The cool new couch

This couch was really almost FREE (not really), because I sold a few little pieces of furniture and home decor and with the money I made from that I bought us a couch!  The seller was asking $100 but I asked if they would take $80.  It is made in the USA by Bernhardt.  It is big and solid and very comfortable.  So now the room we call the front living room actually has a place to sit.

linking to Southern Hospitality (click on picture)

Another painting project, before and after

Before:

After:

(I know it is missing one handle.  One of the original ones has been broken a while.  When I was reading one of the blogs I follow a few days ago Twice Lovely, I saw they have a new online shop selling furniture hardware, I was able to find the match for Kate's dresser and it did arrive today so it is complete now!)

I painted with one coat of paint/ primer and one coat of paint - "spring cactus", the same green as my desk I just painted

Here is a before picture of the nightstand:

The nightstand was another Goodwill find and you can read more about it here

and after:

I am really happy with how they look in Kate's room

To read the story behind Kate's bed, read here

The colorful quilt at the end of her bed is from Land of Nod, but I got it at a garage sale for $10!

and her curtains are from IKEA

pretty clean green dresser, now like brand new furniture!

Linking to piece of work wednesday:

Painted book shelf

 Here is a "before" of my bookshelf.  I had stained it this dark walnut a few years ago.

And after light and bright (painted light gray)

notice something else "new" in the picture.  This is Emmy, she is a beautiful 3 year old cat, we adopted her from the SPCA.

My green chair is her favorite place.

the shelf is a good place to display some of my thrifty finds, all these (except the little cup on the left) are from garage sales or Goodwill

the milk glass pieces are all thrifty finds too 

some of my owls and other little things collected

my office is also home to some of my other favorite painted pieces too.  This white chest of drawers I use to store all my scrapbooking and craft supplies

this cabinet

the green desk and white chairs and table

Emmy approves of the room, it gets a lot of morning sun

I thought of one more thing in this room I've painted!  The light fixture!

Here is a "before" picture of the whole space, the only thing I'd painted so far was the chairs.....

and "now" - the french door can only open a little on the left side now because the bookshelf is behind it now.

I got that heavy antique mirror that sits on the sewing machine table for $5 last weekend.

My family is very used to me in my "painting clothes" now.  At least in a couple of weeks I will be back to my teaching job and not so much spare time to just paint!

linking to:



Light and bright change in the kitchen

The kitchen has had a lot of changes since we moved into this house a little more than 2 years ago.  One of the first things I did was paint the cabinets, and add hardware.  We had 2 nice cabinets with glass front doors to display some pretty dishes.

Since I painted them, I have wanted to paint the insides of the cabinets too, especially since I started collecting some fiestaware and other vintage dishes.  As a temporary fix I had the backs lined with scrapbook paper.

Last week when I finally had the motivation to paint the cabinets, I also took off the 2 middle cabinet doors so I would have even more open storage to display pretty things.

Here is an "in progress" shot

Here the cabinets are NOW:

And a look back to see where we started, a very nice big open kitchen, but very brown!



and now:

Linking here:

New desk

I bought this desk at Goodwill for $24.99.  It wasn't really quite this orange but the flash picture made it look that way.  It was in good condition just a few scratches on the top.  It is solid wood and very heavy.

I had seen a similar desk on the blog Centsational Girl here.  And I remembered I had a small can of Glidden paint (from whenever there was the deal to have the free can of paint), the color was called "Spring Cactus", a pretty light green.  For an undercoat I used the Zinsser permawhite paint I have used on my kitchen cabinets.

Here it is all painted:

And although I originally thought it would be great for the kids to share in the playroom, I liked it so much so I moved it into my office.  It has a lot of storage.  I lined the drawers with this wallpaper, I had brought a roll home from my parent's house in New Zealand. 

And I added new fabric to this Goodwill chair that a bought a couple of months ago, I will probably paint the chair sometime too.  One change leads to another, and so on......

the bookshelf I think is also on the list to be painted and de-cluttered too

my "old" desk which was a free find I still love and just got moved into the next room and looks pretty nice hanging out under the chalkboard.  And with the matching white chairs.

Linking to Thrifty Treasures at Southern Hospitality.

and just added this to piece of work Wednesday, for my favorite project of 2011