One Room at a Time: The Beginning

When I began this blog, my intention was to write about DIY, affordable home organizing, décor, crafts, and the occasional crochet and knit project. I still intend to do those things, but I wanted to begin with a series of posts showing the transformation of my home, one room at a time.

Now that you have seen my beautiful project that made a small portion of my home look organized, I am going to show you the rest of my home. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart. You may not want your small children to be present. I am warning you and asking you to be forgiving of this tragedy because I am a full time graduate student and simply do not have the time to keep a clean and organized home. My husband and I are gone all day, five days a week. Beginning now, I am going to make time. I will admit that the reason I have neglected my home is because of my lack of time management skills, not because of an actual lack of time. Now that you have read the disclaimer, you can begin the tour of my little slice of the suburbs.

The Dining Room

It is tax time and all of my tax papers are somewhere in a pile lying on our dish hutch. For this reason I decided to begin the transformation of my home with my dining room. The photo was uploaded from my phone so I apologize for the quality. I will add better photos when I am not rushing to get to class on time.

 

This is the dish hutch and keyboard in our dining room...what is a keyboard doing in the dining room? I did plan on putting it into storage, but...well, I'll do it later. I'm beginning to think I should call this series: "Memoirs of a Procrastinator" or "A Day in the Life of a Hoarder".  

 



The center of our dining room, what should be our dining room table. It's more of a shelf for now. You can see that it is also my sewing station...I NEED a craft room. I also holds last night's dinner plates and drinks, some napkins, a Christmas gift, all of our winter accessories, and some other miscellany. Please enjoy the solar dancing penguin in the back, right-hand corner.

 

This is the bar with no bar stools. It is also serving as a shelf for the time being. It holds vases from my friend's wedding in July, bubbles for blowing (obviously), a tape measure, a few cans of Sprite, an external hard drive that had to be repaired, and a cake that I made for my husband's birthday (only three weeks old).

 

 

I have to admit that I was hesitant, to say the least, to put these pictures on the internet for everyone to see. It is embarrassing. I know that I make excuses for the state of my home, but finding the time really is difficult. I wanted to share my experience and difficulties, because I am going to assume that I am not the only person who has a messy house because of a busy schedule. In the next post, this weekend, I will outline some of the first steps to organizing this space and making it feel more like home. 



DIY Dresser Makeover

This was the very first time I ever refinished a piece of furniture and I believe that it turned out great...but not perfect. Below is the finished product.

1. My first step was to remove all of the drawers and the hardware connected to them. I took of the handles and set them aside for later.

2. The next step was to sand the dresser and drawers to make the surface rough so that the primer would stick. This was difficult and I had to change sheets of sandpaper too often. Next time I think I will try some sort of chemical paint stripper before I try using sandpaper.  

3. The next thing I did was apply a white primer that was made for smooth surfaces. I hoped  that this would stick to the surface that I could not sand properly. I applied this with a cheap paintbrush. I did this to save money, but next time I will use a foam roller.

4. The next step was to paint the dresser. To do this I used a foam roller intended for painting cabinets. I was hoping that this would leave a smooth finish. The foam rollers worked wonderfully and were not super expensive. I painted the yellow insides of the drawers first. I painted all parts of the dresser except the main bottom, under the trim, and the backs of the drawers. I did paint the entire inside of the drawer including the back part of front section (behind the part that you see, where the handle is attached).

5. Once all the painting was done and dried overnight, a second coat was required.

6. While the paint was drying I set the handles and knobs on an old sheet of plastic (a shower curtain works) and covered them, from all angles possible, with a white spray primer. I let them dry and then covered them once again in white spray paint. Something I would have done different here? I have seen others hold the handles up with toothpicks, or something of the like, while they're painting. That might have been a good idea.

7. Finally, after all the paint had dried, I reassembled the dresser.

I am very happy with the overall look, but I did learn some things about painting furniture that I will apply to my next project.
By the way I did NOT do this project on my own. Thanks so much Mom for wasting spending an entire weekend working on this with me. Also, thanks to my husband's family for transferring it to it's rightful home...upstairs. It weighed a TON!

Home Decor Project

My First Home Décor Project

Today is a snow day! Since I have no place to go I'm going to start my first blog post. Right now I am refraining from double spacing this post to make it an APA paper D:  Instead of beginning this blog on a negative note and showing pictures of my home currently, I am going to begin with a project that I completed over the summer to improve my new home.

This beautiful (possibly antique, at least vintage) dresser was a $15 Goodwill find. Yes FIFTEEN DOLLARS!! I was thrilled. You can see that it is scratched, missing a handle and (maybe you can't see this) has terribly bent metal gear to attach the mirror. Despite its condition, I saw a diamond in the rough.
I decided that my bedroom décor would include grey and yellow. I have recently decided that I love the color yellow. It is so happy! I'm thinking maybe a "happy when skies are grey" theme...just an idea. So I set out to find a cute grey paint that coordinated with my comforter set. I must have taken every grey and yellow paint card from Lowes. I finally decided on a grey color called Wet Pavement (I think). I wanted in incorporate the yellow color without making the dresser look dated in the future. Here's what I did.

You can only see the yellow when the drawer is open. Not only does this keep the dresser a neutral color, it also makes the yellow color easy to change when I get tired of yellow.
In the next post I will outline the steps that I took to make this transformation and the things that I will do different on my next project.

Mirror to be added soon!