Adventures in Thrifting

I like the DI. Our kids...not their favorite, but they endure it for the chance at buying a book when I am done looking. If I am looking for something specific then my trips are more frequent. I also am a stalker on KSL (just like Craig's list for Utah) when I am looking for something. Luckily, my patience and persistence normally pay off. When I am out Blake will get a text from me that looks a little like this:

"Check it! $15 and it is coming home with me!!"

Our kids may have said something along the lines of "Gross! that is dirty and ugly. I don't like it. Are you buying that?!"

Yes kids. Yes I am.

You may remember that I stole our extra storage out of the downstairs bathroom for our bedroom. I had found a few dressers that I liked online but they were all around $65-100. So when I spotted a $15 dresser...it practically jumped in my cart.

I made sure that it fit in the space and then I got to plotting its make over.

Pinterest once again to the rescue.

Blake said that he liked this one the best, so that was going to be the winner.

I used Citristrip and it removed that paint like it was nobodies business.

What caught me off guard, was how nice the wood looked underneath, and for one hot minute I debated on just having a nice wood dresser in there. Then I remembered that I still have 3 more dressers to paint so I snapped out of it.

When I had removed as much of the old paint as I could, I took it outside and gave it a real quick sanding, and a coat of primer.

Then I brought it inside and started painting it black before I could second guess my decision.

(Ignore the mess in the background! This is what happens when you do projects in the laundry room...you have to look at the piles of laundry.)

But not all of it was painted black, the drawers were kept white. 

After two coats of paint, I moved it into the bathroom, and then made a trip to Hobby Lobby.

When I went into Hobby Lobby I knew exactly what knobs I wanted (left middle--the swirly ones). That is, until I looked at the knobs. Then? I was completely useless. I found four choices right away, and then my choices quickly doubled.

Black and white?

Colored? Glass?

With back plates? With out? 

Well, wouldn't you know. I ended up with the exact ones that I had gone in to buy in the first place. I evidently just like to over complicate things.

The dresser has already been filled with the necessities like towels, soap, a hair dryer, and toothpaste.

The vintage metal magazine holder is going to be used for holding towels down the road, when I get around to buying them.

A little something like this:

The upside is our kids have told me that the dresser looks awesome. 

I wish I was the kind of parent that rubbed things in their faces, because I would be like 

"See! I told you!!"

Spring Trimming

Spring is here. Although, I think it still can't quite make up it's mind. Most days have been nice, so I won't do much complaining. With it being spring, all the yard work that needs to be done comes to the forefront of my mind. 

When we moved in, the house looked like this.

8 months later it looked like this:

Notice what I did there? Used the same picture. The only difference in the front of our house has been our front door, no eagle, and cars in our driveway...that belong to us.

The real problem that I have had with our front yard is our bushes. They are out of control. Like Miley Cyrus in plant form.

The tree on the far right is gigantic! Pictures don't do this mammoth thing justice. The plant in the middle, while smaller, blocked out our downstairs window completely. Plus, it also came about 3-4 feet out onto our grass.

Blake and I decided one evening to "trim" our bushes. In hopes of maybe giving them a nice little cut, and making them cute.

Blake was in charge of trimming the one in front of the windows. Cutting across the front of the bush took about 20 minutes and filled up our garbage can. Plus, we were left with this brown monstrosity.

I would like to pretend that my plant fared better....Um...No.

It was like Edward Scissor Hands attacked my plant and left no survivors.

Awful.

Lest you think that Blake and I are impulsive pruners, we had talked about removing some of the plants in our front yard for awhile. Some plants blocked light, some were just to overgrown, and others made it so that we couldn't see our kids riding their bikes while sitting on our patio.

We weighed our options. We could remove them by renting a chain saw, finding a truck to load all the plants into, and then paying to dispose of it all....or we could hire someone.

We chose to hire.

It was a two man job, and the total time was around 3 hours for removing 4 bushes.

Seeing the progress was exciting...and a little nerve wracking.

I was a little concerned about our grass, and what was going to be left to clean up.

I fretted for nothing. They did a great job. The front of our house looks a lot more open, and the inside is leaps and bounds more bright. The kids weren't sure about it. But when it comes to change they are normally the hardest to budge.

Here are some comparison shots to help you get the gist.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Now we just have to get to the rest of the yard. 

Still hoping to: plant a garden, plant some bushes, make our grass greener, seal our patio, paint garage door....the list goes on and on. 

The Little Things

I have been sick. Coughing up a lung sick.

Not awesome.

I have also been a bit busy with my shop. Nothing horrific, it just takes up extra time that I could spend doing other things.

But there is something about sitting at home and seeing all of the little things that are not getting done. Things that no one else probably thinks twice about, but bug you endlessly.

My list:

1. The paint on the wall going down the stairs. The paint didn't go all the way down to the new stairs because there used to be carpet there. With the carpet gone there was still part of the wall that needed to be touched up. I finally did it this last week. Woot!

2. The main bathroom has a "window" at the top of the wall. It lets in light from the master bathroom and gives the bathroom daylight that it otherwise wouldn't have, because it is in the center of the house. Around the edges of the window was paint.

The previous painter was not especially careful. It bothers me every time that I look at it....and yet...here it is 7 months later.

Because our kids just had spring break, and because I believe in slave labor, I made the kids clean the bathroom while I got to scrape old paint off of a window.

It probably took about an hour or two to scrape all the paint off, and my fingers were screaming by the end. Old paint does not come off gracefully. It is mean, and sticks around, and really puts up a fight.

Good thing I was determined. Now our window doesn't look like I don't know how to paint.

3. Our front windows next to our doors.

In all honesty they weren't horrible, and I feel bad covering them up because the previous owner was so proud about how he "got them professionally etched." But roses...they ain't my thing.

I knew I was taking a risk that might not work. Luckily, the paint that I was using was removable with paint thinner and only cost $4 for the can.

At Home Depot I found the frosted glass spray paint, taped up my windows and got to spraying.

About 30 minutes later, I had frosted glass windows that had stripes going down them.

Surprisingly, it worked much better then I had thought that it would. The upside is, if I get tired of it I can just remove it.

I also have a lot of projects half started right now. You should see my laundry room...it is nuts.

At one point last week our living room looked like a furniture store. It had two extra dressers sitting in it, a new chair, our green bench, two nightstands, my white cabinet, and all of the regular furniture that belongs in it.

Here is a really quick breakdown of the madness:

Our dresser and nightstands were just too big for our bedroom. I have been looking for small dressers online to act as nightstands, in order to get rid of our current dresser and nightstands.

I found this dresser online and was excited because we had a dresser exactly like it that would match, so I bought it.

The dresser that matched it was in the downstairs bathroom.

So I moved our nightstands and dresser out of our room and moved these two dressers in to act as nightstands.

(This is how it is, for the moment. Although, there is still tweaking to do.)

Then came the problem of our missing dresser in the downstairs bathroom. The dresser in the bathroom acts as storage, but also blocks the ugliness that is our fuse box and water softener.

Insert this $15 dollar dresser that I found at the DI.

So...right now I am working on...

Striping off the paint from the dresser and then redoing it.

I also need to paint our bedroom dressers, and the boys new dresser, and the new laundry cart that I bought.

Now you understand why our laundry room looks like a war zone. Removing paint is a messy business.