The First Step: Living Room

Leave it to me to wait until 10:35pm on the last day of the month to try and even work towards my blogging goal. Eesh.

At any rate, as of two days ago, we have finally accomplished the first step in furnishing/decorating our living room. Yes, it had furniture and decorations but it is a far cry from My Dream Living Room. If you looked at my Home Tour, you would have seen what our living room looked like three days ago. Well, I am tickled pink to say that after three different shopping days, many measurements and drawings, and eight stores on the final trip, we have purchased and received our new couch!!!

Other than bar stools, this is the first new piece of furniture we have bought.

I love it!

If you need a reminder, here's the before: 

And now:

(don't mind the drawers out of the dresser...hubby was in the middle of a project and I wanted to get the pictures before I left for work since when I came home it would be dark out)

 Before:

Now:

I am SO happy we kept looking until we found this one! There was a couple before it we almost bought. I am also quite glad that we didn't go with a bigger sectional. Our small living room can only handle so much furniture and the big reclining super comfy couch will be for our basement someday.

I had originally wanted grey, but after realizing there are so many brown tones downstairs with the kitchen cabinets, wood floor and carpet, I should probably compliment those tones. I am really happy with the color we chose. Kinda an oatmealish. In some lights it looks light brown/tan but in others it looks kinda grey. So I got what I wanted while still complimenting the browns. Double win!

As if I'm not happy with this couch enough, we discovered it can fit not just the 2 ways we originally measured for, but also a third. Ooooo, the rearranging/decorating flexibility makes me giddy.

So Step 1 is accomplished! Now onto Step 2, which I'm not entirely sure which that should be: curtains or different coffee table. Hmm...advice?

P.S. I did purchase the curtains from My Dream Living Room and they just did not work. Too orange and too small. So I'm back to the drawing board and totally clueless. Any ideas? I'd love to hear/see them!

DIY Entryway Table Part 3

You probably thought I would never blog again. And even if I did come back, you probably thought I would never finish that darn entryway table. Well, if you did think those things--think again!

I am back and definitely sad that I have been away for so long. Teaching Kindergarten in the morning and math for 3rd and 4th graders in the afternoon as well as keeping a close eye on our house-in-progress left little time for blogging. But as with all school years, summer comes and there is more time!

We finished the table back in April during a weekend that tricked us into thinking summer weather was here to stay.

In case you forgot, here's a refresher of the not-so-pretty-looking table.You can look at Part 1 and Part 2 to see how we got this far.

 
 Close-up shot in case you thought from the other picture that it was "not too bad".

 Being my our first DIY wood-refinishing project, we just guessed our way through what to do. Yes, yes, I know there are so many how-to's and directions on Pinterest. But, when your husband suggests spur-of-the-moment to finish it since the weather is nice, it is better to just get up and go while's he's willing  to help rather than say, "hold on honey, first we need to do our Pinterest research." And I wasn't too concerned about doing it just right either because again, this table is our funky little creation that we don't intend to keep forever (although we quite possibly might).

So at any rate, we could tell there was some sort of varnish on it and figured we should probably sand the table. Did I get that one right? At least partial credit? 

 The little hand sander wasn't going to get the job done like we wanted so we pulled out the belt sander.

 After getting it all de-varnished and smoothed down, it was time to paint! You can tell by the pictures (in case my own admittance isn't enough) that we are total amateurs...we didn't even own a paint stick so used an actual stick. 

I like painting things! I'm no artist by any means but give me a piece of wood and one color and I can get it covered for ya! I am so eager to try a wall (or two or three) in our house eventually despite hubby's unrelenting insistence that painting is "not that fun." Hmmm...maybe he's right but I want to find out for myself.

 There she is! We let it dry overnight and put a second coat on the next day. Since I got the paint from Re-Store, I'm not sure what the color is called, but I'm calling it Iced Mint. What do you think? Should I apply for a job to name paint colors or OPI nail polish? Maybe not. But either way, I'm so happy with how our first little project turned out! Now this summer I need to spend some time reading those Pinterest directions so that next time I am prepared.

And I just realized as I was putting pictures up that I totally neglected to take any pictures of the table back in the house with the cute May decor on it. Unfortunately I can't take a picture right now either because we are moving in one week (YAY!!!) so all the decor stuff is packed away. Once we are in the new house and this little Iced Mint table is re-decorated, I will post a picture and then the story will truly be over!

Check back later this week for pictures of our finished house! :)

What was your first DIY wood-finishing project? Did it turn out like you hoped?

I've linked up at the following parties:

 The Girl Creative

DIY Entryway Table Part 2

Some of you may remember that back in October I posted about an Entryway Table project that Nate and I started. You can read Part 1 here.

Well, it took us longer than we anticipated to get to Part 2, but two weekends ago we were finally able to do it (and two weeks later I finally have time to blog about it, sheesh!)

I'm not sure I can really describe to you what we did in this segment, or how we put it all together. Like I mentioned in Part 1, this was a table we got from his grandma when she moved it. It was built by someone in the family and so we were attempting to re-configure it. We had some road-bumps and complications (breaking a drill and losing a drill press key) but we were able to get 'er done.

First we attached the legs back onto the top using the original hardware.

And then I stopped taking pictures because well, how do you take pictures of breaking a drill and searching for a lost key. And then by the time we got back into business, I forgot about my camera (I even left it out in the garage that night, oops!) We attempted to use original bottoms of the legs that we had cut off as little risers under the bottom shelf. However, when we tried to drill up through the center to attach it to the bottom shelf, it broke. And so, we decided to go without risers.

Here is the (almost) finished product. We basically cut the table top in half and re-attached one half as a bottom shelf under the legs. Seems simple, but it took so much longer and more work than it sounds like haha. Looks kinda cheesy, I know, but for the time being while we live in this rental, I am okay with free, re-built, no-risers entryway table. I am planning to paint it by the way (that will be Part 3...and I bought the paint yesterday!)

Here it is put to use and spruced up!

DIY Entryway Table Part 1

My husband's grandma moved out of her house this summer into a retirement home and had to give away several things. This wooden card table was sitting in the garage, unclaimed...so I put my name on it. I immediately saw potential for it.

What, you may ask am I going to do a with a flimsy, wooden card table? Well...I'm going to cut it in half and make it into an entryway table for that space on the kitchen floor with all that bare wall you can see in the picture above. Since this table isn't the best quality, we decided it will work great for our rental home now and then if we choose to, we can build a better/nicer one for our new home someday. Half will be the table-top and the other half will be a low shelf. We'll see how it goes!

First we unscrewed all the legs. Make sure you keep all the hardware!

Hubby loves a chance to use his power tools. :)

Yay! A project for our new radial arm saw! Hubby found this on Craigslist for a great deal and we couldn't pass it up as we each look forward to many projects.

Measuring to find the middle.

All set to cut it in half!

First time using a skill saw.

According to my man, "you made a really good cut!" oh, and don't forget to wear those sexy safety glasses.

Now to cut reinforcement spacers for the legs.

Pretty fun using power tools!

The reinforcement spacers are glued and clamped on to dry.

The other half drying on a  "work table". We have limited space in our garage but look forward to a nice shop someday!

Come back later to see part 2 and the finished result!!!