Armoire Re-do

First of all, I want to remind you of my very first linky party….

(Click on the button to see my original post about my party.)

I am sooooo excited. I hope you can come. :)

I can’t wait to see the “best” DIY projects in blogland during the month of March. All you have to do is pick your best DIY project related to home decor or home improvement and link it to my party.

Then after you link up your post to my party, be sure to visit 3 to 5 other blogs and check out their best DIY projects. (And don’t forget to leave an encouraging comment.) :) Let’s spread the love!

I will be using a new linky system called “inlinkz”. You will be able to pick a picture of your project from your post and add it to your link. It will look something like this….(I just added a bunch of links from my blog to give you an example.)

I think it is so much fun to see a “snapshot” of each link! :)

Please pray that it will work out. I am hoping to have the link up and running by Monday night at 9:00 p.m.

Hope to see you there!

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Now to my latest project!

I have been working fast and furiously on my master bedroom re-do. I have gotten a lot done but still have more to do.

I wanted to share with you the entertainment armoire that I found for our bedroom.

As I told you before, I wanted to be able to hide the tv in our bedroom. To do this, I decided to try and find an entertainment armoire to re-do.

I searched at some antique malls and on Craig’s list, but had no luck. The ones on Craig’s list were all $200 to $300, and I didn’t want to pay that much. (Remember, I am doing my master bedroom re-do on a $700.00 budget.)

One day I ran into a Habitat store and saw this armoire…

I walked over to check the price and expected it to be way more than what I would have wanted to pay.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw that it was only $40.00!!! I was so excited!

To be honest, it wasn’t exactly the style I was looking for, but for 40 bucks, I could learn to love it!

When I opened the doors, I quickly realized why it was only 40 dollars…

The back was gone!!

But that didn’t bother me or Eli one bit! That was an easy fix! (My 8 year old help me take these pictures.) :)

I called my honey and said, “Honey, I found an armoire for 40 bucks!”

He said, “Great!”

I said, “The back is gone.”

He said, “Oh.”

“Can you put a back on it for me?”

“Yup.”

So I paid my forty dollars and took that baby home! :)

Here it is from behind…

My hubby applied wood glue to the edges…

And then used his staple gun to nail the new back on…

( 4 x 8 sheet of birch plywood - $18.00 at Lowe’s)

I also need some more storage space inside the armoire for baskets, so my hubby built some extra shelving. He used a 4 x 8 sheet of MDF board for the shelves since we were going to paint them. It cost approximately $ 15.00 at Lowe’s, but we only used a little of it. My husband used the leftover wood to make a work table for his garage.

Here are the products I used…

First I applied a liquid deglosser over the entire piece to prepare the surface for painting.

Then I primed the fronts of the armoire with KILZ. Technically, I should have primed the entire armoire for the paint to adhere properly. However, I knew that I wanted to sand down the edges of the armoire after I painted it. If I had primed the edges, the white primer would have shown through, and I didn’t want that.

So I didn’t prime any of the parts that I was planning on sanding. Again, this is my way, not necessarily the right way. :)

I did prime the insides of the armoire because I knew I would be painting them black.

I used my favorite Valspar paint in black satin to paint it.

Then I used a medium grit sanding sponge to sand the edges like this…

I love the way the cherry wood shows through.

Here it is in my room…

(I am sorry these pictures are not the best, but I think I had my camera on the wrong setting. Now it is nighttime and too late to take any good pictures.)

I love the way it turned out!

I just threw some things on top to take these pictures. :)

And I haven’t bought any handles yet. I am still trying to decide what type I want.

Here is the inside of the armoire…

I got the baskets at Gordman’s. They were 10 dollars a piece. We are using them to store socks and such.

I love the way the doors slide back into the armoire. And the tv is up good and high so we can see it perfectly from our bed! :)

We are using the bottom of the armoire to hold some of my husband’s clothing.

Here are the total costs:

Armoire - $40

Wood for back and shelves – approx. $25.00

Paint - $9.00

Baskets - $20.00

So the whole project cost me less than $100.00! Not bad.

I found this armoire at an antique mall a few weeks ago and almost bought it…

They were asking $375.00 for it. I think my armoire turned out just as nice, and I saved $275.00 by being a little creative!

So I used the money I saved to buy a little “bling” for my room!

Here’s a sneak peak...

Ooh-la-la…I love it!

Stay tuned for more of my master bedroom makeover!

I am linking this project up to…

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch

Make it for Monday at Cottage Instincts

DIY day at A Soft Place to Land

Furniture Feature Friday at Mustard Seed Creations

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

Traci

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,

Our Fireplace Make-over

We have lived in our current house for 4 1/2 years. It was built in 1968 and was definitely a “fixer-upper” when we bought it.

I hope to show you more pictures of the changes we’ve made on future posts, but my before pictures were not digital, so I will have to take pictures of pictures. Like this post…

One change we made to the house this year was the fireplace in our bedroom. It was hand made from Kentucky fieldstone. I love that it looks rustic, but it didn’t seem to fit in with the way I wanted to decorate our bedroom.

It was very “dated”. It had a huge solid wood mantel, but it was stained an “orange-y” color. And then there was the gold tone fireplace cover that seemed to SCREAM 70’s.

I told my husband I wanted to cover it up with paneling like the rest of our room, because I couldn’t figure out how to make it look the way I wanted. (I am SOOOOO glad we didn’t!)

This is a “picture” I took of a “picture” several years ago. Yikes! It’s painful for me to look at. Sorry the picture quality is so poor.

Can you see why I just wanted to cover the whole thing up? So dull and bland.

Finally, this fall, we decided to do something to change it. It was a very SIMPLE and CHEAP re-do.

We started by painting the mantle white and adding some molding details on the top and bottom.

Then we took out the old gold-tone fireplace cover, cleaned up the inside and painted it black, and bought a black fireplace screen from Target to place in front.

My husband also installed can lights in the ceiling to spotlight the mantel.

That’s it! And the difference was amazing!

I added this Christmas picture to compare to the old Christmas picture. And it seems I only take pictures of my fireplace around Christmas time anyway.

The picture below shows the molding he added to the top and bottom of the wood mantel.

We were very pleased with the results.

Blessings!

Cafe Shelves

UPDATE: Click HERE to enter my cafe shelf giveaway that ends Friday, September 4th!

If you have been following my blog, you know that I recently made a lot of changes in my house in preparation for a family reunion.

One of the changes I made was putting up cafe-style shelves in my kitchen.

I got the inspiration from my favorite magazine, Ballard Designs.

They have several different pictures of the shelves in their magazine, but here is an example I found online.

I knew I could make a “knock off” of these “knock out” shelves. So I am participating this week in Knock Off Knock Out at It’s So Very Cheri. Be sure to stop by there and see some other great posts.

And since this was a wonderful change to my kitchen, I am also sharing this post on Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch. There are tons of great ideas over there every week so go check them out!

Then head over to Make Your Monday at Twice Remembered for other great projects. Wow! You’re going to be busy today!

My husband built a pantry in our kitchen last year and made a countertop space beside it, but I have never decorated the wall above the counter. At first, I thought I wanted to put some cabinets in that space. But when I saw the cafe shelves in Ballards, I knew my husband could make them for me.

(The pantry is on the right of this picture.)

This is what the countertop looked like as we worked on projects in the house. LOTS of tools and stuff!

So my husband trimmed out some 1” by 8” ponderosa pine boards.

I bought 4 corbels at Home Depot. I didn’t like the corbels at Lowe’s. Home Depot has a better selection. I got the smaller size of the style I wanted. They were about 5 bucks a piece.

We painted them black and then hung them up on the wall.

I decorated the shelves with my red Southern Living at Home tidbits and casserole dish.

I got the silver strainer at Goodwill for $1.50, and the apples and wall plaque from Marshall’s.

I am so glad I have that spaced filled with colorful things now!

The cafe shelves in Ballard Designs magazine cost between $99.00 to $139.00 EACH, depending on the size.

I don’t have an exact cost on my shelves because we already had the paint and boards. But I spent about $20.00 on the corbels and my husband spent about $10.00 on the trim. My husband said you could buy the boards for about $6.00 a piece. So this project could be done for less than $50.00, not bad!

Thanks for letting me share my project!

(To my followers…Thank you to all of you who have been praying for my mom. We had a wonderful time together at church tonight. My brother-in-law is a Baptist minister, and we met together tonight to lay hands on my mom and pray for her. She has been feeling pretty good lately, but is still very weak. Tuesday is when we meet with the oncologist to get the results from her biopsy. I will definitely let you know what we find out so you can continue to pray for her. I have been blessed by so many of you during this difficult time. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!)

Love in Him,

Traci