Plain Jane

 Hi there long time no write.  I am here sitting down in my bedroom starring at a big boring wall of plain Jane closet doors and a TV that's hung too high with nothing underneath it.  It's no wonder I can't sleep thinking there has to be something I can do and it needs to be soon because this has been bugging me for a long time.

This is what I am staring at and I can't believe I am sharing this in the web for anyone to see.  This was my attempt at making them look better the trim and doors used to be and orangy oak stain nightmare.  I painted them when we first moved in almost two years ago. And that's our TV hung way up in the sky with nothing underneath (sigh).  The doors have ugly brass knobs which you can see are missing two tops to them.

I would like to remedy this terrible situation but I am not 100 percent sure what it is I want to do. It needs to be cheap and look really nice.  Maybe paint the doors a pop of color make a pattern with painters tape, a stencil or wall paper.  I also need something nice for under the TV, something with shelves to hold the cable box and some beautiful nicknacks.  Lets see where we end up.

If anybody has any ideas and would like to share please feel free to leave me a comment.

My headboard tutorial

Thank you so much to all of you that stopped by my blog and checked out my headboard inspired by West  Elm's Stria Bed.

I promised a tutorial so I will deliver, we are no professionals at building or blogging so this might not be a great tutorial but hopefully you will understand it.  I tried downloading Sketch up but apparently you need to learn how to use it before you start doodling on it like I did, bad idea, I'm going to need to take a crash course some day.  That being said prepare yourself for the un-fancy-est tutorial ever  (it's a little embarrassing, really).  We used some leftover 2" x 4" scraps for our legs and a piece of leftover 1" x 3" for the middle support to save money and to have less scrap wood in the end.  We also had an extra 1" x 3" at home leftover from a play kitchen we made for our daughter for Christmas, so we only bought 6 of them for this project but you will need 7.  That's why in the pictures there is an ugly duckling 1" x 3" slat which is personally my favorite because it was naturally aged and I decided to put him smack dab in the middle.  So here we go.

Shopping List (we used studs and furring strips, very fancy, I know)

2- 2" x 3" @ 8'
4- 2" x 4" @ 8'
7- 1" x 3" @ 8'
2- 2" x 2" @ 8'
3- 1" x 2" @ 8'
2 1/2" screws (we countersunk the screws so that they wouldn't scratch the walls otherwise you could just use a Kreg jig and buy pocket whole screws).
1" screws (for middle support if you use a 1" x 3", if you use a thicker wood than you can use longer screws)

Cutting List

2- 2" x 3" @ 59"  Top and Bottom of the Frame for the slats
2- 2" x 3" @ 36-3/4"  sides of the frame *(This is the Measurement you will have left over from the two first cuts)
1- 1" x 3" @ 33-3/4"  middle support *(also leftover from one of the 1" x  3" front slats)
3- 1" x 2" @ 62" Front slats
2- 2" x 2" @ 62" Front slats
7- 1" x 3" @ 62" Front slats
4- 2" x 4" @ 62" Front slats
2- 2" x 4" @ 23" Legs
* The measurements with the *stars are just what you will have left over from the first cuts there is no need to cut them just use the left over pieces and they will fit trust me, it's what we did and it turned out fine)

Order of slats

1x2 (this is the only slat that will be screwed in from the back and into the 1" side).
1x3
2x4
1x3
2x2
1x3
1x2
2x4
1x3
2x2
1x2
1x3
2x4
1x3
2x4
1x3

You should have a total of 16 slats all together

Now for the my poor little tutorial, basically this is what we did.  I sanded every single board prior to putting it together to make it easier because you will have lots of height variation.  I used 60 grit, followed by 220 grit to give it a very smooth finish.  

First step is to build your frame with the 2" x 3" studs.  You can predrill your wholes for the screws and countersink them from the out side and use wood filler to cover them or use a Kreg Jig from the inside so that you don't leave any visible wholes that have to be filled in the end.

Next we started screwing in the slats from top to bottom.  The first slat (1" x 2") is flushed even with the frame.  We attached all the slats by screwing them in from the back of the frame countersinking in the screws as we went along so that we didn't leave any scratches on the walls.  I would advise you  to put your middle support on first I don't know why my "carpenter" (my hubby) skipped this step and did it later.  But it worked out anyway.

 

We also ended up turning the headboard upside down because the first slat gave it a nice sturdy base to work on and because we didn't have any clamps to tighten the slats together. So this made it easier to apply pressure to keep them together while screwing them in form the back of the frame.

 This is what I mean when I write that we screwed the slats in from the back of the frame countersinking the wholes as we went along.  This is what the back of our frame looks like.  

   My beautiful ugly duckling 1x3 scrap in the middle.

A quarter of the way left to go.

And that's it, because we attached the legs after we stained the headboard.  I forgot to throw pics of that part. Sorry.  And as for the stain I mixed plain white vinegar with steel wool in a lidded glass jar weeks prior to making the headboard.  The first step to the stain is to make some black tea as you would make your regular tea, and apply it to the whole headboard after it has cooled off, wait a couple hours and then apply the vinegar and steel wool mixture.  We did one coat but you can do multiple coats to make it darker.  The stain gives it a lot of color variation and a weathered look.  But because my stain was mixed weeks prior to making the headboard it had already created rust from the steel wool which resulted in some reddish tones around the headboard which I personally didn't like.  I wiped the headboard down with a couple of damp cloths to remove most of the rust but the color is still not my cup of tea.  It's more golden in person.  That is the reason I have yet to put a top coat over it.

This is a picture after staining it but before wiping it down we were just dry fitting it. 

You can see some of the color variations here.

You can see more pictures of our headboard in this post.

As for the price we paid

$32.83  Lumber
$8.47 pack of 2-1/2" screws
Grand total of $41.30 plus tax @ $2.48 equals a whopping  $43.78
Everything else we already owned.  When compared to our inspiration bed that cost $899 plus tax, delivery, shipping and handling it's a savings of more than $1,000.

And now I will share with you what I would do differently if I were to make this headboard again.  First I would make the frames with legs at the very beginning.  We ended up attaching them after and with 2x4's instead of 2x3's, so if we decide to make the bed frame in the future (again hint, hint lovely hubby ;-) there will have to be some tweaking there.  I would also replace the top 2x3 frame piece and the first 1x2 slat with a simple 1x4 to keep the look more clean even though you really can't see it from where your standing not even my 6'1" hunk of a hubby can see it from where he's standing.  I would not make my stain weeks before I would only make it 24 hours prior to staining to prevent all the reddish tones on my headboard from the rust of the steel wool.

Over all the bed was easy to make, super inexpensive, and imperfections and all we love it.  There you have it my not so fancy tutorial.  I hope you guys enjoyed it and understand it well enough to be able to make your own headboard.  Again thank you for stopping by and leaving such wonderful comments.

West Elm Stria bed Headboard Inspiration

I'm So excited to share this project on my blog because I get to post it in the Pinterest Challenge over at my Favorite blog in the whole world www.younghouselove.com.  I fell in love with the Stria Bed from West Elm but there was no way I or my hubby for that matter was going to shell out the cash for it at $899 for a queen size it was well over our budget.  I thought to myself we could fake it (or make it, whatever).  I showed the bed to my hubby and some other beds I had pinned on Pinterest.com and he really liked this one the best and was on board to help my inspiration come to life.  So I sketched it up, came up with a list of wood and sizes that we needed them cut up to and off to the Hardware store we went.  The picture I'm about to show you is of the official bed from West Elm not mine.  So here's my inspiration.

We only made the headboard, not the bed frame, but who knows? maybe in the future (hint, hint babe ;-).   And here is our headboard.

 

Here's the bummer I love the headboard, but I don't love the stain.  It's close to the stain I wanted but not close enough.  So it does not have a finish on top because I'm still procrastinating on whether I should change the stain or not.  It looks really good with the mirror (from crate n barrel) and like I said it's really close to the stain I wanted but not 100% there yet.  I have no idea what to do.  Should I keep the stain the way it is or should I change it?  Should I add another coat of the oxidizing stain treatment I used or maybe a different stain, should I just keep it the way it is and seal it already?  Help I don't know what to do.  Oh well, if anybody would like to leave a comment or an advise towards what I should do, I would greatly apreciate it.  For those of you who would like to know, I will be back with a list of wood, size, cuts, stain and I even have pictures of the steps we took.  Thanks for looking.

Mini version Modern Farmhouse coffee table

We needed a coffee table for our living room since we got rid of our large brown leather ottoman.  The ottoman wasn't fitting in with our new Kivik loveseat chaise combination from Ikea.  We loved it, but it was just too big now with the chaise.  Plus Lou and me compromised over it.  I wanted the Karlstad sofa from Ikea slim, sleek and comfy.  He wanted a big, comfy chaise to chill out after a long days work.  I showed him Mr. Karlstad at Ikea but he saw Mr. Kivik with the chaise and it was love at first sit (no that's not miss spelled he literally sat on it and fell in love).  I told him if you want to buy that brute of a sofa you have to give up your ottoman which was a gift from me two Christmases ago.  So it was Hello Mr. Sivik (as I call our sofa because we bought the Kivik sofa with the sivik dark grey fabric) and bye, bye brownie (the ottoman).  I have this weird thing were I name my furniture and some of my stuff like I have this frog lamp that I call Froggie It's no big deal I don't need to see a therapist or anything I just get attached to my stuff and like to give it names.  Oh God anyways I totally side tracked from the coffee table.

So back to the coffee table here she is, all in her stubby gorgeousness.  Yup shes like a mini of our modern farmhouse dining table.

Here she is in front of our sofa, sorry about the bad pictures, messy surroundings, no I didn't vacuum the rug, fluff the pillows or fix the sofa cushions, my bad I was in a rush to take these pictures. 

And a view of the smaller side.

 

We made her with some leftover pieces of wood we had stored in the garage and we purchased only one piece of scrap wood at Home depot that came up to .54 cents.  So total investment for this project was .54 cents.  I will be back with a step by step post of how we made this cutie.

Time for a makeover

A clock make over that is.  So I had this big ole clock I bought a couple years ago at the dollar store and I wasn't liking the style very much now a days.  It looks alright in the pictures but in person you can see that the faux antique finish is just printed out on a piece of paper and the beige tones are a lot more yucky yellowy than I would prefer and the frame also had a bad black and gold antique finish. So here's what it looked like after I tried to update the frame by giving it a coat of black spray paint.

I bought a bottle of Modge Podge that was collecting dust on a bookshelf.  I had been dying to use Modge Podge on something so I thought finally the perfect starter project for me. So I saved some free news papers that get delivered to your house with store fliers in them because they had some recipes on them that I wanted to use for this project.  I was going to hang this clock up on the kitchen so recipes seemed like a good fit for it.  First I stripped the clock down, took off the frame, the glass, and the wands or what ever you call those sticks that tell you what time it is.  I then cut the recipes out, measured them to fit the clock diameter and then I used Modge Podge to stick them on I did two top coats of Modge Podge.  
 

The last step was to add some modern numbers to it so off to Walmart I went and grabbed some some of those mailbox/house numbers that were like .54 cents each.  Which is the only thing I actually bought for this project because everything else I already had at home.  The spray paint was left over from another project and the Modge Podge had been sitting there for months.

I had to cut around the numbers because I had no idea they had this flashing illuminating thing going.  I bought them because they were the biggest, modern, cheap numbers I could find.  After I hung it up everything seemed to black and white with the curtain valances that I made so I added a pop of color with some sunny yellow Rustoleum spray paint.  And wah-lah!

If I were to do this project again (which I probably will) I would put a coat of white primer on the base where I modge podged the news paper to because you can still see some yellow from the old finish through the news paper.  But it looks much better and more modern for my taste.  So I'm happy, plus I always get compliments on my work of art unless my family and friends are just being sarcastically nice to me.  So there you have it, don't throw away that ugly old clock, it may have seen better days but it's time is not up yet. Maybe its just time to give it a little make over.

Building a modern farmhouse dining table

 So it's no surprise that me and my hubby jumped the build your own farmhouse table band wagon since everyone else in blog land is doing it.

 Like a lot of people we used ana-white.com for free easy awesome plans.  I am now highly addicted to Ana's website, I want to build everything in our house from scratch but Lou would kill me so instead I'm opting for some smaller projects here and there like a coffee table, desk and maybe even a media stand.  Anyways enough about that and now for the details on our table.  We used to have a smaller table with 4 chairs that felt too bulky for our small eat in kitchen which is our only eating space in our home.  So we put that baby on craigslist and used the funds to buy the supplies for our new table. 

  We are in love with our new table and a little obsessed.  We are also very proud of ourselves for building our own super sturdy, awesome, incredibly beautiful, obsessively gorgeous, makes me wanna clean it everyday modern family farmhouse dining table (did I tell you I was a little obsessed, well I meant a lot obsessed).  We used the shopping and cutting list provided in Ana's website and then followed the instructions.

 We bought and use a mini hand held Kreg jig for the first time in our lives and we love that little guy he's so easy to use and it's nice when people come over and ask where are the 100 plus screws that we used?

 We Kreg jigged the table top 2x6's together from the bottom so you won't see all the screws.

Next we built the frame with 2x2's screwed from the inside of the table into the 2x6 legs for the inside supports. Then we used 2x4's for the aprons, the long side aprons are screwed from the out side of the 2x6 legs  into the 2x4's and the smaller side aprons are screwed from the inside 2x2 support into the 2x4.

Then we screwed in all the 2x2 support slats with Kreg jig screws into the side aprons.

Finally we were able to put the table top into the frame which was super tight and almost impossible but we got'er in, and screwed each 2x2 into the 2x6 table top from the bottom up.  We then sanded the whole table but I don't have any pictures of that part of the process we were too busy taping and covering the whole kitchen with plastic.  We started with 60 grit rough sanding paper, then worked our way to 180 grit medium sand paper and all the way down to 220 grit fine sanding paper.

We finished the table with wood conditioner, one thick coat of Rustoleum's Dark Kona stain applied with cheapo foam brushes.  We let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes and wiped out the excess with a cheese cloth.  We used  3 coats of Minwax water based polycrylic in satin finish for the top coat. And that's it.  She's a beauty.

And here she is with the chairs we bought off of good ole craigslist for $10.  The chairs are waiting to be painted, I'm thinking glossy white or some other bright pop of color, not sure yet but I'll keep you posted whenever I decide to do that.

 

I'm in love, it's not perfect but it's not supposed to be and we love it too pieces. I know it looks too big in the pictures but there's more that 3 feet of walk space all around it.  It's bigger that our old table but the smaller chairs really help big time making it feel alot more spacious than before.  It's been about 4 months since we built it and we couldn't be happier with our table, we are enamored with it.