Changing a Light Bulb

I promise I will not make any jokes about  “How many (insert witty line) does it change the lightbulb?” because this is not a joking matter and I can, in fact, do it all by myself. A very long time ago, February to be exact, I posted about a candle holder I converted to a light fixture. It was a good post and all, but lacked an explanation on how I accomplished it. The light bulb finally went out so I used that as a reason to get back up there and snap some pictures.First let’s take a look at the original light, well, just something similar to the original. Can you believe this costs $5.98 at Lowes? Crazy sauce. That’s like six McDoubles.

This is what I planned to replace it with. The opening was the exact same size as the light base. The silver stand was able to be unscrewed, flipped and screwed back in place. You can buy it online here but it’s 50% off in store maybe every other week.

This is after I removed the cover. When I first did this, it was to see if I even could. Once I decided it would work, I didn’t really finish anything because I was too busy gleaming about my success. Anyways, the base was left ivory, but wasn’t meshing with the crystal cover.

A little Rub n’ Buff took care of it! I had it out when I was doing the buffet. I was lazy again and didn’t tape anything off. I was shooting for “good enough”. From the floor, it looks flawless. I’m satisfied.

Once the lightbulb was changed and checked to see if it worked, it was time to put the cover back on. The screws are a part of the original light fixture so I took a paper clip, wrapped it around the crystal cover securely then wrapped it around the screw. There are three screws total I did it to each one. It takes longer to get the ladder out than to actually do this. I originally did this about a year ago, and have had zero problems with it except the light bulb burning out. It’s really easy to take it off and put back on so it’s not permanent.

There you go! Lights ON.

Lights OFF.
Anyone else attaching random objects to the ceiling and calling them light fixtures?

Antiquing an Antique

It’s possible, and I totally did it. I have a buffet that backs up to some chairs in my living room. I absolutely love the piece, but was having a lot of inner turmoil over whether to paint it or not. Believe it or not, sometimes wood it pretty. The buffet was lacking something and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. I’ve had this almost three years, and just kind of let it be because nothing was lighting my Christmas tree if you know what I mean.

Last week I came across a post of an updated buffet using Rub n’ Buff, and let me tell you, it looks amazing!  So I aspired to do something similar because, that’s what blogs are for??? Inspiration?!?!

 

Here’s my ingredients,

• Rub n’ Buff in Silver Leaf (It’s what I had on hand from this project.)
• Paintbrush
• Paper Towels
• Folk Art Antiquing Medium in Apple Butter Brown
• ONE finger

First off, I rubbed in the Rub n’ Buff into the wood trim. As soon as I would finish one part I would be like “Oh this part would look cool in silver too! Oh and this part! And THIS part!” I ended up silver leafing the trim, embellishments, hardware and legs.

Here’s a quick comparison. The silver wasn’t so bold in person, but it needed a little more dimension.

This is the original hardware and I lovvve it. It’s in really good condition, but also needed a little more emphasis. I put the tiniest smidge on my finger, because a little goes a LOOOONG way and lightly grazed it over the hardware just to hit the top of it and not go into the crease. So easy. Why did it take so long?

This is what it looks like when I put on the antiquing medium. Brush on, Wipe off. I don’t leave it on very long at all, maybe 30 seconds? I’ll bust out the stop watch next time.

This photo most accurately shows what it looks like. It’s still very silver, but has a nice aged look added to it now. I think it could have looked incredible in gold, but I didn’t have enough foresight to see that through. Most of my spontaneous projects evolve out of what I have on hand. I’m still happy with it though.

For a little sneak peek to the inner workings of my brain, I started the day preparing to clean the floors, that is so desperately needed based on this picture but quickly realized that updating this piece would be SO.MUCH.MORE.FUN!

This is the finished product for now product. The whole thing took about a half hour since all the parts I highlighted were raised, I didn’t need to tape it off for a crisp line.

I just need some magical potion that will help with the scratched and water spots on the wood. It could use a little rejuvenation without being completely refinished. Anyone have any recommendations?

P.S. the floors never did get cleaned either.

I Really Love Lamp

Consider me frustrated for forgetting to take a before shot. You see, I had this lamp, and it was brass kinda like the one below. While it could have worked in my decor as plain ol’ brass lamp, I was craving something different.

I found the perfect drum shade from Ross for $14.00. I wish they had ten, I would have bought all of them.

For the lamp base, I picked pink! First I sprayed it with Krylon’s white primer that I had on hand. For smaller, more detailed projects I totally prefer Krylon over Kilz. Krylon comes out way smooth and gives the perfect base coat for a project like this. Kilz I like for furniture, but sometimes comes out chunky.

After the primer I finished it up with Krylon spray paint in Watermelon. The color is not exactly subtle but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s taking a lot of self control to not paint any and everything pink. I love being a girl.

Drool. It is exactly what I wanted to be. It’s my pink artichoke lamp.

It so perfect that the color is called watermelon, because it hangs out in my “green room” or the den and everyone KNOWS that green + pink = watermelons, duh.

Ahhh, look at my nekkid pillows on the sofa! How embarrassing! The covers are in the wash, but I’m ready to make something new for it. Oh and you get to see a sneak peek  of Christmas! Plenty more to come there.

I’m happy with the way it turned out for less than $20. I forgot to mention, it was a gift from my mom she picked it up from an estate sale. I’d like to do something interesting to the lamp shade, but I still need the inspiration to strike me like lightning preferably without the hospital bills. I’ll probably check out Anthropologie’s lamp shade, I’m sure there is plenty to copy, er… “get inspired by” over there. Seriously, who can afford their shades? Or anything they sell for that matter?

Anyone else craving bright and bold colors?

New Door Handles… Be Still My Heart

This is by far one of my favorite updates I’ve done in a long time. I’ve been wanting to replace all of the brass egg knobs on all of my doors, but with so many doors and knobs not being that cheap when you add it all up, it simply wasn’t a priority. See how ugly and dirty and scratched up and neglected this poor french door is? How sad.

This past weekend I was walking through Hobby Lobby, looking for something completely unrelated, and stopped dead in my tracks to inspect these beauty. This was love at first site. You may not think it exists, but I swear on my life it does. These were on clearance for $5.68 each down from $20, I’ll take four, thankyouverymuch!

Oh thank heavens, there wasn’t a giant hole drilled though! Make my life much easier! Just took some wood filler, and a sanding to get it all fixed up. Of course I cleaned the door and all of the stupid, tiny, cornucopia of window panes then slapped on some fresh bright white paint. I didn’t realize how yellow the old trim door and trim color was. You’ll just have to take my word on it since I can’t find that picture.

You saw earlier that they were brass which was fine and dandy, but not exactly what I wanted. That door is really close to my built in desk which has all silvery hardware. I’m down with mixing and matching, just wanted something different.I bought some Rub n’ Buff in Silver leaf (in the below photo, top right). I’ve read enough blogs to know it was awesome, but never had a reason to get some of my own. I just happened to spot some down an aisle and  there it was, in the flesh, begging me to take it home. So I did, and let me tell you, they should rename this product. Forget Rub ‘n Buff just call it Magic. How can one tiiiny little drop do that! I was all like, “CALEB!!!! COME QUICK!!!”  Wow, gee cool, Gloria. I thought it was awesome. It kept it all antiquey but I really like the switch up.  If you have never used Rub ‘n Buff, I URGE you to FIND a reason to buy it, seriously awesome. Imminently life changing.

Drool.
I’m so happy with the way it looks, and that I actually cleaned this door for the second time ever. Panes are a pain.

Now to clean the rest of my house! Oh and I guess I hadn’t mentioned it already after getting so caught up in all of the love and magic, this is the first of many makeovers for this room. I’m turning this into my crafting/studio room. It’s not that I don’t love my original studio, it’s that the space didn’t function very well for me unless I was sewing. I’ll be getting an awesomely huge crafting table as soon as I can find a truck to bring it to my house then bringing in other furniture and what not. So for this pending makeover, what better way than to start at the door. Voila! Cross this off the list!

Any one else out there get way too worked up over simple changes like me?

Dog Food Storage

There’s nothing worse than having to sneeze after you just swallowed eighty percent of the food in your mouth because that usually means you don’t have to worry about about swallowing the other twenty percent. My poor computer screen, oh well I guess I didn’t need those calories. Sorry KitKat, you were delicious though. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything except that it just happened.

What I REALLY wanted to share with you is my dog food storage. If I didn’t know and hang out with me I would think I was obsessed with my dogs, my husband knows this is not entirely the case. They drive me CRAZY about sixty to one hundred percent of the time (What’s my deal with percentage all of a sudden?) all the hair, mud, slobber, sneaking out of the yard four times in one week, fixing holes under the fence after each prison break, the tearing up of drywall, the barking, the vomiting, the STILL peeing inside the house even though I thought we were done with that, the humping each other on OUR bed where I SLEEP, having to change the sheets every three days because of all the invisible dirt, hair, and yuck that only I can see and not Caleb but doesn’t mean it’s not there, the garbage from the trash can when they go all CSI up on it, and having to let them out in the morning at crazy hours that I should not even know exist. Enough complaining.

Previously I had been using a woven hamper in the den by the back door to keep the food in. It worked fine when we just had one dog, but when one turned into two, it was one dog food bag in the hamper the other sitting unattractively in the middle of the room. Plus it had seen better days no thanks to Durant.

Look closely, there is a dog INSIDE the food basket.

Always trying to get in….

Preferring to eat the food in the basket rather than what was laid out for him. He tells me its the “experience”…

Whatever it was, changed needed to happen but I wasn’t necessarily on the hunt for it. I was strolling through Ross looking for something different entirely, saw this and had the light bulb moment. Perfect size, perfect pattern, doubles as seating and isn’t as easy to sneak inside. Sold.

The pattern fits perfectly inside my home. It wasn’t as cheap as I would like, I prefer free, but it was still on the low end at $36. Which is worth it considering the headache that it was before.
Success! It all fits!

 

Where do you keep your pet food?

Doggie Duvet

I am a mean, terrible, horrible person. That’s what Elway would say if you asked him about me. You see, I refuse to let him sleep in the bed. He is too BIG and DIRTY and just plain INTRUSIVE. Who wants that??? Well, Caleb for one, but not I. They both lost this battle. Being the only girl in the house, I get a little more veto power and I exercised my right. Elway still constantly gets up on the bed and it drives me INSANE. He literally jumps from the kitchen onto the bed which is crazy far away. Sometimes I want to strangle that dog.

He has grown out of the stupid chewing everything phase which demolished his previous dog bed. You know, it’s kinda hard to force a dog to sleep on the floor without giving them an acceptable alternative. I figured I could make him a bed because they cost way to much in the store, aren’t even big enough, and don’t match anything. The last point is VITAL.

Enter my old curtains. Perfect amount of fabric, doesn’t clash and don’t need ’em anymore for . SCORE.

I wanted this to be a BIG bed so I didn’t even cut it down. To start, I folded it over inside out and sewed along the edges.

Once the sides are all sewn up, I just turned it right side out and put in a giant pillow that I made from old stuffing and styrofoam  I had laying around the house. Seriously, it was an old cushion that was too big to fit in the closet so it was just standing against the wall in the living room.  Something HAD to be done.

Here it is all stuffed up. My own little, er GIANT, doggie duvet. This is the back side so you can see how it goes in.

This is the top side. I know it looks kinda lumpy, but c’mon, it’s for a DOG. He doesn’t care. He eats poop. And dried worms. He is SO not a diva. Durant on the other hand totally is. What is it about small dogs?

Elway loves it! And it’s a better size compared to his old one which was the extra large size but was NOT extra large because half of his body hung off it. He actually sleeps on it! But sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I find him sneaking onto the bed, then I do the figure S snap in the dark and he hops down feeling all defeated. I win.

Durant likes it too. He thinks its just his size. I think not.

Check out that booty! Showoff!

You know what was harder than making it was trying to get a decent picture of the dogs. It felt like The Ring or some horror movie, every time I took a picture then looked in the camera something terrible came up.

Oh no! Seven DAYS!

So that’s all. I’m off to get my THIRD cup of chai today.

I.

have.

a.

problem.

The Pillow Formerly Known as Tea Towel

It’s Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday!!! I don’t know why I’m so excited about that but, oh wait! I do know… It’s my anniversary! Been married for three years now. It has gone by so fast. Sometimes I still feel like we’re in highschool. When the heck did I grow up and become old enough to get married and how in the world has it been THREE years?!? I never in 4.2 BILLION years (because that’s how “old” the “earth” “is”, Guffaw!) would have thought that at age twenty-three that I would have been married for three years… to a captain of the football team. Me?!?!? The Art Nerd! I love you Caleb! Happy Anniversary to ME!!

Okay, so this tea towel. It’s such a lovely shade of turquoise and my mom picked up these two at an estate sale. They kinda sat in a bag for a while before I decided to put them to use. I’m on a kick of getting all of the tiny little projects done, and this is one of them. Oh it feels so good to clean out the clutter and MAKE STUFF. No more “someday” or “eventually” excuses.

My one condition is that I didn’t want to spend any money on it, for like the filling. I did what any sane person does and tore open some old pillows I didn’t use anymore but didn’t have the cahones to throw away. What if I NEED it someday! I think that’s a hoarders mentality.
Here is is all sewn up now. I made it the fastest way which doesn’t include a zipper or a way to get the stuffing out. It’s okay though because it’s going in one of those not used very much rooms.

It looks lumpy because I was just testing it out. Success, it works! I really love the  pillow with all of the colors with the newly painted side table.

Haha dog butt! He’s been working out and just wants to be applauded for his efforts. Silly Durant. Maybe I’ll submit this to pets on furniture.

Well, that’s one less bag of stuff to do laying around. What have you been working on?

Linked up:

Look at all Those Legs: Part Duex

I know I just posted about this table and called it done, but I couldn’t convince myself that I really liked it. It looked lazy, and unfinished and it didn’t take long for me to get on it and show it a little more appreciation. First, let’s start from the beginning.

Just the plain ol’ wood…

Then the gray with white stripes.

I guess I kind of liked it, but it lacked a bit of pizzazz. It fell flat in the room, more like a piece of furniture was thrown in place rather than it intentionally placed there. Be warned, what I’m about to show you is a little “out there.” I can tell you right here and now that not everyone will love the after, but for me it’s perfect…. until I change my mind again. At least, I don’t feel like I’m convincing myself I like it, but my tastes may change down the road, who knows.

I still wanted to do stripes, but a more interesting version. Out came the bright colors and painters tape. I started with what I already had and built on from there.

I think I’ve been subconsciously inspired by all the Target Missoni hoopla because I think the finished product channels it a little bit. I didn’t intend to hence the subconsciously inspired bit.

It’s a cornucopia of color now and helps tie in some of the other colors in the room that may have felt a bit disjointed. I feel like it fits my personality so well, my decorating personality that is.

Here you can see a tiny peek at the green ceiling. It’s all coming together!

It makes me so much happier than the previous table.

Linked up at:

Little Projects Take the Longest

This may not be true for everyone, but it’s true for me. Some of these little projects take forever to finish only because they take forever to START. See this chair…

I’ve had it as long as I’ve had my other chairs which were made over when we bought our house almost two years ago. I didn’t finish them at the time because the table we had wasn’t big enough to hold six chairs. THEN I got a larger table that is the perfect size for the room, it just had to extra chairs sitting around mismatching like crazy…

They may look like the green chairs, and they are EXTREMELY similar, but they aren’t. One is a gala apple, and the other a fuji, at first glance you can’t tell at all but on closer inspection, you can. Anyway, off came the seat so it can be recovered.

I bought extra fabric at the time I did my other chairs knowing that these would also get redone down the road. I didn’t know it would take me two years, so it is definitely a good thing I bought it when I did since it’s no longer for sale. I badly wish it was because I want this fabric for my master bedroom curtains. Oh what could have been!

I didn’t even take off the old fabric, I just put it right on top. I did “test it out” to see if I could see the fabric underneath it in the sun. Nope, onwards.

Align, staple, pull, staple, pull, staple.

Staple

Staple

Staple

Fold

Staple

Staple

Screw back into place. How’s that for a tutorial? I’m awesome.

No more clashing! Why did I put off a half hour project for so long? I’m glad the fabric swatches aren’t wasting space anymore. It makes me want to put to use so many other items laying around the house and TRUST ME there is puhhhlenty of that going on.

I think I’ve convinced myself I like having the chairs mismatched a bit with the paint and wood. I’m mostly talking myself into it because I REALLY don’t want to sand, prime and paint anything right now or in the foreseeable future. Laziness prevails.

At least it looks intentional now, it only took TWO years.

New Buttons

I feel so blessed by all of the sweet, encouraging words that were left yesterday. I feel such a sense of clarity after getting those words out and it helped me monumentally. Thank you for listening. You help so much!

Today I thought I would share a teeny tiny update that has absolutely nothing to do with paint… or my house. It’s my sweater! When I bought it, it was missing TWO buttons and only had one backup button. So I took them all off and left it buttonless for awhile, out of sheer laziness, nothing else. Finally, when I got around to it I put some new fun buttons on it and it gives it more character now.

I chose orange, because I love me some unexpected character. Even though I have a hundred other sweaters to wear, I find myself grabbing this one the most. It keeps my outfits from getting too snoozy.

I’ve done this with quite a few items in my closet and its so simple. All it takes is some new buttons, a needle and thread. No tutorial here, sorry. I did this awhile ago, but was wearing this today, and thought, “Hey, I should share this!” So I did. And here it is.

I’ve changed buttons on a few other “cheap” pieces I buy. My sister and I complain about that a lot. Some items you can just tell they were cheap because of the buttons, but changing them out is an easy fix. Kinda like replacing the hardware on cabinets and dressers. Same concept!

I know what you’re thinking….

LEGEN……

DARY!!!!!

As for the orange, I don’t know, I just love the unexpected pop. It may not be your cup of tea, so it’s a good thing I’m the one drinking it!

P.S.   I rarely wear scarves, but I did today because I spilled salsa on my shirt… Last night… Because I wore it TO BED!!!

GASP!!!!