A Boy's Desk

We came across this beauty at a yard sale. Love yard sales! I can feel them gearing up already. And it's only February.

My son's room was looking a little barren, with only a twin bed and a few containers of toys. He hadn't ever had a room this big in our new place, and we were on the hunt for something to fill some space. We found this desk and couldn't pass it up.

Before:

After:
I used a stain on it, even though the wood wasn't spectacular. Fortunately it was an opaque type stain, and worked awesome! I purchased new knobs (just cheap wooden ones I painted), and distressed it all to heck. He loves having a place to color and play his games. I love that it's so stinkin' cute!

Photo Board

I don't know about you, but I feel like my in-laws are the hardest people to shop for. Not because they are picky, but because a) if they want something, they probably already have it, b) they already know of all of the super cool stuff, and probably already have it, and c) they are just so dang cool, you want to get them something super fantastic awesome that they don't have yet.

Enter: the homemade gift. My mother in law loves handmade things, and I like giving them to her because she knows how much effort goes into them, and is always so appreciative. For Christmas, I scoured the interwebs to find a mind-blowing gift. I found this. I thought it was such a great idea! Grandmas love photos, and need a place to store them right? For that kind of money though, I knew I could replicate it for way cheaper, and way better.

I feel selfish, but I don't even want to tell you how simple this is.

No really, I don't.

Because it's way too simple.

I went to the Habitat for Humanity store and picked up a cabinet door. I painted it (or stained it, in this case), distressed it, added some moulding to hold the pictures. Done.

Do you want to hear the sad part of this story now?

I couldn't give it to my mother-in-law.

Because it wouldn't fit in my luggage.

So I made another one for her that did fit in my luggage. But it did not turn out nearly as cute. And I was way bummed.

Fortunately, her birthday is coming up in April, and I've already got something in the works!

The Coffee Table

For a long time, we used our coffee table as our dining table. We lived in a one bedroom apartment for a few years, with a toddler, and we used this as our eating area as well as our hang out area and play area. The coffee table that my dear in laws gave us for our wedding, had become worn and torn. Add to that a swamp cooler that created some lovely white spots, and this quality piece of furniture had seen better days.

Luckily, in their smartness, my in-laws picked out a coffee table that had the "rustic" look to it. I remember them telling us, "You'll thank us when you have kids running around making dents and scratches on it". They were SO right (aren't our parents always right?).

The before (with awesome husband's cooking skills being illustrated)

The after: (including side table)

My husband had the awesome idea to put fabric over the table. He took spray adhesive, put the fabric on top, and made an awesomely refinished coffee table. Ok, it was a little more difficult than that, but he did this project 100% by himself, and I just had to show it off.

It adds some nice spunk to the room!

Printer Stand

Again, with the furniture. We found this baby at a yard sale for $10. It's solid. Like, been-used-in-the-garage-to-hold-tools solid. After thoroughly cleaning it out (spiders...ew), I started sprayin' with some spray paint left around by the owners of the house.

The end result?
An awesome industrial printers stand, which also gives me storage. See how awesome that was? Gosh I love spray paint.

One thing I've noticed with spray painting metal:

-Rustoleum is awesome, and definitely premium brand. It works great, and I like to use it on all metal surfaces.

-You have to spray in thin layers metal is particularly prone to drippage. No one likes a drippy paint job.

-You will get a major finger cramp from holding down that spray nozzle. You should prepare exercising for a larger spray paint job.

The Dresser

Last summer we moved into a fantastic home. It had space! It had a back yard! It had a raspberry patch! It had...a garage. This meant that we could refinish furniture. This meant that we could fill up this new home with furniture we bought for cheap and refinished. This meant a lot of projects!

From then on I was on the hunt for a dresser. We didn't have as much storage space in our new place, so a new dresser was the first thing on the list. I scoured craigslist, garage sales, online sales, everywhere. On the way to can some jam at a friend's house, I passed this beauty.

(This is post-strip process. It was white with gold inlay. Classy eh?) For $10 she was mine, and I loaded her into the car, continued to go can my heart out, and surprised my husband with it. As I stripped off the paint, I found that it had gorgeous wood. It was solid, and beautiful. We decided to stain the drawers so you could see the grain, and paint the rest of it black.

I was so pleased with the results. Which was really good, because a lot of time was spent by me trying to remove crappy paint off of it!