Summertime is Painting Time

Remember that one time I bought a pretty ugly dresser on KSL, brought it home and painted it but forgot to take a before picture?

(I swear that I took a picture, even one of me priming the dumb thing, but I can not find it anywhere)

The gist of the story is that the dress looked a lot like this.

Woodish, ornate, big heavy handles, and cheap, because no one knows what to do with these things. That is, until I come along and want to snatch up that ugly dresser like it is nobodies business. I even drove the 40 minutes one way to pick it up.

I knew exactly how I wanted to paint it, I just had to wait until we had space to do it.

I feel like the reveal pictures are very anti climactic without a before picture. Sigh...oh well.

This dresser is going to live in the boys room. It may be the first step in actually, one day, making their room not suck. 

Anymore, when I spot something...a little on the ugly side...and say that "I want it", Blake doesn't argue. I am not sure if it is because he trusts me...or because he realizes that he is fighting a loosing battle. Either way, for me it is a win.

With the weather getting warmer I am now able to spray paint things outside. Quite possibly one of my favorite quick fixes.

We have a very large patio on the front of our house that we lovingly refer to as the "party patio." We have a lot of impromptu BBQ's on the party patio and we hang out there a lot. Since a good amount of time hanging out there is also spent eating, I decided that I wanted a table that we could use for food. I wanted it to be cheap so that if the elements reeked havoc on it, I wouldn't care. I found the perfect table at the DI.

It had all of the things that I wanted. It was cheap, it had a leaf, and it was Formica which would be good in the rain.

It was speckled with gold, which left something to be desired.

Plus it was dirty as can be. I gave it a good healthy scrubbing and then used something that I had been wanting to try.

Appliance spray paint.

I gave the table three good coats just to make sure that it was well covered.

Then I painted the metal legs a bright teal that matches some of our outdoor chairs.

The table has been painted for over a month and, so far, has held up great. Truthfully, I am trying to figure out what other things I can paint with appliance paint that are not appliances.

On a completely separate note: We were hoping to close on our refinance this last Tuesday but it didn't happen. As soon as we close, demolition begins. I am very excited about tearing down the wood paneling.

Fixing What Bugs You

Where to begin?

First: we decided to refinance our house. It helps us to lower our payment. With that happening, we have not been able to really work on anything. We had to have an appraiser come to our house, so we couldn't have it all torn apart.

Before the appraiser came, however, I did decide to work on the one thing that irritates me more then anything else in our house.

What you ask?

Our hallway closet.

In the spirit of full disclosure, this is what our hallway closet looked like 99% of the time.

Our kids get home from school and toss their backpacks and crap on the floor. Most of the time their stuff was vomiting out into the hallway. No matter how many times I "reminded" them to clean it up, it was always there.

That coupled with the fact that the closet door blocks our hallway, was enough to make me batty most days.

When something irritates you day in and day out, the only reasonable option seems to be...to paint it.

You know what they say? If you like it then you better put a dot on it.

That's not how it goes?!

Well, while I drew circles, you can imagine that I sang my version of the Beyonce song.

Using a cup for my circles seemed like the easiest idea to me. I spaced them randomly, and used a little sample pot of paint I bought at Home Depot months ago for $.50.

Blake moved up the top shelf so that one day we can add another shelf. Just moving up the shelf seems to have made more room in the closet. That...or the fact that I got rid of 90 gazillion pairs of kid shoes they don't wear.

With the shelf moved up, the new shelf looked out of place. I had some of the color paint left so I decided to paint the top of the closet.

I gave the gold hooks, that were in there, a little coat of paint to match our kids homework holder.

Then I stood back and thought..."is this busy closet going to bug me?"

Then it occurred to me, "if it does, then I will paint it." Easy enough.

When I was painting all of the dots, Penny kept being insistent that I needed to make some small dots. She wasn't happy with the prospect of only big dots. So, I did what any crazy mom would do. I appeased her with three small dots. They even got antennas and a smiley face.

Having all the crap back in the closet kind of takes away from it's charm...but it also covers up the loudness of the dots.

So far having the dots has made me not hate it every time I see it open. My big dreams for the closet would be adding a sliding door, like this.

In the mean time...

Blake and I have been plotting our next move for the house. With the appraisal done, we decided to start the big downstairs room remodel.

Blake was even kind enough to do a scale drawing of the basement.

The one on the left shows the secret laboratory. The one on the right shows the new bedroom addition and office. 

We are supposed to close in a couple days and then the construction begins.

I am as giddy as a school girl.