to cover a wall as it did Tom. I also seem to wear a lot of the paint by the time I was finished. But the bottom line was I liked it.

That was then, this is now. I can now unequivocally state "I hate painting!" I killed my joy in painting by doing too much of it. I plan to post more on the bigger painting projects that I've done since we moved in, but for now I want to share the little paint projects that have contributed to my new attitude:

25 picture frames

9 jar lids

9 lamps

3 wire baskets

5 decorative boxes

1 letter "S"

1 bell

4 wall hangers

1 clock

8 candlesticks

and

1 kleenex holder that I painted

light blue, then silver,

and then finally settled for

a dark blue with silver highlights!

Latest Project

With all this heat...temperatures in the 90's... I have had to put my gardening aside most days. I decided that it was time to work on a few inside projects instead.

I painted the kitchen table legs, chairs, stool legs, and buffet (really just a dresser) white. I really like the crisp look of the white in my blue kitchen. Of course, Tom had to point out to me that he was pretty sure that the table legs and the stool legs started out white. Yes, when we bought the table over 20 years ago, it did have white legs. Since then the legs have been a dark green and then an apple green. I just reminded him how lucky he is that he has a artsy- craftsy wife who has save him hundreds of dollars over the years by painting the legs to match our décor instead of buying new tables.

Then we got to laughing about the fact that we have had the table for over 20 years and it has a leg that doesn't match the other three. The funniest part is that we had the table for almost 10 years before we realized the leg didn't match. (You can see the two different kinds of legs in the photo... did you notice it?) Yes, we had eaten most of our meals on that table. We had taken it apart and put it back together 3 times that we had moved. We had to be told by someone else that it didn't match. So much for us being observant... but you got to admit we are frugal!!

Tom's Office

Our remodeling projects are moving forward. Last week Tom finished his bookcases for his office. He is really getting good at the woodworking thing! This is the "before" of what is now his office. The previous owners were using it as a dining room.

We had one of the doorways closed in. Added a French door to the other entryway. Painted the wall dark blue and the trim white.

The finished product!!

We still need to buy curtains. Kelly also thinks we need to buy Tom a office chair... she doesn't seem to think the green folding chair that he is now using is good enough-- go figure!

fireplace

We bought our home in September. The house was built in 1988. We will be in the process of re-decorating for several months... maybe even years! I will try to take before and after pictures and write about our progress.

This is how the fireplace looked when we first viewed the house.The fireplace is brown-orange brick. It has a stain wood mantle and brass fireplace doors.

We had the brick painted white and painted the doors black.

The finished product!

We love it!

Before and Afters

We bought our home in September. The house was built in 1988. This is what "my office" looked like when we first toured:

The walls were painted 2 shades of blue. The chair rail and trim was stained a dark brown. The floor was uneven and covered with a blue indoor/outdoor rug.

New Post

Changes we planned to make:

paint walls white

paint trim and chair rail white

level entry

new carpet

new curtain

paint walls blue

paint desk white

paint end table

hang pictures

paint frames

bookshelves

bulletin board

Process so far:

walls painted white (too stark... paint blue)

trim and chair rail white

entry leveled

new carpet

new curtain

pictures hung