Showing posts with label repurpose. Show all posts

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Updated Armoire in Vintage Green

Finally! With the help of my husband, I finished this DIY armoire. I painted the whole thing a vintage green with oil-based paint because the wood was not in very good shape. There was a very heavy mirror in the door that I took out because I wanted to do something a little French country by adding toile and chicken wire in the door. I will reuse the mirror by having it professionally framed and hanging it horizontally on a wall. On the back of the mirror (which is original to the armoire), was the date November 16, 1928.

My husband made new feet because the ones that were on it did not look original to the piece and did not really match. My inspiration comes from

Flea Market Finds Before & After: Home Decorating with Makeover Miracles.

source

With all my DIY projects, I am kind of trying things out on a smaller scale that I might want to do for a bigger project later. For instance, these knobs very cheaply purchased from Target, are what I would like to buy for my kitchen cabinets when I someday update them. I would buy a more expensive and durable brand than these because they have already had to be repaired with strong glue.

Also, I love the mini green-tinted glass tiles for a kitchen back splash. I would really like to use them on an even bigger scale in the bathroom (subway tile-size). My husband put this tile on the lower top of the dresser. I wanted this part of the dresser to be more durable. I learned quite a bit about glass tile by doing a small-scale project with them. Over-all, I am pretty satisfied with how the dresser turned out and I think this update will last for a long time and helped to protect such an old piece of furniture that probably was not very expensive to begin with. I find this vintage armoire to be a charming addition to my home.

My big passion these days is to study every blog post I can find to prepare me for tackling my old kitchen cabinets. I am absolutely terrified of painting them because I want them to be free of streaks and drips. I have found some really great ideas with this problem and how to antique the cabinets as well. Here is my Pinterest board for all the cool ideas I have found for my cabinet re-do project. Please send me any of your favorite Pins as well and let me know if you have a similar board so I can follow it!

Follow Heather Allen's board Home: Cabinets Redo on Pinterest.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Grateful Living: M.H. Spa Retreat

Count your night by stars, not blackness, Count your time by good deeds done. ~Ethel C. Smith

This is the last of my Grateful Living Series--are you grateful? About 20 years ago I read in my women's church manual about enjoying what you have. An example was given of an older woman who had a very modest apartment without very many material possessions. But what she had, she took good care of. Her apartment was kept neat and clean. There were little touches such as houseplants and photographs and other simple things attractively displayed. The little apartment was inviting, warm and comfortable to guests. Being newly married myself, without hardly a stitch of furniture, the lesson really struck home. I have followed its guidance in every home I've lived in.

vintage pillowcases hide the laundry

It never occurred to me at nineteen that in my forties I would choose to live in a mobile home! I totally sympathize with Janet Palmer who said, "Turning forty was the biggest let-down of my life. I thought I'd be happy and in control by then." However, I know I wouldn't trade my life with anyone else. Having an oasis from disappointments or stress or just plain exhaustion has come in the form of my bathroom or as I like to call it, my "Spa Retreat." I even play soft, soothing music with calming background sounds from nature--just like at a real spa.

My husband replaced the tile and lights, and installed baseboards and the curtain rods, but basically everything else was done by me during a particularly stressful period. The job was therapeutic. We had just added a third bedroom and large bathroom to our mobile home and I thought we'd never get it done. Little did my family know that they would no longer be welcome again in the old bathroom--My Bathroom. You do what you have to to get by sometimes, and having my own bathroom--the only room in the house that no one could mess up was critical to my psyche!

Dealing with the massive mirrors over the tub was the biggest obstacle. They came with dark curtains, but I saw a picture in a magazine of a softer, brighter window treatment and knew that would be simple and inexpensive and a huge improvement. I painted the cheap vanity cabinet with the same kind of paint I used on the baseboards and crown molding (cabinet and trim paint). My husband sanded the knobs to find a really nice "nickel" color underneath the gold so we kept it like that. The only gold is the bathtub faucet because the one that came factory installed fell apart and this very expensive model was practically given away at the hardware store. Everything else in the bathroom is nickle, but I've made peace with the gold faucet.

Pegs hold towels, robes...

I tried flat paint on the walls and ended up repainting with gloss. Satin would probably do just as well, but I was very careful to finish out the mobile home walls so that there were very few flaws to see. I painted the ceiling with Kilz first and then ceiling paint. My best advice for renovating a mobile home is to make sure you're fairly comfortable with what you are doing. Save up for jobs that you don't feel competent, (especially wiring!). Study before you take on drywall, painting, even hanging anything on the wall. As the old saying goes--Measure twice, Cut once!

Keep an idea book of what you like for at least a year before you delve into renovating a room. When you start to see a lot of ideas that go together in your book, you will begin to know better what you want. Some people are super gifted with this--not me. I'm talking to the rest of us who don't have a clue! The main thing is being happy with the results of all your hard work. My goal was that when I was inside my home, it was a home not a mobile home. I can look around and there is nothing left of the "factory installed" and my home is warm, comfortable, and inviting (at least to me!).

Living Small
Homemaking Journals
Homemaking: Homebuilders of the World
Grateful Living: Scaling Down to A Mobile Home
Grateful Living Series: Dress Up M. H. Windows
Grateful Living: Repurposed Trunk
Grateful Living: Class Up the Mobile Home Fireplace
Grateful Living: Front Porches
Grateful Living: The !#*! M.H. Walls
Grateful Living: M.H. Spa Retreat
Grateful Living: My Collection on Reflections of Home

Monday, September 26, 2011

Grateful Living: The !#*! M.H. Walls!

This I learned from the shadow of a tree, That to and fro did sway against a wall: Our shadow selves, our influence, may fall Where ourselves can never be. ~Anna G. Hamilton

Above is how I arranged my collection of cross-stitch samplers. I got the idea from a past issue of Southern Living Magazine. A tip I learned from Martha Stewart is to trace the frames onto wrapping paper and cut out. Using removable tacky putty (whatever it's called), you can try all kinds of arrangements for picture placement. I actually keep pictures from magazines of picture arrangements that I like in my Idea Book. It really comes in handy. Also, Martha taught me to use little Velcro circles to put at each bottom corner of a picture and then press in place to the wall. Then the picture doesn't move out of place. Which is great if you live in a mobile home with paper thin walls. See my post on Picture Groupings.

I wanted to do something my very Southern grandma did in her hall and have my own "hall of fame." As children, my sister and cousins and I loved to look at old family photos, baby pictures, and pedigree charts that literally lined my grandma's enormous and long hallway. Somehow, I had to find a way to make my now less wavy hallway wall more interesting to walk through (and wavy wall even less noticeable). Here's how I got the hall wall's flaws to be less noticeable.

I'm not sure if this is a common occurrence or cheap building gone amuck, but our hall had become a real
sight! For some reason the outside wall is all wavy. My husband's standard response is "What do you expect from a mobile home?" My reply is always, "Remember that wavy wall in our family room in the house we built for $250,000? Bad construction happens folks! I am a great lover of old homes that were built to last but no matter how well-built a house is, there is bound to be something that goes terribly wrong. You can't just blame everything on bad construction and hope your wife backs off!

So we thought about using spackling to even the wall out, but that would really take someone talented with spackle or someone who has a lot of patience--neither of which was us. We thought about replacing the wall board (it's literally a cardboard substance!) with bead board. However, my husband had just put baseboards and crown molding up and we didn't want to mess with that. I thought about painting the wall in vertical stripes as an optical illusion. But the hall is such a narrow space that I thought stripes might overwhelm it even if I used narrow stripes in soft colors.

Finally, I was in Lowe's and became attracted to the paintable wallpaper products and noticed some that looked like bead board. That's what I decided on. My husband, younger daughter and son put the wallpaper up. My husband is a little OCD and soon learned that you didn't have to place the wallpaper to the wall with great force. My son's method of simply placing the paper to the wall gently actually held the best. Here again, my husband complained that nothing was straight in the mobile home and therefore it was impossible to place the wallpaper up straight. I quietly reminded him that we have never lived in any HOUSE where any of the construction seemed straight. That's where the kids came in. They actually seemed to have fun with the project and turned my husband's mood around. Also lots of yummy snacks keep spirits high. I kept the paint color the same in the hall as throughout the house. I use flat paint because wavy walls and other unsightly flaws show up less.

Living Small
Homemaking Journals
Homemaking: Homebuilders of the World
Grateful Living: Scaling Down to A Mobile Home
Grateful Living Series: Dress Up M. H. Windows
Grateful Living: Repurposed Trunk
Grateful Living: Class Up the Mobile Home Fireplace
Grateful Living: Front Porches
Grateful Living: The !#*! M.H. Walls
Grateful Living: M.H. Spa Retreat
Grateful Living: My Collection on Reflections of Home

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Grateful Living: Front Porches

When you live in the country (in a mobile home), you have to give serious consideration to a porch. In our case, we have a closed-in front porch and a "back deck." Since the front door is the easiest to enter from our attached carport, we needed some way to take shoes off before entering the house. This is because there is a lot of dirt in the country. We have a gravel drive which is very dusty when it hasn't rained in a while. Our cars need constant spraying down due to the amount of travel they go through, (we're 30 minutes from the nearest Walmart). Also, front porches are really important in the South for welcoming people. When you live in a mobile home where you walk through the door and HELLO there's your living room, kitchen, dining room, etc., it's kinda nice to greet people on the porch and chat awhile while the family straightens up. My goal was to make my front porch so cozy (as well as a way to trap dirt) that we might just visit there instead. The decor has to be simple but homey so that it doesn't become one more place that requires constant attention. It has to be okay if there are leaves and grass on the floor. They are easily swept away and pretty much expected on a porch. I added what I call Parlor Touches like the knick knacks, pillows, houseplants. A double rocking chair with cushions and corner bench with storage are easy to wipe clean. The porch ceiling is painted a coastal green and the nooks are filled with little treasures. (Ceiling painted Valspar Signature Colors - Southern Breeze SR901)

Living Small
Homemaking Journals
Homemaking: Homebuilders of the World
Grateful Living: Scaling Down to A Mobile Home
Grateful Living Series: Dress Up M. H. Windows
Grateful Living: Repurposed Trunk
Grateful Living: Class Up the Mobile Home Fireplace
Grateful Living: Front Porches
Grateful Living: The !#*! M.H. Walls
Grateful Living: M.H. Spa Retreat
Grateful Living: My Collection on Reflections of Home

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Grateful Living: Class Up The M.H. Fireplace

Some women go through life turning on lamps in the evening. Others are themselves a light. ~Helen Parks

One of the first renovating projects I did (after replacing the carpet!) in our mobile home was to antique the fireplace. The original was pretty cheap looking wood and cheap looking tile. My husband replaced the tile with marble leftover from the house we built. He also painted the fireplace insert with a brown, "hammered-look" spray paint designed for metal that can be exposed to heat (I think Rust-oleum brand). I replaced the blah handles with adorable twig-shaped ones. I used the below product that I found at Walmart at the time. It was very simple. Because the adjacent wall has my cross-stitch collection displayed on it and there's a TV above the mantle, I chose to decorate the mantle sparsely. I have my grandma's figurines from her dining room that my sister and I used to play with (and quite possibly broke!).

I'm pretty siked about another Rust-oleum product on the market that will class up my kitchen cabinets. I chose a light color for the fireplace to make the tiny living room appear larger. I would do the same with the kitchen cabinets as well: http://cabinets.rustoleumtransformations.com/

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Grateful Living Series: Repurposed Armoire

Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have. ~Kiki Knickerbocker

Living in a mobile home, I had to think about whether I could use another piece of furniture (painted girly pink) that my sister was wanting me to take. She was about to give it to someone else when I realized that it was just what I needed in my master bath as a linen closet. I had my husband move the tiny pantry-sized factory-installed cabinet to the kitchen where I could place cans of food in it, and made space for this very pink armoire.

The armoire stayed on the front porch for quite a few days. Every family member would go out there and sand on it a little. It wasn't until my eldest daughter spent about three days sanding that I was finally inspired to really go to work.

I pulled off the bottom door that hinged open and painted that space as well. I found two lined, white baskets at Lowe's that fit perfectly in this opening. My husband placed two more shelves in the side of the armoire normally used for hanging clothing. We used regular shelf board from Lowe's. You iron-on strips to the exposed sides of the shelf to give it a finished look (it's really cool). We replaced the door handles with something that looked vintage and actually fit the piece better than the original. I was going for a spa look in my bathroom so white furnishings with the metal door handles added a minimalist, clean feel.

I was inspired by these two pictures from Before and After (ISBN 1574862960). The first picture convinced me to paint the armoire and the second one showed me what I could do with the empty space once I took off the hinged door on the bottom of the armoire. I'm only sorry that I didn't take a "before" shot.

Living Small
Homemaking Journals
Homemaking: Homebuilders of the World
Grateful Living: Scaling Down to A Mobile Home
Grateful Living Series: Dress Up M. H. Windows
Grateful Living: Repurposed Trunk
Grateful Living: Class Up the Mobile Home Fireplace
Grateful Living: Front Porches
Grateful Living: The !#*! M.H. Walls
Grateful Living: M.H. Spa Retreat
Grateful Living: My Collection on Reflections of Home

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Grateful Living: Repurposed Trunk

The Spirit of the Hive (Beehive girls' theme): Have Faith. Seek Knowledge. Safeguard Health. Honor Womanhood. Understand Beauty. Value Work. Love Truth. Taste the Sweetness of Service. Feel Joy.

My oldest daughter and I worked on this trunk that my mom had been given by an elderly neighbor who had recently passed away. It was in pretty bad shape. I wasn't sure if there was anything that could be done. But it was built of solid construction and had a lot of character. Then I saw the trunk pictured below in Flea Market Finds, Before and After, Leisure Arts (ISBN 1574862960). Since it was a trunk, we decided to go with a travel theme. As can be seen, the cushion on top of the trunk has gotten a lot of use. I really like this blog that inspires me to repurpose older furniture: http://fineandhandy.blogspot.com/.