DIY: farm table seating.

while we were "theory-crafting" (as daniel likes to call it) about our table, we went back and forth a lot about our seating options.

we knew we wanted a bench on at least one side, and two fabric chairs for the ends of the table. i couldn't decide if i wanted to do 2 benches or have chairs on the other side. i thought 3 different seating options might be a little much, but i'm glad we decided to go with it. i think it gives the room a little more character & height.

we found these chairs at the nashville flea market for $15 a piece. we bought 4 and thankfully we only needed 3 because we had a flying chair incident on the interstate.... no worries, daniel sacrificed himself to recover the chair and now it is used around the campfire :)

i sanded the chairs & used a tact cloth to remove the residue. i spray painted them with valspar primer & then valspar gray spray paint from lowe's. i used 2 cans of primer between the 3 chairs, and 1 can of gray per chair.

{i love the detail on the back of the chairs}

{after the primer}

 {finished product}

next up we purchased two dove gray tufted lydia dining chairs from world market. i had my eyes on these for awhile, and when we went to world market after the flea market, they were on sale that day for 15% off! there were also only two gray chairs left, so we took that as a sign and came home with these beauties. this was by far our biggest splurge of our table project.

and last but not least, about 2 months later, we finally built the bench. we used the same blogger's plan for the bench that we used for the table - click here. we didn't follow this exactly - just went with the same general design we used for the table. we actually measured a few things wrong and had to do a little "re-do" half way through the project. thankfully, we both just laughed. 

 

i was really worried about getting the stain the same color, but i only did 1 coat of stain & poly and it turned out great. 

last but certainly not least, we replaced the god-awful light that was in there (so bad i don't even have pictures) with this beautiful (and CHEAP!) pendant lamp from ikea. and the rug came from rugsusa.com sometime last year - it came over from my apartment when i finally moved all my stuff in. 

drumroll please... our dining room/eat-in kitchen!

DIY: farm table!

daniel and i both really love projects. how lucky that i found a man with a whole garage full of saws & tools? jackpot.

back in march we decided to build a farm table. we used this link from pinterest for the wood cuts: click here. we pretty much followed those directions and ended up with a beautiful table!

once we cut the boards to the correct measurements, we put them together to see which order they should go in. we were looking for them to be as flush together as possible. 

then we sanded everything and put the top pieces to the side. 

next came the frame. we built the top grid separate before adding the legs.  once the frame was complete, we placed it upside down on top of the boards that become the table top. we then made sure it was lined up correctly on all sides, and added 3 screws per small strip of wood to attach the top pieces to the frame.

ta-da! we then filled in all the screw holes with wood filler & sanded them down after it dried. 

next up was the staining - hi diesel!

we used minwax special walnut. i think we did about 2-3 coats. the wood we used for the legs was pressure treated so they soaked up the stain quicker. we did  2 coats of poly once the stain dried. 

we already had the stain, poly, and wood filler, so really all we had to purchase was the lumber and screws. when all was said & done, we spent less than $80.00 on this beauty!

next up, the 3 different seating options we have at our table. 

DIY: etched glasses!

a few months ago kristin started working on etched glasses for her boyfriend's birthday. they turned out awesome (read her post here)! so when i was trying to come up with a small little gift to give my guy friends, i decided to give the glasses a go!

what you'll need:

• plain pint glasses (or any glass you'd like) - i actually couldn't find these anywhere. i finally found them at world market for $1.99 piece
• contact paper - this was hiding somewhere near the poster boards in michaels
• armour etch - near the paint in michaels

• isopropyl rubbing alcohol
• rubber gloves - apparently this armour etch stuff is full of acid and can kill you - so make sure you get some gloves!
• exacto knife
• plastic knife

here's how it goes:

• print off whatever you want to etch onto plain paper & cut it out - use exacto knife for any small areas. the areas that you cut out will be what actually gets etched.
• trace onto the contact paper and cut out any parts that you don't want etched. this actually took some serious thought and consulting with my coworker to figure out which parts i needed to cut on on the chapel hill  & villanova logo. 
• clean the pint glasses with the rubbing alcohol. i used a cotton ball and then a paper towel to dry it off. this makes sure there are no finger prints or smudges that will show up on the etching.
• place the contact paper on the glass. smooth out any bubbles. make sure all the parts that you cut out made it onto the glass  -- see the chapel hill logo below. (i saved all the little pieces in an envelope).

• put your gloves on, and use the plastic knife to "glob" the armour etch onto the glass. it doesn't need to be smooth or even - it works better if it's not. 

• be careful of the cream running off the edges! next time i will make the cutouts bigger because i kept having to wash off the cream and redo it. 
• let the cream sit for about 10 minutes. wash it off and see if you like the "darkness" of the etching. if not, add the cream again and let sit a little while longer.
• wash the cream off in the sink - peel the contact paper off & you're done!

an SEC girl had to make all ACC glasses :(

good luck & happy etching!

crafty.

last week before vacation, i made a few cards for people i'd be seeing at the beach.. i scored some individual lowercase letter stamps (i despise capital letters) a few weeks ago on sale & set out on a journey to use them.

here are the three cards & envelopes i made: i really love how they turned out!

i also made my friend laura who is recently engaged a little basket full of goodies.

includes: twine wrapped W for her new last name, chalkboard with her date, candle, his & her cups i picked up at the vintage market a few weeks ago, a bath fizz ball, & of course, a bottle of andre.

i used hot glue each time i needed to start wrapping in a new area - easy to do but took quite a while to wrap!

happy crafting!

DIY: plywood sign.

a few months ago i painted the sign below for katie's room. she had leftover plywood from another project & decided to paint it yellow & i drew/painted the words. it was a great idea & one that i stole for this project.

a few weekends ago, court and i went to lowe's in search for some plywood. we got there and realized that 1. plywood is expensive and 2. we certainly didn't need a whole sheet. so we wandered back to the wood cutting area and found some employees who were loading up scrap pieces. we asked if we could have a piece & he agreed we could have it for $10. STEAL. so he cut it to the size we wanted, 34" x 34", and it was a done deal.

1. primer. i tried to just go ahead and paint it without primer and that didn't work. i also decided when i put the first bit of paint on there that i hated the color yellow we had picked. mom had some primer so i borrowed it, painted a thick coat, and let it dry overnight.

2. spray paint. we had originally bought the same kind i have always used, but on a trip to home depot, i picked up a can of rust oleum. i did an event for rust oleum a few months ago and i was so impressed by all their props/painted items they brought along, so i felt good about switching it up. i wasn't disappointed.

 

{$8 tarp from lowe's for projects}

 

3. distressing. speaking of the rust oleum event, they had shipped some distressing tools here but they arrived a few weeks after the event. my client said to toss them, so a few of us took a set home. if i had followed the instructions, i would have used the appropriate sandpaper before using the tools. but i didn't have any, and didn't want to make another trip, so i just went ahead with banging these things on the wood. really, i think that's all there is to it.

 

 

 

 

4. quote time. we ended up going with joshua 24:15. i free handed this with a pencil first and then used regular old acrylic white paint.

 

 

5. attaching the hardware. this is actually REALLY easy. i got a pack of d-rings and a pack of picture hangers. i measured equal distance for the d-rings and just drilled them in. i used the painter's tape trick to hang the picture hangers on the wall and the wood hooked right on.

 

 

{d-ring}

 

finished product!

 

 

 

wood: $10

paint: $3.49 + $.99

hardware: around $6

 

total cost: $20

DIY: gallery wall.

one of the cool things about living with your sister is that you have the same family, so you can put up family photos in the mutual living spaces in your house. after seeing this pin on pinterest, we decided to give it a go.

on friday night, we stopped at michael's to pick up the frames. we opted to get the 10x10 frames in black because they were $2 cheaper than the 12x12 and hey, $18 is a lot of money! i also bought a pack of 12x12 white card stock to use as the background.

when we got home, we cut the paper to 10x10 and decided to go ahead and figure out how to hang these suckers. obviously, the spacing of these frames was important. we figured it out like this..

• measured the entire wall side to side. we divided the side to side measurement by 4, and marked each 1/4 spot along the wall, so really, you have 5 "lines," 3 being actual lines and 2 being the walls. the 3 lines that were actually marked were the vertical lines that we placed the frames on.

• once we had the vertical lines figured out, we had to figure out how high we wanted the highest set of frames to go & how low we wanted the lowest set to go. we decided we would rather have the higher set higher, so we measured from the higher point (not the ceiling) and followed the same measuring as step 1.

i printed off two copies of each picture at rite aid. originally, we wanted to do 5x5 squares, but buying 5x7 prints was like $70 vs. the $10 i spent on the 4x6 prints. no brainer there. i trimmed the photos to make them as close to a 4x4 as i could. i simply taped the photo in the center of the white paper & inserted it into the frame. voila! 

total cost: about $60

and for a closer look at what freaks we are for 1. taking some of these pics and 2. for hanging them in our home...

{grand canyon!}

{this was taken in public. yikes.}

{in the running for my all time favorite picture}

DIY: bathroom re-do!

we're finally getting around to the last few projects of the house. and in doing so, i realized i absolutely hated our half-bath that is on the main (middle) level of our townhouse. the bathroom is painted a weird green color and has these terrible gold fixtures. we had a red bulldog portrait hanging in there and that was about it. it was tragic.

a few weeks ago, roomie amanda bought these adorable chevron curtains for us from urban.

i thought they would help liven things up, but no. we needed a whole new idea. after all, this is the bathroom that all of our guests use since it is on our "living level." and being the poor/crafty person i am, i got on pinterest and started emailing roomie katie some ideas.

first things first, the ugly gold towel bar had to go. this was easier said than done & we ended up having our friend andy come over to help. after removing it, we spackled and  touched up the holes with what we thought was the same paint color. errr... wrong. so the next day, i carved a piece of the paint out of the wall and had lowe's match the color for me. all better! i bought a small silver towel hook from lowe's and installed it on the opposite wall. once i replaced the towel bar, i realized the toilet paper holder had to go too. i got the one that matches the towel hook and installed that as well.

next up was the crafting. we did three projects for the "new" bathroom.

project # 1: frame wall

inspired by this blog post, i picked up some natural wood blocks in various shapes & sizes from michael's. each of them were $2.99. we primed & spray painted them all grey. after the paint dried, i had to measure the middle & drill holes in the back of all them so we could hang them on the wall. then i traced all of the frames onto paper (via this pinterest idea) to get them positioned the way we liked them. last step will be (eventually) printing out pictures and taping them to the frames.

project #2: burlap canvas

i have about a thousand canvases that i've painted at (insert business name that is a play on words about wine & paint) over the past few years. all of which live in my attic. so instead of buying a new canvas, i spray painted over an old canvas white and we wrapped it in burlap from walmart. i then painted the quote "run wild my child" on it and realized i left a big gap at the top & misjudged the size of my letters. so i added "always" to the top and called it a day.

project #3: frame+twine

i don't know where this idea came from. probably some neat wedding blog i read at some point. but i picked up a natural wood color 16x12 inch frame at michaels for 50% off.  we primed and painted it grey as well. then i used the staple gun to attach the twine to the back. i didn't measure the ends evenly and i wish i had. i think i was just ready for bed and being lazy.

i had the little basket left over from an event at work & got the washcloths from home goods for about $5. and finally, we have a new bathroom! our friends can now pee in serenity - all for the price of about $60.