Painted Porch, Under Cabinet Lights and a MASSIVE Bean Bag

Hey dolls!

Hubby and I have worked on a couple odds and ends this spring, including painting our porch, which has needed to be covered for more than two years (eek!). We finally got around to it with the help of my family, using two different shades of a paint/stain specially formulated for porches and outdoor wood (Olympic Elite, available at Lowes). We went with taupe and cream to match the house. We also replaced the purple flowers on our outdoor fireplace and added a new natural area with stepping stones. It was time consuming, but we sure are happy with the final product and can rest easy now that our porch wood is protected!

Can you believe it was this ugly before?!

He also installed lights under our kitchen cabinets, which I'm infatuated with! I've always felt that nontraditional lighting sources can add so much to a room and these hidden lights really help illustrate that. This project was a lot heavier of a lift than we thought, with hubby having to drill countless holes in the cabinets and run electricity through some crazy places, but we love the finished project. Best of all, they're LED and use almost no electricity, so we don't have to worry about harming the planet (by the way, check out this really short, but really alarming video I recently came across on global climate - scary stuff!). These photos are horrible - please forgive me!

Last but not least, we're absolutely OBSESSED with our latest and by far ugliest ever purchase: a 7 foot FufSack bean bag.  We'd seen the designer versions of these for over $1000 and were so impressed with how comfy they looked but not ready to spend that much on a bean bag, but after coming across much much cheaper versions online from FufSack, we went for it, and are so glad we did. It very comfortably fits two adults and three dogs and is our new favorite chill spot. When company comes over it will definitely go to hide in the media room, but until then, this ugly thing is the best thing that's ever happened to us!

Thanks dolls!

DIY Wall of Built-Ins Made From Cheap Bookshelves!

Hey dolls!

I've been meaning to share one of our recent projects with you for weeks, but due to it being my busy season at work just haven't found time. Hubby and I (lets be real, mostly hubby) completed this project in February in less than a day! We wanted something to jazz up our big, bland and empty master sitting room, but didn't want to spend a fortune since we don't really anticipate using the space much. I asked hubby to do a big built-in wall unit when we moved in, but the size of that project is I think what ultimately put it on the back burner for 2 years. On a whim, we decided to use a time and money saving hack instead and I'm so glad we did! Ultimately, I think we have less than $170 and 8 hours in this project, which is minimal compared to the labor and cost of having custom built-in cabinets installed.

Pinterest is literally bubbling over with posts on "Ikea built-in hacks" or "DIY Ikea Cabinets" where folks buy several sets of inexpensive white Ikea cabinets, mount them to the wall, then add frame pieces or crown molding on top and quickly and inexpensively have something that looks like custom built-in cabinets.  It's genius! Our idea was really similar, but we didn't want white, don't have an Ikea anywhere nearby and wanted to add face frames to ensure all of the cabinets looked like one unit.

Since our bedroom is decorated in black, tan and gold, we decided to go with black cabinets. We went to our local Big Lots, where we bought 4 black bookshelf kits for $30 each, which I assume even outcheaps Ikea.  I've seen them at Walmart too, so you definitely don't have to live in an Ikea town to make this work. After bringing them home, hubby assembled them, which didn't take long. To add height and make them look more custom, he built a base in the footprint we decided on out of 2x4s, attaching the base to the wall for stability. We decided to position the middle two bookshelves further out to make it more dynamic.

After situating the bookshelves in place, he attached each of them to the wall. The last carpentry steps were to cut then nail base molding and crown molding to the top and bottom (covering the base and sitting above the top) then, and I felt strongly that this was the most important step, added face frames to each and every board out of inexpensive 1 inch by 1.5 inch pine strips. This made the unit look like one piece as opposed to what it really is, 4 cheap bookshelves placed side by side. It also gives the illusion that the cheap, thin boards are two or three times as thick as they really are. One thing I've found in all of our DIY'ing and home design adventures is that the thickness of your boards goes as far as anything else aesthetically. Thin wood almost always looks inexpensive, and unfortunately, $30 pre-fab bookshelves are made of very thin wood.

We then painted all of the molding and face frames black to match the shelves, paying close attention to match the gloss level of our pre-fab cabinets, again for the sake of cohesion. After everything dried came the fun part - decorating! Leaving the bottom row open for utility/storage, I decorated the top rows in black, gold and white, mostly with things I already had.

True story: I have so many picture frames (I can't ever find the backbone to demote a photo from frame to album, so in our house, once in a frame, always in frame - I'm such a softy) that I literally have them stockpiled without enough surface area to display them all (fortunately there were several in black and gold). My formal living room was a little over decorated, so I pulled several gold items from there. As always, I love to decorate with books, and one of my favorites, The History of Mathematics, was a perfect fit with its rich black spine.

I had two black mini candelabras that I picked up at an antique mall for $2 each that I decided to spray paint gold for more pop. I added the fake white orchid to the table (which was brown, but we painted to match the new unit) for color, which I picked up for 90% off ($2) at Michael's after Christmas. For some reason, the glitter on it made it part of the Christmas collection, which made it more, not less desirable to me, but I gladly accepted the discount. I also added some fake crystals (I keep a stockpile of them in my craft room) to the chandelier for more pizzazz. Stringing the crystals was by far the most time consuming part of my work on this project, mostly because I have no motor skills and huge fingers.

If you're looking for an easy, inexpensive way to fill up a wall and improve your home, I highly recommend this one! Unlike many of our projects, I feel like this one could be easily modified to suit any skill level. Thanks for reading dolls!

Scroll Iron Baluster Staircase Upgrade!

Hey dolls!

Happy Spring! For my birthday I asked hubby and my parents to go in together to buy me scroll iron baluster pieces so that we could upgrade our staircase balusters from white wooden ones. To our surprise, the balusters came in in less than 3 days (stair nation was awesome!) and it only took hubby a couple hours to install them!

Because our staircase is spiral, there was a lot of variation in baluster height, so my husband had to individually cut each one down using an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel attachment (no clue what that is, but I know it lives in our garage). Then he just popped them into place and installed the shoes. Helpful hint - if you're planning an iron baluster project, don't forget to budget for the shoes. They're $1.25 each at a minimum and you'll need more than 100 of them for a normal sized staircase.

We've wanted these since we bought the house (our builder didn't have the scroll option, only basket balusters), so it's amazing to finally have them installed! Our next project for the foyer is probably to add 14ft taupe wainscoting to break up the really tall walls.

BEFORE

 AFTER!

To keep everything matching, we also added them to our upstairs hallway arches that we love so much. These photos from during and after installation were taken from the living room.

Check back soon for our new built-ins in our master sitting room... an entire wall of custom built-ins for only $160 in materials! The project is done, I just need to find time to upload pics.

Guest bedroom makeover!

Hey dolls!

I recently decided one of our guestrooms was in major need of a makeover. We'd had the bedding/decor for that room since our wedding in 2010, almost 5 years ago. After being inspired by another blogger's master bedroom makeover, I decided to go with whites, glass, crystal and silver. My MIL gave me the comforter for Christmas and as always, my mom sewed the curtains - thanks mom & MIL! The before & after photos are below.

 

I made a new flower arrangement with some inexpensive white flowers and a used, large wine bottle:

 

I repainted this piece of furniture and added crystal knobs

 

 

 I also repainted this old black rocking chair a distressed white

 

 The bathroom in the guest room is the same as before, but now fits the color scheme a lot better!

Isn't it an improvement? Thanks for reading barbies!

BDH Updates: a new brown sectional sofa, furniture shuffling & more

Hello barbies! Over the past few months, we've had a handful of updates at the BDH that maybe weren't worth a full post on their own, but I thought I should share altogether.

 

The biggest of these updates would probably be that we moved our family room furniture into our sunroom and purchased a new large brown sectional for our family room in early December. We LOVE our family room furniture - its so us and our first big furniture purchase together - but we really wanted to get back to having a sectional in our family room like we did in our Texas house (that well loved, yet tired sectional is now living out its golden years in our media room, in case you were wondering).

So we sold our leather couch that we had in our sunroom on Craigslist, moved our nice family room furniture into that room, then replaced the family room furniture with a really large brown upholstered sectional... and we're so happy! Having our nice set in the sunroom has been great, because its so cold in there this time of the year (hardwoods, lots of windows) (the leather couch was just too cold for that room) and the new sectional is amazing and just the right size for two humans and 3 dogs that insist on all sitting on the same piece of furniture. My BFF Vanesa and I picked out the fur pillows together - love them. We also bought a new peace lily houseplant to keep the indoor air clean (peace lily's have indoor air filtering qualities) and to add some greenery.

The new family room:

 

The new sunroom:

A few mantle upgrades and updates:

Some changes to our downstairs hallway side table:

 I'm OBSESSED with this new iron coffee table that my mother-in-law gave us when we were visiting Texas over Christmas. In addition to our DIY patio (full post here), with DIY couch (full post here), we now have a cute little sitting area on the porch thanks to this table. I plan on doing more to this spot soon, but for now, you get the picture.

And of course, our new wine cellar, which I blogged about last week here:

Now we're working on some upgrades to our foyer (and I'm loving what we've bought so far so much I can hardly contain myself!), filling out our media room (to my surprise, hubby denied my request to hang 6 different Titanic movies posters) and beautifying our kinda bland upstairs guest room (it's going to be so light and dreamy! my mom is already sewing the curtains). Stay tuned and thanks for reading dolls!