Vintage lockers for the playroom!

There is one spot left in my playroom that I hate... here it is.

It was just never "finished" and doesn't jive with the rest of the space in any sense.  It's a giant mosh of toys, puzzles, and books.  The last frontier of that room.

I mean, its directly across from this gallery wall... just not giving off the same vibe!



Gallery wall and custom lamp shade how-to found here. I left plenty of room to add to it over the years.



I had envisioned building in a desk surrounded by pantry height shelving for more storage of course!  Something kind of like this.

source

Well, as luck would have it, I was shopping at the Tobacco Barn with my mom on Mother's Day and ran across these absolutely perfect vintage lockers!!

I was over the moon excited!  They were the perfect size, perfect feel for the space, and even better than what I had in mind. Just think of all the things I can hide in there!!  And there is even a row of shelves at the top that can be mine all mine (because the kids can't reach them!)

 Next step... getting them home.  This ended up being the hard part.  Giving them your money is easy ($150 by the way!  About $450 cheaper than they Ikea system I had designed!).  After mulling over the purchase for a few days I decided to take the truck and head back to buy them while my mom watched the kids.  Guess what happens next... they do not fit in the truck and they DO NOT come apart.  A really old guy in a motorized wheel chair suggests that they will fit perfectly balanced on the sides of the truck.  Good eye old man!!  This wasn't his first rodeo.  I head off to Lowe's and buy $75 worth of ratchet straps (we only needed two but I wasn't taking any chances!)  Two sweaty guys, two random ladies in dresses, and myself end up getting them on, balanced, and strapped down.  It was the longest 45 minute drive home of my life!

So here they are right this very second.  My biceps got a two day massive workout from scrubbing every sticky, dirty, nasty teenage whatever-ness off these babies.  There is still one pesky piece of blue gum stuck to the bottom... I think I might just leave it :-)  Goo  B Gone is a miracle worker by the way!!  It even ate through duct tape!

I'll leave you with a little vintage locker inspiration.  I am pretty sure they are going to be sprayed green with my new sprayer from Will (you know your husband truly loves you when he supports your hobby that drives him totally bonkers). 

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On another note, Rebekah and family are making the trek to NC this weekend!!  Maybe I'll make her help me paint these.  That is, after we watch our kids and husbands participate in the Mad Mountain Mud Run!  Awesome pictures to come!!

Kandi

Southern Home Show and IKEA!!

I mentioned here that I won tickets to the Southern Home Show.  I never win anything so I thought it was awesome and a great excuse to head out of town for the day!  My friend Jenn met me there.  We were giddy just to see each other and didn't care too much how the show was.  Here are a few of my must haves from the show. 

There are a few things I would have left with if at all possible...

1.  A Suspension Chair (or 4) from BH System.

It was seriously the most comfortable place I have ever put my tush!  And they were beautiful.  Can't you just picture yourself with a cup of coffee, reading a magazine, watching your kids play.....  baaahhaaaaa!  Yeah right... but still fun to try to imagine!

2.  Carved Rock Sculpture from Eric Moore Designs.

He carves these all himself with rocks he mainly finds (there is only one kind of rock he buys).  They were just unbelievably beautiful!!!  I know the perfect person who will be getting one of these as a gift.  But he/she may or may not read by blog so I will say no more!!! 

So I took the next couple pictures with my i-phone.  The quality it bad and I know nothing about the vendors, also bad... but they are inspiring!

Who wouldn't want this in their yard?  Tulips + Sculpture = Yes, please!

This would be minus the canopy for me... but, the orange and blue together is perfectly fresh and the monogram pillow.... I'll take it!  I am from the South after all!  I will monogram anything possible!

To feed my monogramming obsession... it might actually be a bad thing if I had one of these... 

And finally, Jenn posing for me in an Ikea setup (at a fake laptop).  This would be perfect for the random spot in my playroom.  I would add a desk rather than table for the kids to do homework at one day (planning ahead!).  I would have the cabinets in glossy white, and I would hide endless amounts of toys and craft supplies. 

Don't we all need a day away with friends?!?!  So blessed to not only have great friends but an awesome husband who understands that I am a happier person when I get to recharge... even if it is only a couple times a year! 

Kandi

Children's Art Display and a Playroom Update

Both of my children go to preschool.  My son attends 5 mornings a week and my daughter 2 mornings a week.  That means they come home with a minimum of 7 pieces of art each week!  Has anyone else out there ever been caught throwing it out?!?  I finally had to tell my 5 year old that I just can't keep every single thing. Does that make me a bad mom?  I do keep the extra special things!  He seems to understand... well kind of.  

In an effort to rediscover my refrigerator and better display their art I came up with a super quick, easy and free way to display the precious artwork that they are always so proud of!

In digging through a "junk" drawer for a candle last week I found a pile of drapery clips I had taken off curtain rings.  Those, along with a ball of twine from the dollar spot at Target, and a few push pins (which will soon be replaced by screw in hooks that I know I have somewhere in this house!).

I had a large blank wall right over a pile of toys.  The perfect place!  Tie your clips onto the twine, tie ends of twine to your hooks (or push pins for impatient people like me) and  attach to the wall.  If you do not have extra drapery clips, I have also seen this project with clothes pins.  Done!  In 15 minutes you can mark two things off your to do list... display your child's prized art work, check....and clean off the fridge, check!  

I wanted to show a couple other playroom project that have gone on since the reveal.  I'll use this super awesome "during" photo so you can see the giant fluorescent light box in the back of the room.  Maybe it was functional but I'm not sure there is anything I hate more in the world of lighting  than florecent bulbs.  I even took out the bulbs to make it less noticeable until I could get it totally out of there. 

Have you ever in your life seen a bigger mess!! 

It has since been replaced with track lighting that makes the gallery wall look 100% more awesome!  Made a huge difference in highlighting the photos and adding more light to the room!  Thanks Will for being so handy!  You can look back at the original Play Room Reveal post to see the difference.   

A couple other inexpensive playroom art projects. 

The "i can do HARD things" free printable is from an awesome blog called  Kiki Creates.  She is creative, smart, focused on God, and all around inspiring!  Go check her out! 

And finally, I can't help but smile when my son recites to my daughter when she's whiny... "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit".  Yeah, right!  Print from Children Inspire Design.  They no longer have this one but have great things that are super affordable.

While some of us are enjoying a snow day (Rebekah)... I'm sitting her looking at a sunny day... super jealous!!!!!!  Not even a flurry last night!

Kandi

Here is where we link up!

 

 

PLAYROOM REVEAL!!

I guess I've been promising this post for some time now.  The problem is I can NOT get this room finished.  Now, it is "finished"... but it's not perfect.  Is any room ever going to be perfect?  I have decided the answer is NO!  So, I'm going to show you this room in its current state.  Looking at these before pictures I can see we've come a very long way so the few things here and there that I want to add and change will just have to become future blog posts!

This room started as a weekend project with an accent wall, new furniture arrangement, and a few pillows.  3 months later it had grown into new floors, painting all the trim and doors, curtains, etc. etc. etc. The main wall color is Pale Smoke and trim and cabinet color is Super White both by Benjamin Moore. My husband saw the slight transformation and got on board!  He decided we needed new floors and enlisted his buddies to come help lay them one weekend.  BUT... before we could do that... all the trim and doors were wood tone so we decided they needed to be white!  It was one of the best choices we made and the worst task to complete!

Early morning painting... no fun! 

The payoff was totally worth it!  Goodbye 1981! 

The cabinets were all taken apart, sanded, primed, painted, and then got a coat of poly.  Then, about a month later all the cabinets were taken apart {again}, sanded{again},  primed{again},  painted {again}, and then got a coat of poly {again}.  I wasn't aware that oil based polyurethane would turn my white cabinets the color of a banana!  Sad and frustrating, but lesson learned.  While we had them down anyway we chose a brighter white (Super White by Ben Moore) and also painted the hinges in Krylon Fusion Metallic Shimmer.  The ACRYLIC top coat was tinted to the exact white as  the cabinet color to avoid the banana debacle from happening again.

The Hubs doing the sanding as I go right behind him priming with the big can of Kilz you see in the forground.

Benjamin Moore's Super White with newly painted hinges.

Two rounds of sanding, priming, painting,and sealing ended up

being totally worth it in the end! Look at the difference

in color from the above picture where we are sanding!!



Once all the painting was done and the floors were down it was just a matter of rearranging furniture and accessorizing.   I made two curtain panels to hide the giant holes on either side of the fire place.  I am assuming they were put there to store wood.  We use them to store toys, fabric, craft supplies, etc.  If you remember from the original post I wanted sliding barn doors to cover them.  Sliding doors are impossible because the actual fireplace sticks out about 4 inches past the wall.  There may be barn style doors in my future but they will be on hinges.  For now, these panels do the trick of hiding the junk. 

Good storage but U-G-L-Y!

The accent fabric here is "Spot On" by Waverly and the rest of the panel is a white cotton duck.  They are hanging thru a rod pocket on $3 tension rods from Big Lots.   Notice in the before picture the cubby on the left is perfect size to hold fabric bolts!

The wet bar cabinets received that same paint treatment as the other cabinets (both times) and you can read about the fridge transformation here.  The mirror was a gift from my sweet mom she picked out just for this spot.  I love how much light it reflects back into the room!  It is from Pier 1.

What were they thinking in the 80's?!?

Perfect place to clean dirty hands or mix a drink.  It's inevitable that people end up down here whether we are hosting a kids party or an adult party.

In came a new rug.  The one I was coveting from Dash and Albert!  We got rid of the worlds heaviest TV and sold the TV cabinet (it was where the gallery wall is now).  The new TV was a Christmas present from my sweet in-laws.  The couch was reoriented which completely opened up the room.  The gallery wall went up and that was enough for me to call the room "finished enough for now."

Gallery wall and custom lamp shade how-to found here.  I left plenty of room to add to it over the years.

I made this pillow from an old bird seed sack.  Love it!

Before

Inspiration Room from Traditional Home Magazine

The overall cost of this room was very inexpensive considering the amount of work that went in. We purchased the floors from Lowes on Black Friday for right at $700 ($1/sq. ft). We recruited friends to help install (cost... 1 case of beer for the boys :-). We spend about $200 on paint for the baseboards, doors, walls, and cabinets and still have some leftover. The Dash and Albert rug was 30% off so I got it for less that $250 including shipping which is pretty good for an awesome 8x10 rug. I owned most all the frames and just made them cohesive with paint. Mirror was a gift. Lamp $5 from Goodwill and refurbished. Waveryly fabric was $12.99/yd and I bought 2 yds for all the pillows, curtain trim, and bench cover. Other odds and ends maybe $50. Total cost came in under $1300. I'm OK with it because it feels like a brand new space that we want to spend time in rather than a dark, cold, dingy basement.

I wanted this room to have a playful feel because that is where we plan on keeping most of the toys (now I just need to work on my scaredy cat son so he'll go down there alone...). But, when we have big parties at our house this is the room where a lot of people end up so I needed it to also function that way. I hope you enjoy checking it out! If you have a suggestion for the TV wall PLEASE pass it on!!

 

Kandi

3 Money Saving Projects and a Basement Update

It has been a little more than a week and my basement reno is still not quite finished.  It kind of took on a life of its own and what was going to be a little face lift turned more into a major over-haul.  There were a few snafus that slowed me down... starting with the fact the color I bought [2 gallons of] was horrid and even worse the polyurethane I bought to go on my cabinets turned them from a beautiful white to full on banana yellow!!  Please learn from my mistake...ONLY USE AN ACRYLIC BASED POLY WHEN PAINTING OVER WHITE.  More on this topic and how I remedied it in a later post!  Then, of course my husband came home and got involved and we now have beautiful new floors down here and I won't complain about that at all!!  Thankfully the basement is about 99% complete now and I am only lacking a couple baskets to feel good enough about it to post it on the blog.

Today, I am going to show you 3 projects I did down here that saved me tons of money!  Who doesn't like that?

1.  Spray painted refrigerator.

What?  That's right!  I spray painted our little under bar fridge that was bought in 1980 and had the brown wood grain color to prove it!

I figured I didn't have anything to lose and if turned out horrid I would just go buy another one.  I taped up the handles, primed with Kilz, and then hit it with Krylon Fusion spray paint in Metallic Shimmer (2 coats). Easy as pie and less than an hour project including dry times!  I think it was 100% worth it and no one had any idea it was spray painted.   We are talking $5 rather than going to spend $150 on a new one!  Good stuff!

2.  Repurposed Goodwill Lamp and Walmart Shade. 

This was $5!!!!  Yes!!  They actually had a few to chose from but I wanted one that could take up a good bit of visual space on a big side table.  I was drawn to this lamp from Ballard Design, but the $169 price tag seemed completely unrealistic to me!

Pretty huh!  Here is a link if you don't feel like doing it yourself.

For the lamp base I first checked to make sure it worked before I did any work to it!  Wrap up the hardware with painters tape and next give it a quick wipe down a a coat of Kilz primer.  I would normally spray paint the whole thing but I didn't have any bright white and was sitting beside a big can of Super White Benjamin Moore trim paint.  I did two coats of that and then hit it with a coat of Rustoleum High Lustre Lacquer. 

The shade was just a little trickier but not much!  I found a $14.99 drum shade at Walmart.  I had a scrap of fabric left over from pillow making and used the plastic protective covering from the lamp shade as a template, traced it onto my fabric, and cut that out leaving an extra 1/4 inch or so around all the edges.  Next, just pin the fabric onto the shade, cut off any excess, and slowly glue (I used hot glue) the top edges all the way around. Lastly cut two lengths of matching ribbon to hide your raw edges and glue those down.  It turned out pretty close to perfect... close enough for me anyway!  One thing I learned is to line up the seams of your new cover with the existing seem on the lampshade.  Otherwise, when the lamp is on you will see both seams. 

I'm kind of in love with it and my total price including the $14.99 Walmart lamp shade was still under $30.  A far cry from the $169 price tag on the Ballard Design gourd lamp!!

3.  Gallery Wall. 
I have been pinning tons of gallery walls on Pinterest!  But, to price all new frames, mats, etc was gonna be a little ridiculous.  So, I gathered up tons of existing frames and a few other pictures and mirrors from around my house and got out... you guessed it... the spray paint!  I wanted to stick to the green, black and white so all I did was lay out my design and decide which frames to paint!  I even painted some mats and it worked beautifully!  Hopefully the glass pops out of your frames (some of mine didn't) which makes it very easy work.  Spray prime, spray paint, hang.  Easy as that!  I am left with a cohesive gallery wall that I think highlights the pictures which is exactly what I wanted!

There you go... 3 incredibly easy money saving projects that absolutely anyone can do!
Full room reveal this week sometime!

Kandi