Shutter Shift

When we bought our beloved, ugly ranch, it had red shutters. This wasn't a huge problem, except that a previous owner had used the wrong kind of paint. We noticed when we first looked at the house that red paint had run down onto one side of the house. We initially thought the shutters had just been put back up before drying, and rain had caused the red run-off.

Once I had time to really look at the shutters, I noticed that they stained my fingers with a chalky residue.

They were definitely painted with the wrong paint. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to paint them with anything that wouldn't run because they were vinyl shutters, not wooden.

Then I remembered a good friend: spray paint.

Spray paint is awesome and a quick fix for small projects. I decided to paint the shutters a sage green. They'll look really good with our new front door...if we ever get that installed!

pre-makeover

I used dish soap and water to scrub all the cobwebs and dirt off the shutters

up-close before

Progress! I did use more paint than I originally thought I would. It took 5 cans total for 14 shutters of varying sizes, but for less than $30, that was a great deal compared to buying new ones.

summer before with red shutters

winter after with green shutters

close-up of the green shutters

Fabulous Find

We totally lucked out last fall. There's this awesome store in S. Amherst called The Trading Post that has tons and tons of old furniture and odds and ends. We have a few pieces of furniture from there plus some other random things I've stumbled upon from time to time. We knew when we left our apartment/condo/quarter-of-a-house in Florence we would need a new dresser of some description. I gave my childhood dresser a facelift, and it now lives in our guest room. We used a monstrous wardrobe from IKEA at our old place since it didn't have a closet, but there was no way that thing was coming with us to our new home. Plus the fact it wouldn't fit or would've died on the drive over. (For more of my opinions of large IKEA furniture, leave a comment or email me. It's a good story.)

So we were without a dresser in our new bedroom, and kept clothes in two different closets and furniture in other rooms. Then I found the best dresser ever (see it in all its glory below). It was only $50 at The Trading Post--solid, heavy wood (good construction); 9 drawers and it didn't need to be refinished! All I needed to do was replace the pink zebra ribbon that substituted as drawer pulls with real ones.

We kept the dresser in our garage until we had finished painting and staining in the master...then December came and we were done and the beautiful piece is finally being used!! (forgive the run-on sentence...I was pretty excited!) There was a slight hang-up when we determined there was a puzzle to be solved with the drawers, but after several minutes of configuring by the engineer (Andrew) and the math whiz/Sudoku lover (Sarah) we were in business. All I needed to do was find economical yet stylish hardware. Now to the educational/how-to part of the post:

Need to spruce up your nightstand or chest of drawers? Why not give it a paint job and some new hardware? Both are easy ways to keep your furniture regardless of changing decor. For this particular dresser, the 6 exterior drawers measured 4.5 inches between holes, while the doors to the interior drawers measure 3 inches. Three inches is a pretty standard size for pulls, so you should be able to find multiple choices at varying price ranges at Lowes, Home Depot or even Wal-Mart. The occasional four and five inch pulls can also be located. Weird sizes, like 4.5 inches, are harder to come by. There is the option of special ordering, but those pieces of hardware will cost more than your furniture. We chose to use pulls for the doors and knobs for the drawers. This did mean buying more hardware, but we found knobs on clearance.

If you are set on having matching pulls across the board or want pulls without having to special order, you can always fill in the holes and drill new ones. This would have been a more viable option if I was planning to refinish the dresser. We also knew the holes for whatever original hardware used were slightly too large, and the screw might not hold. Simple fix: buy washers. In the pictures below you can see what I did to take the drawers from a hot pink zebra mess to a look my husband would appreciate.

before

washers that kept the screws from pulling out the front of the drawer

knobs

pulls

finished product!

the three drawers hidden behind the doors

No Longer a Halfway House...whatever that means

While visiting family in Alabama, a cousin of mine that shall remain nameless, commented that he would come visit, but he was waiting until our home no longer looked like a halfway house! I'm assuming he felt that way from the pictures seen here. Well no longer!! Our house actually resembles a home at the moment, and for that, I am very thankful! Here are a few pictures of the updates:

gray walls that have a touch of blue in them in certain light; hopefully I'll find a new bedspread and another bedside table soon

we still need crown molding, which we plan to recycle from the living room, closet doors and eventually we'll paint the bedroom door

Just after Thanksgiving, we moved back into the master bedroom! Hooray!! No more sleeping against a wall! And I will say, always use a bed frame. You may not think putting the box springs and mattress on the frame makes much of a difference, but let me tell you it does. It's also nice to be able to sit on the side of the bed and not have your feet touch the ground (or maybe touch a little if you're tall like me!) as opposed to being able to knee yourself in the face when getting up without a frame.

sort of blown out (sorry...weird lighting) but here we have a complete living room! 

We also put our living room back together...finally! The floors are 95% done in the house (we need to touch up the hallway and transitions...and if you were to count that we haven't done the carpeted areas I'm sure the percentage would drop...but let's not think about that!) so we can now live in the living room! We bought a rug at Lowe's on clearance and put the original furniture back in. Oh, and we got a nice deal on our first flat screen on Black Friday! What can I say, we're extremely late adopters when it comes to technology :) All those extra digital channels came in handy for the Iron Bowl when our local CBS station decided to show infomercials instead of the game...don't get me started on that blessed event--the fight with CBS, not the actual game--though we shouldn't talk about that either.

Anywho, all that to say, the bedrooms are done minus some minor changes and decorating so we can now focus on the next headache, er joyous improvement: the kitchen.