I can’t believe I forgot to share this with you all! I was so proud of the final product and it has been hidden away?!

I took a jewelry box and painted it to give it a new look.

Sanding of course is the worst part of any wood working job.

I got the paint in the oops section of Home Depot.
50 cents for for a paint sample that no one wanted.. score!

I painted the flower and swirls using craft paint. I didn’t really have a plan, I kind of just went along with how it looked and what it needed more of. I think it turned out nice.

I also mod-podged some scrapbook paper to the insides, but I forgot to take a picture of that… of course! I also painted the handles white (another oops paint score for 50 cents).

- ASH

Happy tax day! I hope you all got everything in on time. We did well this year, the Hubster and I finished up ten days before! Last year I was in the long line at the post office getting the 4/15 date stamp on my envelopes.

Umm .. I digressed early this time. Back to my chalkboard.

I had this black, framed, plastic thingy that my sister and I had since our college days. It was used as a white board, except you had to have it over something light to see the writing. It was cool, but after the years, the markers don’t erase as well as they used to. It had been hanging around on the kitchen floor. Yea, I know what you are thinking. I have no explanation for it. I promise, my house is not as messy as it sounds .. okay just a little messy. Hehe

Annywhoo.. a few weeks ago, I was cleaning up and I finally got fed up with it hanging around the kitchen floor and I came up with an idea of changing it up to a chalkboard. I already had the paint from one of my incomplete/failed DIY wedding projects last year. So that’s what I did!

The front and back of the chalkboard.

Of course, my impatience got the worst of me as I didn’t bother to spray primer on before hand. But I jorified (jorified: my word for when I come up with a weird way of fixing something ) the process. I painted one thin coat and used a blow dryer to dry it as a base coat. Then with each coat I kept using the blow dryer to dry it until I got a nice smooth surface. It worked out well; except I didn’t get in the cracks so I have to go back.

See that slit of white/cream color, that’s the crack that I missed. 

It looked nice but it needed something more, like designs around the frame. I got this nice template of floral border designs, sorry I don’t have the link for it but you can google “floral border designs”. I couldn’t figure out a way to trace on to the frame so I free handed, while looking at it.

Isn’t the design pretty? I free handed with a pencil first.

Then painted using the paint you get at the craft store.

 Here it is half way done, with just the vines painted in.

I just used what I had on hand. I think it turned out pretty nice. I still need to gloss the frame so that it looks a bit different than the middle chalkboard.

I think it turned out quite nice!! Do you like it? I was thinking of selling it, anyone interested?

- ASH

I’m back with the reveal of our master bedroom. What can I say, things work a bit slowly around here. You can see part 1 and part 2.

You can see most of the room in this picture: the bed, rug, and the blue paint. What you can’t see is the lonely brown wall. Next to the bed on the left side of the picture is the night stand and a milk crate filled with books/magazines/journal for me. I also have a spot light hanging from the bed side for when I want to do some reading/knitting in bed. On the right side is an ottoman that stores extra candles.

Here’s the other side of the room, with both wall colors. The doors on the very left are to the bathroom. And the one in the center goes to the hallway. (Please excuse my vacuum peeking out from the hallway.) The double doors is the Hubster’s closet (he doesn’t get much space).

And to have more storage for our clothes and my jewelry (I have A LOT!) we got this humongous wardrobe from Ikea. I didn’t realize how big it was until we put it together. I just hope that in the future if we move, it fits where we go. Right now its about an inch from the ceiling. I also want to put curtains in front of it so you can’t see the clothes. But for now this shall do. Right next to it is our floor lamp that was a wedding gift. It provides just the right amount of light and is controlled by a switch near the door.

This is at the foot of the bed, it hold a lot of stuff fro us. It is actually a wall shelf that I decided not to put on the wall. The two bowls are used to keep his and her keys. Baskets for other items. (Please ignore the “Mudd” shoebox there, it’s our first aid kit.) There are two black (Ikea) boxes, one for the Hubster and one for me, that keeps our important papers that we need for the month such as bills. We compete for whose box will be on top, making them more important.

The duvet cover is from West Elm and the rest of the set is a “bed-in-a-bag” from Bed Bath and Beyond that I had bought with a huge discount a couple years back. I love the duvet cover; doesn’t it look inviting?! Oh, I also got a “summer comforter” from Ikea to switch out after winter is FINALLY over.

I leave you with a picture of our Vikings that sit at the foot of the bed. Aren’t they cute?

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the turn out. It is functional and pretty. So what do you think of it? Anything you suggest changing?

-ASH

It was New Years day and we were trying to figure out what to do that day. I realized that the Hubster’s classes would start in a couple weeks and suggested we paint our room this weekend. And with that our new years day plan was set. Of course we didn’t start immediately.

After some lounging around we decided to hit the store. Yes, Home Depot was open. As we go there (7:30 pm, I told you we lounged around) I looked at the store hours and realized we had 30 minutes to get all our necessities!! Yikes! Lucky for us, I had made a list of all the things wee needed to do our first paint job. However the unlucky part was we didn’t have a set color in mind. We knew what we didn’t want and kind of what we did but nothing in particular.

See those two color samples on our wall? We didn’t want them, rather something in between.

As we went up and down the paint aisles I figured that at least we can prep the room with tape and such that night and get the paint in the morning the next day. Yup, that was the logical thing to do. But the laws of the universe kicked in to gear and gave me the brilliant idea of hurriedly picking two colors, get them made, and be the last one out of the store. I’m sorry Home Depot workers, i was THAT person. I also had a feeling that this decision was going to bite me later, but hey, now we had our paint and paint supplies!

Back at home, we got busy taping the walls off. The plan was to paint the wall you see in the picture above blue and the rest a brown shade.

Room is ready to paint. 

We painted our blue accent wall that night as well. The next day was scheduled for the rest of the room. The blue color was looking great .. I did well!!

The next day I was all excited and got up early to start on the rest of the painting. I finished the first brown wall and it was time to go to a family birthday lunch. I looked and looked and tried to like the brown. I just didn’t. In fact I could not see it go up on the other two walls at all.

The quick color decision cost me an ugly wall. But it was on to plan B. It didn’t look AS bad by itself; just the fact of three walls looking like this was not going to happen. At least not on my watch. We went back and got more blue and painted the other two walls the same blue color.  I compromised 1. the brown was going to stay 2. the “accent” wall was no longer the accent wall 3. at least we don’t look like we’re in a fish tank (with all four walls blue).

In the end, I like how it turned out with plan B.

What do you think? Plan B look good or should we have stuck with plan A? Stay tuned for the final reveal.

- ASH