Living room and Fireplace Makeover

Here is the living room right after we moved in.  Tall ceilings, one wall with green paint, ugly drapes and a tiny living space.  

 HERE is our living room today! Note the finished archway that J put in for me!  The fireplace trim is simply some poly resin decorative stuff I found at Hobby lobby and regular old decorative wood trim all painted white.  Nevertheless, I love it and it does wonders.  I can't wait until J gets the crown molding up! 

Here's a close up of the mercury glass I have displayed all over the mantle.  Love me some mercury glass!  I did buy the looking glass paint and I have had a ball transforming random glass stuff to beautiful shiny decor! My tip for the looking glass paint, after reading several tutorials online, is to spray a light coat of paint inside your glass object.  Then, lightly mist...LIGHTLY as in one spray up in the air and catch it in your glass, the inside of your creation.  Take a DRY paper towel and blot the inside and even scrape it down the inside of the glass to remove and scratch away the paint.  Do this several times until you get the desired look you're going for and you will have beautiful faux mercury glass decor.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Half Bath Makeover

There's not a whole lot to say about this post.  We ripped down wallpaper, took out that weird divider, replaced the over sized hardware and mirror and added a chair rail.  Here's the before and after:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

guest room to dining room

One of the main problems with our house (on a long list of problems) was that it lacked a dining room.  Soooooo many bedrooms but no dining room!  Well, my amazing hubby made my vision come to life with a simple ceiling medallion for the chandelier I bought and another archway!  Check out the before and after on this one!

BEFORE!!!

AFTER:

Here is our lovely new archway that leads you into the dining room.

This is a goodwill find!  Once an ugly brass lamp, now a lovely centerpiece in my dining room due to a can of metallic bronzed spray paint!

I love this gallery wall!  I loved it soooooo much that I took the frames from my guest room to recreate it in my dining room so I could see it every day!  I took a few old book pages and printed Christmas silhouettes on to them from the computer for the holidays. 

Here's a close up of the Santa silhouette. 

I love this silhouette because it reminds me of my sister and brother growing up.

All the furniture in the dining room are antiques passed down from generation to generation through my family.  Even though I'm not necessarily a fan of light wood or round tables, there's no way I will be painting or re-staining these pieces.  I do plan on changing out the fabric on the seats to coordinate with the gray and gold I have used in this room though.

Can you believe I got this Spode China at Goodwill for .59 a piece?!?!?  The Spode cookies for Santa and milk for Santa cup were also a Goodwill find for $1 new in the box at Goodwill!

Wthl all the Spode for Christmas, I had to purchase this new Spode Christmas table cloth for $20 at Home Goods.  Still a deal since it was listed on Ebay for $60.

I bought a plain card board house from Hobby Lobby to make this gingerbread house.  I added a coat of brown paint and put mod podge on it after it dried.  The sheen came from the glitter I sprinkled on the glue.

To make the icing around the doors and windows, I just stole my hubby's caulk gun.  Some simple candy left over from Halloween and a real graham cracker for the door and I had myself a realistic decoration I can use year after year! 

In-law suite master bedroom to family room

This has been our biggest transformation yet!  We turned the in-law suite master bedroom into a cozy family room.  Here is a before shot of the bedroom when we first moved in:

I still have to paint the back of the fireplace opening black, but can you believe it?  Notice the archway to the right of the mantle.  That wasn't there before and J knocked that wall out to open it into the main living area.  Man my hubby is crafty!!!  He built the fireplace and bookshelf from some pictures I drew and I did the mantle myself.  It was very therapeutic beating the crap out of that wood to get the old distressed look I was going for.

These trees are all made out of old boxes and cardboard and paper I had laying around the house.

Here's a close up of my decor and the mantle.

Below is a pillow I made out of a pretty place mat.  I just painted a "Q" on it because I can never find things monogrammed with our last name.

I have the shelves decorated with Christmas frames and pictures with Santa right now.

I made this "noel" out of scraps of paper and cardboard as well after an inspiring post I saw on Pinterest.

The pillows in the background I made out of some old curtains.  They are simply easy slip covers for my existing pillows and acrylic paint lettered on to say "merry christmas".

To dress up my french doors, I hung red curtains and wrapped garland and candy canes around the top.

Exterior paint

The thing I really did not like about this house when we bought it was the weird orange-ish trim they had around all the windows and the eve of the roof.  It was ugly.  But the landscaping was so bad and over grown that it wasn't hardly noticeable until after I spent all Summer chopping bushes down and moving plants.  One of the projects I did this fall was paint the trim around the windows and I picked a different color for all the front door, back doors and balcony doors.  Hopefully next summer we will be able to repaint the stucco a different color to complete the look.  Here's the before and after:

I got excited when I bought the paint and started in before I realized I didn't have a picture of the front door. The color I chose for this project was Behr cracked pepper.

The existing porch lights got lost with all the beige going on with the house.  Here's whet they looked like before a simple coat of black spray paint.

Beautiful!!!

The chair pictured below was a $3 Goodwill find and a can of apple red glossy spray paint.  I'm going to distress the chair after Christmas to tone it down a bit but for the holidays, I love how bright it is.

In this photo, you can see the orange color of the trim surrounding the windows and on the eves.  YUCK!!!

 

All the garland I made myself from the trees in our backyard.  It took a significant amount of time but was quite easy and well worth my effort I think.  There's nothing quite like real pine garland and it smells amazing!  The urns are just stuffed with various branches and then topped with fake poinsettia stems and pine cones from the backyard as well.

Christmas Entry

In the last post, you saw the NOrth side of our entry so here is what I have hanging on the South wall!
That sign is a little something I whipped up while I was waiting on J to put a second coat of paint on the cabinets.  I simply nailed three pieces of pallet wood together and sanded it lightly on one side for a smooth paintable surface.  Nothing crazy because I hate sanding.
Then I took a regular old paint brush and white acrylic paint and slapped just enough paint on the wood that I didn't have enough to take it to the ends so it looked distressed.

The lettering was relatively easy to do.  In college, I learned this trick where you rub your pencil on the backside of whatever you want to trace.  Then you place the paper, right side up, on the board and trace over the image in pen and it will transfer the pencil onto the white paint.  I free handed "merry"  and the holly but cheated with some simple font off microsoft word.  I painted the letters on with black acrylic paint but you could use a sharpie I'm sure.  I used gray paint for the shadowing then mixed glue and glitter together and went over the paint after it dried because I believe glitter makes everything better!!!!

Here is a close up of my finished project that cost me $0 and looks stunning!  I received several compliments on this at the party I had over the weekend.

My stairway to heaven

We also managed to finish the steps and get the spindles painted.  Here is what the steps looked like before we moved in:

And here are the steps to date and dressed up for the Christmas holiday.  All the pine is real and taken from my trees outside.  I purchase 2 stems of red berries and shiny green stuff and divided them into 6 pairs of "stuff".  I just used wire to fasten it to the white pine and blue fir bundles and zip tied them on the spindles and added a green bow.  It smells great and looks charming too!

Eventually, I'll get around to re-staining the hardwood steps a darker color....