Master Bathroom Makeover: Painted Card Catalog Cabinets

We are so close to being at the end of this bathroom makeover tunnel.  I'm seeing the light and it is glorious!  There are just 2 items left on my to-do list, and I can stick a fork in this room.  Okay, that figure of speech doesn't work at all in that context.  But you get it. (Update:  You can now see our full bathroom reveal!)

One huge step for this space, which I had been putting off for too long was painting our builder grade cabinets.  To be honest, I was scared.  This wasn't like a piece of furniture that I could take out to the garage and strip a bad paint job or give up on altogether if it didn't go well.  These were cabinets.  There was no turning back if my DIY went awry.

But you know what I realized?  I had nothing to be afraid of!  It was all in my head.  And if I royally messed it up, at least they weren't our kitchen cabinets.  (Hence why I considered this practice for that big space one day.)  Robert and I are the only ones who see these cabinets so no pressure.

Here's how they looked before.

I'll admit; they really weren't bad at all.  And they were at least on the more high end of the builder grade scale.  But they had a reddish tint that drove me nuts.  Red and I don't get along usually.

I didn't document every single step on this one since this was my trial run, but now that I'm the "expert" (definitely need quotations there), I'm sure you'll be seeing one at some point.  For now, you can check out this really thorough one about how to paint cabinets that Laura from The Turquoise Home posted.  I didn't follow her method completely, but it had some great tips.

I did learn a few things along the way that I know I'll do differently next time though.

I chose some label drawer pulls that are the same ones I used on our faux planked coffee table in black.  

I love how they can instantly give a piece that vintage flair; they help organize odds and ends; and best of all, they're cheap for less than $1 each!  Everyone's happy...or at least I am.

Since our bathroom cabinets usually end up with grime on them from makeup or hair products or drips from face washing, I decided to laminate my labels with these Scotch laminating sheets that I picked up in the office supply section of Walmart.

Now they'll be protected from all that messy business.

For our cabinet doors, I bought these hammered black ones that already have that aged, worn look I love.

For the paint, I chose Winter Gates by Benjamin Moore in semi-gloss.  

I admit, I was nervous when I painted on the first coat of this color because I was worried it was too close to our wall color, Pediment by Sherwin Williams.  But I like that it's not dark so it brightens up the room.

Our bathroom feels so much bigger now!

That jewelry organizer I shared yesterday fits right in.

And the labels really help to organize our drawers.  Although, we still have a two year-old who likes to do us the favor of rearranging it all for us.  Ya know, just to keep things interesting.  That little booger.

I still want a rug of some kind for the floor to break up all of the gray.  It's nice having this peaceful space to get ready, even if getting ready in the mornings can be chaotic.

I need another glimpse at the before shot of our bathroom from last year.  

Definitely not as plain anymore, huh?

You'll be seeing a little more next week with a full reveal and source list coming soon.  

What do you think so far?  Have you been brave enough to paint your cabinets before?  Do you have any tips for tackling bigger cabinet spaces like a kitchen?  Are you a card catalog pull junkie too?

If you liked this project, be sure to check out this one too: (Just click the image.)

Blessings,

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Thrift End Table to Farmhouse Coffee Table Makeover

I'm so glad to be sharing Karen with y'all today for surprise guest blogger day #3!  I "met" Karen while doing our Holiday Home Tour, and I've been loving her style ever since.  I hope you enjoy her project today!

Hi y'all! I'm Karen from Karen's Up on The Hill and I am just tickled to be guest posting for Lauren on her amazing blog! She is just so darn sweet and creative, and I am so honored that she asked me to be here!

If you haven't been by my place before, we currently have a home that was built in the 50's in the semi-rural western suburbs of Philadelphia, "Horse Country" if you will. We are new to this area and when we moved in and I started to decorate, the house took on a bit of a farmhouse style of it's own.

So, today I'm sharing how I transformed a $30 thrift store end table into a farmhouse style coffee table for our living room.

I had been looking for a coffee table for this room since we moved in last year, with no luck. First of all, have you seen the prices on coffee tables lately? They are a small investment for sure, and I change my mind...a lot. Even if I wanted to spend that kind of money, I couldn't find one with the look, price or size that I wanted. So I decide to make my own.

First, I found this over sized, really heavy end table at a local thrift store. I have been stopping by there for months and I finally got lucky. It was beat up and ugly (ugly like an old library table) but I saw the potential, and it was only $30, so if it didn't work out, c' est la vie, it was no great loss.

I hauled it home, and my husband cut 5 inches off the legs for me to make it the standard coffee table height of 18 inches. Then I gave it a few coats of MMS Milk Paint in Ironstone. I let the paint dry and do what it wanted to do, and then lightly sanded where it had chipped and crackled. To finish it up I applied a coat of clear wax.

I'm really pleased with the way it came out. Our home is super casual and this room is about as fancy as we get, so I just styled it with a few simple touches to keep it light and bright.

Thanks so much for letting me share my living room and my little re-loved $30 coffee table with you today here on Bless'er House.

Have a great week and feel free to stop by anytime and say hello!

Karen

Easy Grainsack Style Folding Chair Makeover

We have two states of affairs in our house:

1.  Chaos Mode- Toys strewn all over our floors (that will render you paralyzed when stepping barefoot on little plastic pieces), folded laundry in piles on our sofa, dishes around our sink still with remnants of PB&J

2.  Preparing for Company Mode- All of the above are hurriedly shoved behind closed doors, and we bust out every chair we can get our hands on to accommodate our huge but always entertaining group of friends and family

We love cramming as many loved ones as possible into our home, so when the holidays roll around, we're completely giddy.  

Until these rusty guys appear on the scene.  Then, I just cringe.  

Which I know is completely silly of me but I despise the sight of these chairs.  Not because it means we're nearly out of sitting room but because they always clash with everything else in our home.  

I've been known to give 1970s chairs an overhaul.  These had nowhere to hide.

Truth be told, they're not in the greatest shape either.  But, hey, they do the job.  

So I set out to beautify them with the old faithful method- spray paint.

After cleaning up the dust and spider webs (because they're usually stored in our garage), I sprayed them down with a coat of primer.  I used Rustoleum Ultra Cover.

And I gave them two light coats of Rustoleum Heirloom White spray paint.  I love this shade of white- not too yellowy, not too stark white.  It's the perfect cream.

Once they were completely dry, I use painter's tape to mark the lines of the grainsack style I was going for.  

I happened to have some leftover Valspar paint in my stash in Montpellier Ashlar Gray.  I applied a little with a sponge brush.

I didn't have any of the skinny painter's tape, so I had to do an extra step.  After the middle stripe was dry, I used more tape to create the side stripes.

And painted on more of the Montpellier Ashlar Gray.

I instantly felt better about my unsightly orange chairs.

I'm pretty sure these chairs are older than I am, but they always come in handy.  My parents knew what they were doing when they gave them to us.  

So Christmas, Thanksgiving, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Easter- you name the get together.  We're ready for ya.

My husband is a Clemson fan, but I had to banish the orange for this one.  Sorry babe.  ;)

What do you think?  Is it an improvement?  Have I totally lost it to be this picky about metal folding chairs?  Ya know...don't answer that last one.  Just come on over whenever you feel like it.  We've got a seat for you.

Blessings,

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How to Make a Faux Planked Eclectic Bookcase

I've come to the conclusion that from now on when I find myself struggling to define my style in my home, I'm just going to slap the term "eclectic" on it and call it a day.

Every Friday, I post my Friday Faves because it helps me sort through my Pinterest boards always overflowing with inspirations from a thousand different directions- rugged rustic, glamorous French, modern industrial.  And a lot of times I realize I have no clue what I'm doing 99% of the time.  

So as I was styling my bookcase from my latest furniture makeover, I decided.  My home is in the eclectic category from now on.  Because guess what!  That term is defined as "deriving ideas or styles from a broad and diverse range or sources."  Done.  Eclectic it is. 

I guess you can look at it as a way to say, "This chick just can't make up her mind."  Or you can see eclectic as "A style that is never boring because it involves lots of story-telling collections from all sorts of times, places, and cultures."  It sounds so much better that way, right?

My little bit of soul-searching all started with this bookcase I found on Craigslist that I knew was destined for our back wall in our living room.

I loved the little bit of detailing at the top and the price wasn't too shabby either.  Once I painted it with a few coats of Annie Sloan Pure White, it was like an entirely new piece.

But the back was too plain for me, and I even polled my Facebook followers (thanks y'all) to weigh a few options: painting the back a dark gray or creating a white planking effect.  Since I knew most of the items on the shelves were going to be dark, I didn't want them to blend in with a dark background. 

The only thing was (and if you haven't figured this out yet, hang around a little longer here and you will) I didn't want to spend any extra money on this thing.  Lugging a tempermental toddler to Lowe's to buy wood for planks, attaching them, and painting all over again was not my idea of fun.  

So here is what I used to create a faux plank effect:

• Level
• Paint pen in gray
• Tape measure
• Pencil

And it didn't cost me a cent or my sanity.

First, I measured each section of the bookcase and marked the widths of each "plank" with a pencil. 

 I used a level to draw on the lines with the pencil too in case I made any mistakes.

Then, I went back over the penciled lines with the paint pen.  I still used the level as a guide to keep the lines straight.

It was so simple and easy.  Best of all, it didn't require a single power tool (awesome for napping toddlers who are light sleepers).  

I still have some tweaking to do on the shelf styling, but I'm happy considering I mostly used items I've collected over time.  And best of all, they have meaning.

That birdcage was a centerpiece from our wedding three years ago.  The little bird figurines were hand carved by my father-in-law.  That old sewing machine was even passed down to me from my mother's side of the family.  And, of course, I always have a slight book obsession.

Now all of my little treasures have a home and don't have to be banished to the depths of a closet.  So many of them have a story to tell.  

What do you think?  Is the eclectic thing working?  Let me know in the comments or on Facebook. :)

Blessings,

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Faux Planked Coffee Table Makeover- Card Catalog Style

There are moments in my attempt to decorate our house that my old English teacher personality kicks in.  

It probably has something to do with being raised by a librarian who passed down her love of literature to me.  There are two things that I always find myself circling back to when I envision our home: lots of old, worn out but well-loved books and vintage card catalogs.  

My mom has told me several times that a few old card catalogs sat completely unused as dust-collectors in her library for years before they were finally hauled away to goodness knows where.  If she could have forseen my infatuation with them, she probably would have saved one for me.  I love my mommy. :)  But since the card catalogs of the past are no more, and buying one usually costs somewhere in the upper hundreds-low thousands range, I took matters into my own hands.

Several months ago I came across this trunk coffee table that had amazing potential and tons of functionality.  A win/win all the way around.  But the paint job on it was pretty sad, and it was too beige along with our already beige living room.  

I managed to haggle the seller on Craigslist down to $50, and I was so ecstatic to go to work on it.  

Then, it sat in our living room for a long time as I imagined up a million different ways to refinish it.  (Sometimes the hardest part of painting furniture is figuring out your game plan.)  

In the end, this was the winning look.

And it has color!!!  I usually shy away from color but she needed some personality. :)

You can check out how I created the faux planked top from yesterday's post.  For the rest of the table, I painted it with a mixture of 1 part Annie Sloan Pure White and 1 part Annie Sloan Duck Egg Blue.  

I let it dry for 24 hours, then rubbed on a layer of Minwax Finishing Paste in Clear (since I had some lying around) followed by a layer of Annie Sloan Dark Wax.  

I found the card catalog hardware online at D. Lawless Hardware for just 60 cents each!  I'm forever hooked on that site. (I swiped the original hardware to use for Olivia's dresser makeover.)

So now, they're not only cute, but they're super functional in keeping our DVDs organized.  (We're a big movie watching crowd.  We already have an entire cabinet devoted to them and that still wasn't enough.)

This sucker is the mother of all toy storage.  If we ever have a surprise visit and need to clean our house in a jiffy, this little feature is a lifesaver.  Our house was an absolute mess while I was making over this table in the garage.  Plastic lego nightmare city.

I'm so glad I went with the subtle color that I'm slowly working in.  It really compliments our shutters on the wall.

Lola is, of course, completely enthralled by the whole thing.

Since Lola isn't being very opinionated, tell me what you think!  I read each and every one of your comments and I do a happy bum-wiggle dance after all of them. ;)

If you liked this post, be sure to check out these:

Next on the project list is a bookcase for our naked looking wall behind the couch and a little more wall art.  Once we add a rug, this room will mostly be done!  Well...I say that but you know decor-obsessed people never truly finish a room. ;)

Blessings,

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