Parade of Homes (and Master Bedroom Reveal!)

I am so excited to be participating in a blog Parade of Homes sponsored by Poppies at Play!

For those of you who are visiting my blog for the very first time, let me introduce myself.

My name is Traci, and I am a stay-at-home mom of four boys. I am married to a wonderful man who loves the same things in life that I do. We love sharing in this adventure called “life.”

I was an elementary teacher for 6 years before my first son was born, and it is hard to believe I have been at home with my boys for the past ten years. What a blessing!

I started my blog in March of last year after my mom kept encouraging me to. I am so glad she did. It has been a huge blessing in my life! My blog is dedicated to my mom who passed away in September of last year after a short battle with gastric cancer. Her love and her faith in God has changed my life forever. (You can read about her story by clicking on “mom” in my sidebar.)

Over the past year, I have been fixing up my house one room at a time. I just recently finished our master bedroom, and I am so excited to reveal it today!

I am not an interior decorator. I have no degree in design. I have just used the inspiration I have found in blogland this past year to decorate my home. :)

So welcome everyone to my

ol’ Kentucky home!

I like to call my home the “House of Thrifty Finds.” Almost everything in my house is from Goodwill, garage sales, or hand-me-downs. I will point my thrifty treasures out to you throughout the tour.

As you enter our home, you will see this vinyl saying that my Mom helped me put up last August.

Directly down the foyer is our kitchen and eating area.

I purchased the hutch for $75.00 at a garage sale and painted it black. You can read about that project HERE.

The white buffet on the left side of the picture below is a $55.00 find at Goodwill that I painted. You can read about that project HERE.

I love this view of my curtains through the mirror. I made the curtains from drop cloths, and I absolutely love the way they turned out. If you want to see how I made them, just click on “drop cloth projects” in my sidebar.

Our biggest renovation in our home has been the kitchen. Last fall, we tore out the soffit above our cabinets and created new, taller cabinets. You can see the complete DIY renovation by clicking HERE.

I love the glass cabinet doors and the open shelving my husband created above the microwave.

The bead board cabinet doors added to the cottage style I was striving for.

We also installed recessed lighting inside the glass cabinets and underneath the cabinets. You can never have enough light in the kitchen!

On the right side of the kitchen, I made some cafe shelves like the ones I saw in Ballard Designs catalog. You can see the tutorial of how to make them for yourself HERE.

Our master bedroom is right off of our kitchen. I have been working on our bedroom for a couple of months now, and I am so excited to finally share the finished product.

I renovated our entire bedroom for less than $700.00, and I will be sharing a ton of Before and After photos, plus the break down of my budget, tomorrow. You won’t believe the difference, so be sure to stop back by and check it out!

Here is the view as you enter the room…

The bed was my parents, and I painted it black. I made the brown bedskirt from burlap, and I think it turned out beautifully.

I was so excited when I found this little vanity for only $25.oo! It fits perfectly beside my bed. It just needed a little TLC which you can read about HERE.

I have enjoyed accessorizing with items that are special to me, like the picture of my mom and me when I was a little girl and a decorative bird that was my mom’s.

The chandelier was my “splurge” for my room. I got it at Lowe’s and I love the way it adds a little romance to the room.

This black dresser was purchased at an antique mall, and I painted it black as well. (Can you tell I like that color?) :)

Here’s the view of the other side of the room.

I got the armoire for $40.00 at a habitat store! It needed a little work (like it was missing a back), but it works perfectly for our room now. Our tv hides in there! Click HERE to see that project.

Our master bath is really small, but can you believe it was actually smaller?! We renovated it a couple of years ago by knocking out a wall and making it a little bigger.

My husband did all the work in our bathroom. He is quite the DIY man!

One of my favorite “rooms” in our home is our covered back patio.

I love watching my boys play in the back yard and enjoying lots of cookouts with friends and family out here. Those are some of life’s sweetest moments!

See that red door in the background of the below picture?

That door leads to the guest house we built over our detached garage.

My husband built our guest house, and I got to decorate it. A winning combination!

We didn’t really have any money to decorate the guest house, so I had a ball shopping at Goodwill and garage sales. I am one of those people who think it is FUN to decorate with thrifty finds!

My hubby built me these amazing cabinets! If you want to see how he made them, click on “cottage cabinets” in my side bar labels.

I got this cute little coffee table at Goodwill for $6.50 and painted it white. It fits perfectly with the room. I also got the chair for $6.50 at Goodwill and covered it with burlap.

If you would like a complete tour of our guest house including the bedroom and bathroom, click HERE.

Well, that concludes my tour!

Thank you so much for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed your visit.

The next house on the Parade of Homes tour is Beth from Stories from A to Z. Her house is beautiful and so is she…inside and out!

Just click on the #3 button below, and it will take you there.

Enjoy the Parade!

Have a blessed day!

Traci

Wooden Fruit Stand

Last month I found a cute little wooden fruit stand at Goodwill.

I guess it’s a fruit stand? I’m sure it could hold many other things as well.

My eye was immediately drawn to it because of it’s shape. I loved all of the curves all over it. Very cottage-y.

I wasn’t crazy about the dark wood color, but knew that it would look great painted white.

And it was only $3.50! I knew I would use it somewhere…if not in my house, then in our guest house.

When you are shopping for items at Goodwill, look at the shape or outline of an item. If it is an ugly color or has an ugly picture on it, don’t let that stop you from buying it. Paint covers a multitude of ugliness!

I tried something a little different on this piece. I rubbed all of the edges that I would be sanding with candle wax before I primed it.

Why? Because sometimes I have trouble sanding off the primer to get down to the wood. It frustrates the heck out of me!

I saw somewhere in blogland that someone used candlewax on the edges before painting. So I thought I would give it a try!

After I rubbed all the edges with my candle, I used a spray primer to prime it.

Then I painted the whole thing white. I used Krylon Satin white spray paint from Walmart.

I had to paint it in the garage and then bring it inside to dry. I cannot wait for warmer weather so I can do more painting outside!

Then I used my sanding sponge to sand all of the edges. I think the candle wax worked! The paint just sanded right off!

Ooooh, I loved how it was turning out!

Then for the final step, I applied a layer of Valspar Mocha Glaze to give it a little more of a vintage look.

I got this bottle at Lowe’s forever ago, and I have done a million projects with it. It lasts for-e-va!

I applied the glaze with a paper towel, and wiped it on and off until I got the look I was after. It’s a subtle difference, but I love how it turned out!

Then I just put some of my artificial apples I got from Marshall’s in it, and I was finished!

I love it!

Now for a parade of pictures of my little beauty…

Well, that’s all!

A very easy project, but I am so happy with the way it turned out.

Here is a sneak peek of a project I’ll share with you next week…

Have a blessed day!

Our Kitchen Renovation is Complete!

****First of all, I would like to ask you to pray for Rachel who's surgery is Tuesday, the 24th, at 7:30 a.m. Click on her picture in my sidebar to find out more. Thanks!

Finally!!! We have finished our kitchen renovation!

For those of you who are new to my blog, about 8 weeks ago a pipe burst in my kitchen and made a huge mess!

So we then had an unplanned kitchen renovation on our hands!

But I have to say that we took our lemons and made some lemonade.

This is what our kitchen looked like before the pipes busted.

(Some of the following is copied from a previous post.)

These were the original 40 year old cabinets in our kitchen.

Notice the soffit above the cabinets? Every since we moved into our house five years ago, I have wanted to tear down that soffit to see what was underneath. Were there pipes that couldn’t be moved? Wiring? Nothing at all? I wanted to get rid of the soffit so I could have taller cabinets.

Well….since our kitchen already looked like a dump site, we decided to bust a hole into the soffits and see what we could see…

Nothing much there….

Or there…

A little wiring there…

But nothing that could not be tucked up into the rafters.

I was SOOOOO excited! I was about to get me some new tall cabinets.

So we tore it out. (No my husband is not going gray…that’s just drywall dust in his hair!")

Now the soffits are gone! Yipee!

Then I decided to hire the hottest cabinet maker I could fine…

and well, my husband won hands down!

He started by building the cabinet frames.

Then he hung up new drywall to cover the ceiling, installed lighting in the cabinets, and underneath the cabinets…

He also added crown molding to match the rest of the kitchen.

The microwave goes in the space where you see the wire and metal frame. I wanted the cabinet above the microwave to stay open, so we added beadboard to the back of it.

Here’s the other side of the kitchen…

The two cabinets in the middle do not have lights inside them because they will have doors. We put beadboard in the back of the cabinet above the refrigerator because it will be left open as well.

Then my husband added some trim inside the cabinets to hold glass shelves. I wanted to be sure the light on top was able to shine all the way down to the bottom.

We had a carpenter from Georgia make our cabinet doors. He had made some cabinet doors for my mother and father-in-law, so we knew he would do a great job!

To our surprise, my in-laws paid for our cabinet doors in honor of my mother who just passed away. What a precious tribute! Thank you!

For the hardware, I decided to go with handles instead of knobs on my cabinets. I think they fit perfectly with the “look” of the kitchen.

We got our light above the sink at Lowes. It’s called a vintage schoolhouse light.

I still haven’t decided if I want a window treatment over that window.

I love that we left the cabinets above the microwave and refrigerator open so I can create cute little vignettes for each season. (However, I am not very good at creating vignettes. I need your help! Maybe a “vignette party” in the future?)

Here is my kitchen all lit up. I love having the extra lighting!!!!

Now I am going to show you something even more amazing!!!!

You want to see the “before the before” picture?

This is what the kitchen looked like when we bought our house 5 years ago…

(I took this picture with a disposable camera, thus the poor quality.)

And now 5 years later…(at the same angle)

I am DEAD serious! That is the same kitchen! Can you believe it? We’ve come a long way baby! I think the hubster and I have a pretty good eye for “potential”!

I asked my sister if she would have bought my house 5 years ago with a kitchen that looked like that? And she said, “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole!”

Oh well…

Since we worked really hard on this kitchen, I am going to share it on

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch

Make it for Monday at Cottage Insticts (I love this girl!)

DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

It’s so very creative at It’s so Very Cheri

Blessings,