Shiplap and the start of dining room updates

Having been in out house for 6.5 years, I am starting to get the urge to update/change things in several rooms. One of the rooms that I want to change is the dining room. The walls are currently green which I surprisingly don't hate. I really want to replace our square pub-height table with a regular height rectangle table. I think something longer but narrower would fit the space better. I also want to ditch the rug in here. But that leads to other issues because I HATE my white tile floors.

We did a wood wall back when we did Brayden's Nursery and I didn't want to necessarily do the same thing in the dining room since I wanted something lighter. So we decided to do shiplap on the wall behind the buffet. I was nervous about it not being able to hold the weight of the aisle runner from our wedding so I read a bunch of tutorials and basically sat on the project for a few weeks ( it was supposed to by Birthday gift). One Friday afternoon, I was doing some work at home and Tim said " I feel like working on a project" so off to Lowe's we went. Oh and  ultimately, we came up with an easy work-around that I will share in a minute.

We purchased 2 sheets of 4X8, 1/4 inch Birch plywood boards and had them cut down into 6 inch strips by Lowe's. We weren't sure if we would have enough to cover the wall but knew it would at least get us started. Tim sanded the rough edges of the boards down while I started painting the wall. If you read tutorials on shiplap many people don't paint the wall first. I was just afraid of my green paint showing through the spaces. I literally used whatever white paint I had on hand. It didn't have to look perfect  since it was going to be covered anyway.

A few hours later, we began adding our boards. We decided to put them put as is and paint them later. I read both ways various tutorials I read online. We also decided to start from the top and work our way down.

In retrospect was such a good decision! We has such a small space between our moulding and wood that we easily just added a small line of caulk. I feel like it would have been more noticeable at the top.

As far as board lengths go, we followed no pattern. We just cut as we went and used scraps for the next row.  We used a nail gun to secure the boards to the wall. We used nickels to keep our spacing between the rows uniform as we went. ( Side note: We opted not to do this vertically between the boards and only did it horizontally). Once we got a few rows in, we had to address the aisle runner issue. I decided not to remove the anchors/screws before painting. We decided that since the aisle runner is a permanent fixture in our house for sentimental reasons, we would simply drill two holes in our board so that we can use the existing screws and anchors ( picture below). When it came time to re-hang the picture, we simple backed out the screws a little and the picture was perfectly placed once again.

After all the wood was installed, I went back and filled in ALL the nail holes with wood putty. Once dry, I sanded all the spots with my palm sander and also any rough spots that were on the boards. Yes, it made a mess of my house but was worth it. I vacuumed the whole wall with the shopvac before moving on to the next step.

You might notice in the picture above that we also added a trim piece to the raw edge closest to the light switch. This is totally a personal choice but I didn't like the raw edges showing we chose to frame it on this side. Tim really  like this symmetrical so I thought he wouldn't like it because the other side was unframed but we both agreed it looked better.

Next came the painting. I am not a huge fan of paint and primer in one. So I opted to prime then paint. I used some old primer I had on hand. I just did one coat of primer.

Because it was raw wood, it soaked up the paint. I followed the primer by 2 coats of paint. I used simply white by Benjamin Moore (my go-to white) in an eggshell finish. A lot of the tutorials I read said they used the brush to paint the wall so they can paint between the "nickel spaces". I personally wanted those spaces to show as much as possible so I did NOT brush paint in those spaces. After cutting in, I used a door and cabinet roller to paint the wall. This was after one coat.

I preferred the look of the brush versus the roller so the second coat I did with the brush. We waited a few hours for everything to dry. We then re-hung the aisle runner and bushed the buffet back in place. It took us 2-days with lots of kid breaks but the shiplap was FINISHED. It is hard to get a good picture since there isn't a light of natural light in this room.

With the light on

No light

Overall, I am really please with how it came out. It does makes my hate my floors even more ( which I honestly didn't know was possible).  It has made us start working on some other dining room updates which I hope I can share soon :)

What do you think of the green with the shiplap? I got samples of two popular "greige" colors but honestly preferred the contrast with the green. I am open to suggestions!

DIY Essential Oil Storage Cabinet

When I first got my Essential Oil Starter Kit, I stored my oils in their original packaging in a storage bucket in our hall linen closet. It was fine in the beginning but as I began to use the oils more, I wanted to be able to access them more easily. I was looking on Pinterest and found this idea from Barefoot in Bluejeans who adapted a project from Ana-white.com to work as a nail polish cabinet. I thought it would be PERFECT to adapt the measurements to work as a storage cabinet for my oils.

The Ana- White website gives the plans to make a jewelry cabinet. She provides a shopping list and all. We followed her technique with regard to the assembly, the only thing we changed were the measurements. I had a small bathroom wall that I wanted to use the cabinet on. I am always at a loss on what type of "decorations" to hang in a bathroom- so normally function wins out!

We purchased the wood, handle and hinges. I already has all the other materials at the house. Our local Lowes, only sold the type of hinges we needed in gold. So I simply sprayed everything with some Oil Rubbed Bronze Spray paint before assembling.

My overall measurements are 15.5w by 20 H. I added 4 small shelves inside to fit both my oil bottles and roller bottles. To get these measurements for the overall size we used the following dimensions for our cuts:

Door- 2- 18.25 inch and 2- 9 inch
Cabinet- 2- 20 inch and 2- 14 inch
Shelves- 1.5 inch deep by 13.75.

I sanded everything down. I recommend sanding and painting or staining the back BEFORE attaching it. Once everything was dry, we used a staple gun to attach the chicken wire to the front of the door. Then we attached the door with the hinges and added the handle.

PERFECT storage for my oils! 

Dress Up Station

Charlotte is OBSESSED with "costumes". She specifically asked for Santa to bring her a "Let it Go  pretty dress and shoes" for Christmas in exchange for her pacifiers. I may have had to search high and low but I finally found one in her size. She also left out all her pacifiers for Santa that night and hasn't asked for one since! But I digress. She ended up with so many dress up items, it left Tim and I looking for a storage solution.

I took to Pinterest to look for ideas. I really loved this fun blue one by Rain on a tin roof.  But the cost of the Billy bookshelf was a bit more than I wanted to spend. Plus it required a trip to Ikea, where I always spend more than planned!

I also really liked the dress up "cart" by Shanty 2 Chic.  I didn't need it to be a cart as we just planned to leave it out in the playroom. and I wanted to use the side cubbies for shoes. But it wasn't anything that couldn't be adapted. Plus they give FREE plans on their website, Looks like we had a winner!

We made a family trip to Lowe's to purchase supplies. We followed the plans provided for the most part. The exception is that we did not use plywood mentioned, we used pine boards cut to size. While we have access to a saw, our Christmas stuff was still in our garage and we wanted to avoid it being covered in saw just. I simply provided the cut list to Lowe's and had everything cut to size for me. I did however ask for them to cut additional 9 3/4 X 11 1/4 squares, as I knew I wanted to add more cubbies. We also chose not to add casters. I had left over paint from our Ikea Kitchen Makeover so that was one less cost as well. We walked out of Lowe's spending just under $39!

Tim set to work assembling the unit. It same together pretty quickly and was looking like this the next day!

We spaced out our "cubbies" 7 inches apart from the top of the bottom trim. The top one is slightly smaller but its perfect for open storage. I filled all the pocket holes with wood filler and sanded everything down. I used the leftover paint from the Kitchen on the inside and white paint on the outside. I also had some Benjamin Moore Advanced Paint leftover from another project and we had JUST enough to cover this. It took two coats.  I then made a trip back to Lowe's for two knobs. Charlotte picked out these pink ones.

And then I grabbed a mirror at TJ Maxx. I lucked out that there happened to be one the right size in the first store I went to! The mirror was $9.99. Once the paint dried, we attached the knobs and mirror and added felt pads to the bottom instead of the casters. We hung up all her "dress up" outfits and moved all over her shoes and jewelry.

She LOVES it. Although I will admit it has contributed to an increase in costume changing throughout the day!

Playground

Last Christmas (as in 2014), my family chipped in to buy a playground for Charlotte. We purchased The Brookside set on Black Friday from Sam's Club and it was delivered to our house by a freight truck. ( The exact set we bought is no longer available but this one is similar both in design and price). Well let me tell you that thing sat, and sat, and sat in our garage until this summer when Tim was on break.

While I was at work one day on a Thursday in June (very pregnant I might add), I get a text from Tim with this picture...

 

While Charlotte was napping, he had taken it upon himself to start assembling the playground. Being almost 8 months pregnant, I was super nervous about him starting this and not being able to finish without my help. Especially after the instructions recommended 2-3 people for assembly. However, I was pleasantly surprised that Tim was actually able to do 95% of the assembly by himself.  

 

The next day, we realized before we could really continue with the assembly, we had to clear the grass out. Tim attempted to do this by hand but we quickly realized that we needed a sod cutter. We rented one from Home Depot for a few hours so he could cut out the grass. After it was all cleaned out and leveled, he laid two layers of weedguard down. This is to prevent weeds from growing through the mulch. We have this in all the plant beds around the house and while it isn't 100% effective, it does greatly reduce the number of weeds that are able to pop through.  This is what things were looking like by the end of day two!

 

Next, we had to pick out what type of border we wanted. This was probably the hardest part for us. We didn't want stone as we were afraid the kids would trip on in. We wanted something with a lower profile that would hold up well in the sun and also wouldn't break the bank. We also wanted something that we could "shape"... not a traditional rectangle. We ended up coming across Dreamscapes on Pinterest and after a lot of debating, we decided to give it a go. We ended up ordering their decorative stone edging in sandstone.

 

The product came in about a weeks time. It is very light-weight and easy to install. We have had it installed for 6+ months now and it is still in perfect condition. None of the pieces have moved or popped up. So we are really pleased with both the look and the quality so far! We decided to use traditional mulch for now. Rubber mulch got a bad rap recently. In addition to that, we didn't want to spend any more money on this project while we were still working on the house addition as well. Here is the final product:

Our swing set actually came with two traditional yellow swings but we purchased a "baby" swing in a coordinating color on Amazon, knowing that we would need at least one baby swing for the next few years. Charlotte LOVES her playground. While we do have a neighborhood park, it is so nice to be able to sit outside and let her play freely in the backyard. Well worth the 6 month wait! :)

Cozy Coupe Makeover

Charlotte loves her a play car. Anytime we take her out and they have a play car, you can guarantee she will be in and out of it 100 times. My kid also LOVES the mouse... especially Minnie! I had seen some really cute "Cozy Coupe" upgrades on Pinterest. I wasn't actively looking for one but one Saturday we stopped at a local shop, Reruns for Little Ones, so I can try out a toddler sized Tula. As we were walking up, we spotted a used Cozy Coupe for $15. Charlotte immediately started saying "my car" so we knew it had to come home with us!

We decided to go with the Minnie Mouse theme. I went to Lowe's to pick up some plastic outdoor spray paint. They were out of white so I picked up red and black only. I read a lot of reviews online and no one mentioned primer. However, the guy at Lowe's was adamant about us priming first. So I also picked up one can of primer.

Back at home, Tim literally set up a car wash station for the coupe. After everything was cleaned off we took it apart. We actually used WD-40 to remove any stickers/residue.

Since I am pregnant, Tim had to do all the spray painting. Even though the body of the car was already red, we gave it a coat of primer and two coats of red paint. A lot of the tutorials I read said to sand the car. We had several rough spots so we did attempt this however they are visible through the paint. I would skip the sanding and opt for the primer. All the yellow parts got a coat of primer and two coats of black paint.

We gave it a good 48-hours to dry before re-assembling the car. Once it was re-assembled, we applied two thin coats of Rustoleum's plastic sealant. Then came the fun part... deciding how we wanted to finish it. I originally was planning on spray painting on white dots with a stencil and having my dad cut out the ears/bow from wood. I read about being using foam or cardboard for the ears but that didn't seem too sturdy. I actually found a lady on Etsy who makes a "kit". I was planning on just purchasing the vinyl dots but then decided to go with the whole kit even though it was more than I originally wanted to spend. Jamie, the shop owner, was super sweet and got my items to me out FAST despite being ready to have a baby any day. I ordered on a Sunday and had everything by Wednesday!

I worked on the applying the vinyl dots and nameplate that evening. Tim was able to apply the mouse ears as well. Unfortunately, Charlotte was already in bed by the time we got done but we were able to show her the final product the following morning. She LOVES it and I have to admit I love the way it turned out too.

Ikea Kitchen Makeover

Every time we took Charlotte to a Birthday party or event, she would gravitate to the play kitchen... and then wouldn't leave. Tim and I both knew we wanted to get her one for the house but simply did not want something plastic. I had toyed around with the idea of making one from an old TV stand... I even went as far as to track one down for $15 at our local Goodwill. At the last minute we changed our minds. We didn't want another heavy piece of furniture in the house either.

So, we decided to pick up Ikea's basic Duktig play kitchen. However, we had NO intention of leaving it as is! The same day we brought the kitchen home, we headed out to Lowe's for supplies.

We knew we wanted to paint the kitchen, add a back splash and come up with someway to make a fridge.  That is where my dad came in. We bought an inexpensive shelving unit and asked him to make a door for it. We has a really hard time finding something that already had a door. Then we had fun with it! For the fridge, we painted the bottom portion in chalkboard paint. The freezer portion was coated in Magnetic paint. This was my first time using Magnetic paint... I purchased a quart of Rust-Oleum Magnetic Primer. I was nervous because it seemed like it got pretty bad reviews overall and a lot of people complained it simply didn't work. While it isn't an easy product to work with... it does hold our magnets perfectly! My tips would be 1) use a brush/roller/ tray you are fine with throwing away after, 2) Have it professionally mixed just before using, 3) Use multiple thin coats ( we did somewhere between 5-7 coats), and 4) Stir, stir, stir between coats! I was nervous that adding a "top coat" like the product calls for would negate some of the magnetization but it held up just fine! Once everything was dry, we added some handles and attached the door.

The remainder of the Kitchen got a thin coat of primer and two thin coats of paint. It hard to see in the picture above but the paint is called Lazy Days from Valspar's Signature Kids Collection. We opted to only paint what was wooden. We left everything that was white originally, as is. The counter was sanded down ( there was some type of thin clear coat on top) and then given a few coats of Red Mahogany Stain and some spray poly.

Next we added under cabinet lighting. Yes you read that correctly... my daughters play kitchen has under cabinet lighting and my own kitchen does not. We use one of these lights from Ikea we happened to have at home. The switch is on the side of the kitchen. I have to say, it is one of her favorite things about the kitchen! She loves turning the light on and off.  The final thing to be added was the back splash. We used the same product we used on our Kitchen Ceiling, just a different pattern. We attached it on the back with the staple gun and left a small hole in the corner to feed out the wire for our under cabinet lighting. Oh and the knobs.... this was more of a struggle than I would like to admit. We could not find real oven knobs small to fit this space. We ended up painting regular black wooden knobs and adding white stripes. We added a washer behind them so they do spin. And this is what the final product looked like.

 

She LOVES it and plays with it everyday. We picked up the utensil and pots at Ikea too. We purchased the food from Amazon since most of the playfood at Ikea is plush and we wanted plastic. So while we might of spent more than we would have on a generic plastic kids kitchen set at the toy store, we LOVE the way it turned out and that it blends in with the rest of our  house. 

4th of July Crafts

So this post is LONG overdue! I realized I never shared my 4th of July projects this year. There were a few of them that turned out great so I didn't want to skip over it even though its about 3 months late...

While not technically a project, I picked up some table decorations from Kohls. Not sure if I have ever mentioned it here but I seriously LOVE Kohls. The stackable coupons and the Kohls cash... you really can't do better. I want to say I was able to pick up everything below for under $20.

The next thing I tried my hand at were 4th of July vases. I had some mason jars lying around so I decided to try my hand at painting a mini- flag across three jars.

First I painted one jar blue and the other two white. After they were dry, I used blue painters tape to make my stripes on two of the three jars. I used a star stencil to paint a white star on the blue jar. I had a lot of bleed through on my tape. I think this is because the jar is round and had ridges so there were certain areas where I didn't get the best "seal".

I used a small paint brush to go over the stripes and that made things look much better. I added some cheap $3.95 flowers from the grocery story and displayed them in the bar area of our kitchen.

The last project I completed was a pallet American Flag for the front yard. The company my dad works for is constantly getting rid of pallets so I asked him to keep an eye out  for one that was in decent condition. I didn't realize how large they were, almost too large for where I planned to display it. So Tim and I cut it down to a more appropriate size. I used the same paints I purchase for the jar project above... Chalk paint I purchased on sale at Joann's.

Since its raw wood, I used a primer first knowing it would soak up the paint.

After the primer, I used two coats of each color. When it dried, I stenciled on the white stars.

We placed the pallet in our new Palm Tree that I mentioned here. All the plants are growing so fast I have to trim them constantly!

We also pulled out the pallet flag for Labor Day last month and will likely so the same on Memorial Day.

The Living Room Take over

Charlotte is slowly taking over our living room! We wanted to add a space for her stuff but also still wanted it to be an adult room since we spend A LOT of time in that room as well.

We decided to add a small bookshelf next to the bar. We picked one up at Target for around $50 and anchored it to the wall. The shelves store some of Charlotte's toys and books. We made the top of the bookshelf into a "docking station" for us.

The shelves above the new bookshelf have been there for a bit. They were also a Target find. They two shelves came with 2 5X7 frames to match. The framed print was our anniversary gift this year and I am kind of obsessed with it! It is one of the "What a difference a day makes" prints that you see all over Pinterest BUT I found one Etsy shop that printed on burlap. I had her customize it to fit a few extra dates but I LOVE it. 

Another major change in the living room was the addition of a gate. I do not understand why babygates are SO ugly! I mean honestly, they are either gray plastic or made of mesh! We had a large opening which narrowed our options even more. We wanted to be able to block off the opening into the living room and keep Charlotte off the tile. The opening use to be a sliding glass door so it is LARGE. After scouring the internet and coming up with nothing I liked, we decided to make our own. Other than coming up with the idea, I was not AT ALL involved in this project. My dad and time spent around $60 on supplies at Lowe's and set to work. They used wood and PVC pipe to construct three panels: two to be mounted and the other to act as the gate. We coated everything with Oil rubbed bronze spray paint and let it dry for a few days before installing. We used a simple latch for the gate and secured it to both walls. SO much better that the mesh gates!

Highchair Makeover

With Charlotte's first birthday quickly approaching, I have been scouring Pinterest for photo ideas. We have actually booked with the photographer who did her newborn pictures for her 1-year pics BUT I also want cute pictures for the party itself. We have decided to have her party at my parent's house this year and so I started to think about where we will do the smash cake. After seeing lots of pictures on Pinterest, I decided I would keep my eye out for a wooden highchair.

About 2 weeks ago, I had my annual physical (which I haven't done in 2 years since I was pregnant last year) and I noticed a kids consignment shop across the street so I decided to pop in and see what they had in. First thing I saw when I walked in the door was this little guy sitting by the door.

It was pretty beat up and I had a hard time removing the tray. The shop owner helped me fix the sliding tray so that everything was functional. Everything else was cosmetic and could be fixed with some sanding. The shop owner ended up taking $5 off so I scored the highchair for $20! 

At this point I wasn't really sure how I wanted to refinish it. I honestly wasn't expecting to fid a highchair so easily. I found lots of ideas that I liked but these were some of the top contenders: dark stain, Teal chalk paint, or a basic white. 

In the end, I was a creature of habit and decided to go with what I knew I would love. I also wanted it to be something we would get use out of AFTER the party. So while a teal/aqua colored highchair would be fabulous to have at her party, I wasn't sure how much it would get used after. So I decided to go two tone, just like Charlotte's dresser. 

I didn't take step by step pics BUT it was fairly simple. This particular wood did give me some trouble so there were a few more steps then usual. 

1) I wiped everything down with deglosser.

2) I started with the roughest grit sandpaper for the tray and worked my way to the finer stuff until the tray was back to raw wood.  I used three different grits with the finest being 220. 

3) I used the 220 grit paper to rough up the surfaces of the highchair itself. Because I was going to paint that part I did not need to strip it completely. 

4) I removed all the dust. This was the hardest part!! 

5) I used Valspar White Satin paint for the "chair" part. It took 4 cans in total. LOTS of thin coats. The issued I had was some texture that would arise after painting. It was not noticeable but I could feel it so I ended up sanding it down between coats, removing the dust and painting another coat. This did help but it made the process much longer. 

6) The top also has the same issue with texture and the wood really ate the stain. It took 5 coats of stain and 2 coats of poly to get the right shade and sheen I wanted. We applied the stain with cheesecloth and used super fine steel wool between coats to remove any texture. The stain is my go to stain: Minwax "Red Mahogany".  Followed by Rustoleum's gloss spray poly. 

And the finals results are perfect:

I spent $20 on the highchair and $20 at Lowe's on spray paint and poly. I already has everything else on hand from my last project. Not too bad for $40!