Friends with Dressers

A few years ago, when I started re-doing furniture, there were only a few blogs I read. They were my inspiration and Kirsten at White Butterfly Furniture was one of them. I loved every piece she did and she seemed so real. Oh and she had 3 boys at the time...like me. She now has 4 boys and she makes it look easy!

Long story short, Kirsten recently moved about 20 min from me! I finally met her in person when we were all sweaty at the gym. We hugged and it was instant friendship!

Last week, my husband and I decided that our 7 year old and 5.5 year old couldn't room together anymore...for various reasons, but mainly because waking up at 5:45 am and giggling until 7:00am was becoming the norm. Not ok. That and the semi-nude wrestling that ensued when getting dressed in the morning. Moms of boys, can I get a "holla!"? Are my boys the only ones? If so, I don't want to know.

So we moved Mr. C (almost 6), to our guest room. We never use it anyway...but it was very girly. I emptied it out and we started fresh...but I needed a dresser.

Now, am I the only one who feels like thrift shops and Craigslist have become overrun with people who want to paint furniture? I mean, I love that people want to do this, but it is making it difficult to find decent pieces for cheap.

I emailed a few people, Kirsten being one of them, to be on the lookout for a dresser during their thrifting adventures.

She wrote me back and said she had one in her garage...turns out it was the perfect size!

Before:

This was after I jimmied the drawers out..they were STUCK. And one drawer was in pieces. I decided that I didn't even want to bother with fixing it...baskets were going to be used in place of a drawer.

I have a barn door headboard that I'm working on, so I wanted the dresser to have a "rustic boy vibe"...if there is such a thing.

After trying red, dark mustard and a medium blue (all of these colors remain under the final color...stripping is my least favorite and we're keeping this), I ended up with this:

Rustic top and drawers..waxed and buffed.

Baskets from Home Goods. Love.

My kid loves it and he's loving having his own space. Stay tuned for the headboard. It's going to be awesome!

~Allison

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Painting New Furniture

Recently, a friend asked me to be on the lookout for a bench. It had to have certain dimensions...long and narrow. And it needed to have a build that allowed baskets to be kept underneath.

I searched Craigslist for a few weeks, but nothing came up. And then I found one online at World Market with the perfect dimensions. I showed it to her, and while she liked it, she didn't love the finish. Nothing a little paint can't fix!

Before:

After:

These pictures don't do it justice. Snowing again in MN = no motivation to take decent pictures.

Have you ever painted anything new?

~Allison

Maple Nightstand: Before and After

Hi Friends!!

Here's a quick before and after on a nightstand I recently picked up. I went to see a "dresser and nighstand" set on Craigslist and I was pretty sure I would buy the set, but upon inspection of the dresser, it was bad. I wouldn't have paid $10, much less the $40 they were asking. But I did get this nighstand...actually this is a photo from Craigslist of a nightstand with a similar finish, as I forgot to take a before photo (again!).

I had this great color on hand (Benjamin Moore: Mount Saint Anne) and after a coat of oil-based primer, painted 2 coats, distressed and sealed with clear wax. I LOVE this color!

Have a great day!

~Allison

A Few Goodies

Just a few picture for you lovelies tonight. No before pictures, just "after rehab" goodness: 

The before of this was your average, maple colonial buffet.

 After:

All was well until I looked closer at the former hardware holes..

Lame. I had to start over on the drawers. But it was worth it. This piece is going to the boys' elementary school auction in April!

I also happened upon these sweet chairs. I didn't even paint them...just recovered in burlap and called it a day! These will be at Carver Junk Company in Carver, MN!




How's that for a little Tuesday night fun?

Thanks for stopping by!

~Allison

Reveal: My Kitchen Command Center

Oooookay. I had so many titles I thought of for this entry.

1. My Cloffice (closet office) 
2. My Sanity Saver or 
3. The project that improved my marriage

But Kitchen Command Center is much more sexy searchable in Google, so I went with that one. 

Now before anyone gets worried (mom), this marriage isn't in trouble. However, the piles of papers on our kitchen island were a stressor for everyone. I mean, you can only do the "shit shuffle" so many times before you just want to dump it in the trash, right? I will also share that prior to this space being created, I had ONE kitchen drawer for my stuff (papers, planners, etc) and my kids' papers, info. ONE kitchen drawer people! I could never find anything.

We started with this closet...and this picture was taken after taking the door off and after we had de-cluttered stuff a bit, but this space was not being used properly at all. It was a bifold door that was never closed, so always stuck out in the walkway. An eyesore and unnecessary, so it came off. And that got the wheels turning!

What you can't see in this picture is the small space inside the closet on the left side. It's 9" wide x 15" deep and I had high hopes of putting shelving in there...a shelf for each child and one for me! My Father in law was able to execute them perfectly! He is my go to for these types of things!

I plan on going through the steps and costs in a follow up blog entry, but here are pictures I took today. I think I still need a few things for the wall, but the storage is perfect and so is the space. My oldest (1st grade) loves doing his homework here!

Apologies on the awkward angles...my refrigerator sticks out so that getting a picture head on isn't possible.

A melamine board trimmed with moulding for the desk, a thrifted ($4.99 @ Goodwill...poppin tags!) chair, and a nightstand stolen from our guest room. Oh how I searched for something with the perfect dimensions...and this was already in my house!

Fantastic storage bins from Tuesday Morning...if you haven't been, you must go! And yes, I'm hiding that game from my children...have you heard the noise it makes? My ears are still bleeding.

Perfectly sized shelf for all of those papers that come home from school. Plus the top shelf for lunch box storage! Love!

As a reminder, here is the before (can you tell I love the improvement!).

I'll do a step by step and cost breakdown within the next week if people are interested.

~Allison