Buy or DIY: An Update

A few weeks ago, I was asked about my kitchen cabinet DIY mentioned here,and I thought it was about time to provide an update for everyone on how they are holding up!  

Remember when we painted our kitchen cabinet using Rustoleum's Cabinet Transformations Kit that we bought for an absolute steal?  Well almost two years later, they still look like new!  Now granted, we don't have any kids to bang on them with pots and pans or pets that might scratch them up, but we haven't been tiptoeing around them constantly worrying about messing them up either.  On the contrary, we have added a backsplash and replaced the microwave since they were painted and they are no worse for the wear.  

If you have ever considered painting your own cabinets, here are a few tricks that have kept these babies in mint condition:

• We put in the time at the beginning, knowing that it would save us in the long run.  Completing the project took us a lot of dedicated time and we followed the directions to the letter.  We agree with the instruction manual that ideally one person should complete a whole step to avoid variations in color, pattern, or style.  While this doesn't save you any time, this painstaking process now seems worth it ten times over because we have a professional, uniform look that makes us want to keep them in tip-top shape.  They don't feel DIYed.
• I wipe the cabinets down with a wet rag when needed and a little organic multi-surface spray if they're really dirty.  I don't use anything that could damage or break-down the polyurethane or alter the color of the paint.
• I use a wood finish stain marker to touch up any nicks or imperfections that might come up.  It doesn't happen often but if I'm clumsy with a fork or saucepan, the marker takes care of the damage.
• The clear, plastic rubber bumpers that we put in the corners of the doors and drawers seem to be preventing most dings.  {If you're lucky enough to have slow close cabinets then you could skip this step of course}
• If you do notice a larger imperfection that a stain marker might not take care of, think hard about how you plan to fix it.  Once something is polyurethaned it's pretty hard to make touch ups that aren't noticeable.  

Has anyone else used the kit?  Any tips you've learned to keep your cabinets look new? We are so happy that we chose to give it a shot because we still love the results two years later!

Home Tour: Our Foyer

It's a new year and about darn time for a home update!  We have been pretty happy with how things look inside of our unit (I really owe you some current pictures of the living spaces), but our shared common area in the building was looking really shabby.  We have a small "home owner's association" of sorts composed of the five residents of our building. We all agreed that it was time for a little sprucing.

Please excuse the extreme yellowness.  Between the cream walls, yellow trim, and beige carpet, it's really a very yellow space.  Our plans are to paint the trim a crisp white, tear up the carpet, and give the staircase a painted makeover with black and white.  Here's one of our inspiration pictures.

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Ahh much less yellow.  We will also be giving the walls a fresh coat of paint in a pretty neutral that my neighbor and I chose.  It's called Sail Cloth by Benjamin Moore. 




Oh and we have big plans for this dirty, worn carpet.  It's sort of a runner alternative that we're all really excited about.

This weekend, we put the first coat on the walls, but there is a lot left to do.  I will let you know when the project is complete with plenty of lovely after pictures and hopefully a tutorial.  Off to paint some more!

Master Bedroom Reveal

   As promised, today I'm sharing our "finished" master bedroom.  Several of the DIY projects have already been featured here and here.  The curtains and curtain rods are also DIY and I plan on sharing details on those as soon as I finish them.  At this rate, it could be awhile.  I think I've been "working on the curtains" for over a year.   

     I truly don't think a room is ever done, so as I tweak I'll be sure to update you on the progress.  Our style is mostly modern traditional but that's also constantly changing so who knows where we'll end up!  Happy Friday everyone!

Source List
Wall frames: Crate and Barrel, Nightstand: Ikea (with DIY trim, paint, stain, and pulls as described here), Lamps: Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Headboard: DIY, Mirror: West Elm, Pillow: Target, Duvet Cover: West Elm, Turtle Jewelry Holder: West Elm, Frame: Target, Curtains: DIY, Curtain Rod: DIY, Armchair: Bob's Discount Furniture, Throw blanket: West Elm, Side Table: Danbury Mint, Dresser: Ikea, Vase: Target, Rug: Surya via One King's Lane

DIY Nailhead Headboard

    So when I last left you with our bed situation, we had just purchased a California King.  Once our new giant bed was in place, all that was missing was a nice large headboard to make the set-up feel complete.  We knew that we wanted to build our own, both to save money and create more of a custom look.  Some of my inspiration?

 {source}

 

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    Having never taken on this project before, I hunted for the perfect tutorial.  We used this tutorial from J and J Home for the look of the headboard and turned to my faves John and Sherry of YHL for the construction details.  The whole project took only a couple of hours and cost about $60.  

    As I mentioned yesterday,  I don't have any real construction pictures because this project was completed before I started blogging.  But trust me when I say that both tutorials above are more than enough to get you through this project if you want to do it on your own.  

{Getting the nailhead trim straight is a tedious process.  I definitely recommend two people.  One to nail in and the other to direct.}

{But from further away, it's harder to tell if there are any imperfections}

{This picture shows that we mounted the headboard to the wall rather than building legs for it.  See how its sort of "floating"?}

     Tomorrow I will be sharing pictures of the master as it looks today.  I can't say it's done because is decorating ever really done?  Some of the accessorizing could use some tweaking, but it will give you an idea of where we are in the process.  It's so different from where we started.  Below is the master bedroom photo from the listing of our condo.

Stay tuned!

Ikea Hack: Rast Dresser Turned Nightstand

    Here's a quickie before and after project for you.  As I mentioned last week, Our new bed was dwarfing our nightstands.  It was not only a decor nightmare but it was borderline dangerous considering that I nearly fell out of bed to turning off my alarm in the morning.  Sorry I don't have any pictures to demonstrate the hilarity of this, but I'm sure you can imagine a thoroughly embarrassing visual all on your own.  We needed nice large nightstands that came to about the height of the bed.  Enter: Ikea Hacking.

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    If you don't know what that means, head over to www.ikeahackers.net and be sure to grab a snack first because you will be hooked!  People are so creative spicing up their bland Ikea purchases.

   Why did I say this was a quickie before and after? Don't be fooled because this did take us a solid chunk of time.  It's a quickie because I have practically zero pictures to show you.  This project (and the one I will share tomorrow) were done a few months back before I realized that I would eventually want to have some "during" pictures of the projects or thought anyone would be remotely interested in them.  But it'll all be okay because as promised, the master bedroom reveal is coming Friday and I will share plenty of details about how that came together!


 

    We used two main tutorials to complete this hack of the Rast Dresser from Ikea.  One is from Anna at Take the Side Street and the other is from The Charming Nest.

    The main difference between what we did and what the other tutorials showed is our hardware.  We chose to fill the holes that the original hardware left and purchase new pulls.  Right now we have an array of other fixture colors in our place (brass and silver), but I am trying to slowly change everything over to oil rubbed bronze.  These pulls were about $9 each in the bronze finish, but in nickel they were only $2 each.  It looks like I splurged but actually I spray painted the cheaper ones using Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze and Clear Protective Coat.  So far they have held up really well which is great news for me and bad news for all of the knobs and hinges in the rest of the place.  Your brass days are numbered my friends!

 

Involved in a Cover Up

    Maybe I've been watching too much Scandal, but I couldn't help but get caught up in a cover-up operation myself.  Ok, so it was nothing crazy, but it was definitely time to address a huge eyesore in our condo that I had to see every time I walked into our master bedroom. 

     
    A huge breaker box was really not in the design, so we needed a plan to cover it up.  We may be a little behind the times, but we are still smitten with subway art here in this household.  Even though they were big back in 2011 and here we are two years later, I find that there is something so timeless about them, and I think that's really important when choosing art that you are going to see on a daily basis.  

    I searched Pinterest on a hunt for the best and simplest tutorial.  The one that suited our needs the best was found here by Lemonade Makin' Mama.  It basically involves building a wooden box and adhering a large blueprint style piece of paper to it.  We followed it almost to the letter, so I won't re-hash it here for you.  I do have a few notes and tips though: 

    First of all, Kevin is way better at formatting than I am.  I get really frustrated when I can't get something centered or words get cut off, so this job was relegated to him.  We chose some of our favorite neighborhoods or areas in Boston and a few different fonts and Kevin drafted this up in Word.  He fixed up the dimension settings before saving it as a PDF for submitting to Staples to print up for us.  

    I went along with the tutorial and used Elmer's Spray Adhesive to adhere the paper to the wood.  I'm glad that I did because I think Mod Podge would have caused a lot of unwanted rippling.  This step might be completely different should you choose to use a canvas as your base instead of building a wooden box.  In fact, that was my original plan.  I've seen some awesome tutorials for creating canvas style prints on Pinterest that would work equally as well I'm sure.  It just didn't work in our case because we needed a super custom size.

    Full disclosure, we didn't stay under $10 like the tutorial that we used.  Wood can be pricey!  But we did stay pretty close to the budget.  Also, I didn't have any Mod Podge of all things so I had to add that in as an expense.  It wasn't used in the tutorial that we followed, but I used the Matte Mod Podge to sort of seal my work afterwards.  It did cause some rippling which terrified me (starting over didn't sound like fun), but once the Mod Podge dried on the surface, I flipped the whole thing over to flatten out overnight and it worked like a charm!  Here it is before it was hung.

    

 

{A close-up of the distressing that I did.  I love that you can see the nailhead from the box construction through the paper.  That was a happy accident!}

 

    
    Kevin used some hooks above the breaker box to hang the wooden frame.  You can actually see them in the before pictures up top.  We needed to still be able to access the breaker box for obvious reasons so this hook system has offered easy access so far.

    Have you covered up an eyesore in your house recently?  
    Or better yet, did anyone watch the Scandal season finale last night?  I'm obsessed. 

    I will be linking this project to the following:

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Pinterest Challenge

    I am beyond excited to that I have a project to share with you as part of the Spring Pinterest Challenge put on by Sherry from Young House Love, Katie from Bower Power, Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop, and Renee from Red Bird Blue.  The Pinterest Challenge is a one created by Katie Bower to get us to stop pinning and start doing...and then start pinning again.  Oh, the vicious cycle!

 

    This isn't the first time I've created something that I've been inspired by on Pinterest, but this is the first time that I have blogged about it, so pinch me because I'm really excited! The search for the perfect project was an easy one.  I had a side table sitting in our living room that I recently purchased from Home Goods (or "The Goods" as I lovingly call that heavenly place).  We needed one desperately, as we have no space for a coffee table and needed a place to put our drinks and snacks while watching our endless amounts of DVR.  The table met all the physical requirements that we needed, but unfortunately it was in a shade of blue that didn't really coordinate with anything else in the room.  I knew that I wanted to paint it, but I also knew that we needed something on top because we're not really the best about using coasters and I didn't want to paint the table only to mess up the finish with water marks.

 

    Enter my inspiration from Allison of Dream a Little Bigger.  She had a dinged up table that she loved but just needed a little fixing.  So she corked the top!

 

    

    I loved this solution for us.  It would prevent water marks and eliminate the need for coasters.  So I bought a roll of cork at Michael's and a $2 can of clearance spray paint at Joann's and got to work.  This wasn't my first spray paint project, but I definitely learned a couple of big lessons during this one:

1) Primer really is your friend.  

2) Always have more spray paint than you think you need.

    Now in this case, I really had no excuse to for the fact that I ran out of spray paint.  I mean, there were several cans of white spray paint on sale for $1.97 at Joann's and I walked out with one?!  Perhaps the fact that they lock it up there makes me feel like I should buy only responsible amounts at a time?  Thank goodness I already owned white primer that matched so I was able to squeak by with the two together.  In all honesty, I should have primed first like a smart DIYer would have done, but in the heat of the moment I just got excited and started spraying without really thinking.  Plus, I was saving my primer for a big summer project I have lined up!  But it would have saved me some major time in this case.

    Anyway, back to the how-to.  I am blessed with an extremely handy husband who's way more into details than I am when it comes to things like this, so it was his job to cut the cork into the perfect hexagon to fit atop the table.  He first cut some brown craft paper to size to serve as a template for the cork.

      
    He got out the good old X-acto knife and got to work.  Then I used some Krazy Glue and spray adhesive to attach the cork to the table.  See my super-professional system of weighing down the edges to ensure good adhesion?

 

   

    Here's a close-up of the finished cork top.

 

     And here it is in action!

     It was so simple that I kind of want to try it on something else now.  Thanks for stopping by! 

Buy or DIY: Kitchen Cabinet Edition

   After the floors were changed to a darker hue, the cabinets knew what was coming.  They stuck out like a sore thumb. 

    Their yellow tones just weren't working for us, and luckily we had found an amazing deal on a Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformations Kit at Home Depot as I mentioned here.  But a real dilemma arises in situations like this.  How do you know when to buy versus when to DIY?  

    1) Money
    For us, the decision was easy.  Brand new kitchen cabinets would have cost us $5000 whereas our DIY kit cost us just $30.  Easiest decision ever.

    2) Time
    While DIY cabinets are extremely time consuming, the worst part is really the amount of time that the kitchen is unusable.  I love to cook, so minimizing the amount of time we had to spend out of the kitchen was extremely important to me.  Having new cabinets installed by professionals can also take alot of time but the difference is you end up at the mercy of the installer's schedule rather than your own which as a DIYer at heart, didn't sound that appealing to me.  Last but not least, my time was minimally important here.  Why?  Because Kevin is awesome and told me that he would start the project on a long weekend when I had to work.  While I love DIY, I also love walking into a room and being totally surprised by the reveal, a thrill that do-it-yourselfers often miss out on.

    3) Confidence
    This is piece might be the most important of all.  Obviously, there is always a bit of trial and error with a new project, but if from the get-go you are doubting your ability, you might as well go back to re-evaluate money and time.  Why?  Because you may have to spend them both again.  If you chose to do the project just because it's cheaper and your heart isn't in it, there's a good chance you'll end up paying a professional to re-do it.  That's why all three of these factors have to be evaluated, not just one out of three or two out of three.  We felt pretty confident that we could get this done based on alot of tutorial watching.  Also, the bright yellow cabinets were cramping our style and we were really motivated to get started.  

    The Rust-oleum Kit broke the process down so easily.  Here is a picture from the Rust-oleum site that shows you just what is included in the kit.  

    First, you watch a video tutorial that shows you what you're about to get yourself into.  To prep, we removed all of the hardware, cabinet doors and drawer fronts, put down plastic drop cloths, and taped areas that needed to be protected (ie. the fridge, countertops, and walls).  The prep was time-consuming but is imperative in making sure that the final product comes out flawless.  

    The official step 1 is a liquid deglosser which cleans the cabinets, removes grease and grime, and eliminates sanding from the process.  After that dries, you apply the bond coat (or base color).  We used two coats to get full coverage.

{Kevin touching up on the base coat}

    By this time, I was home from work and wanted to participate in step 3: the decorative glaze.  Kevin was fine with it since it was the part of the project that required a bit of an artistic eye.  Rust-oleum also recommends that only one person participate in this portion to keep the look of the cabinets as consistent as possible.  Below is a picture from their website of our color Rustic and the difference between the base coat step and the optional glaze step.

        Here is the extremely professional set-up that I used to glaze the cabinet fronts.  Yes those are cans and spice jars holding everything up.  I used a foam brush to apply to glaze and the included cotton cloths to rub off enough to achieve the desired effect.

     After the glaze dries, step 4 is to apply the protective top coat.  It is extremely important when working with poly to make long even strokes and to touch things up as little as possible.  Usually when using poly, two coats are better than one to add an extra layer of protection, but strangely enough with this kit I found that a second coat actually made the cabinets look a little cloudy and less shiny.  So I backed off and just did one coat as the instructions stated.  So far they have held up well.  Only time will tell if they will ding or chip easier than traditional cabinet finishes.

    Here is the official before and after shot.  You really can't tell unless you look closely that these cabinets are painted!  We love the finished product.  And more kitchen surprises are still to come!

Condo Before Pictures

In order to understand our progress, I thought it best to show you where we started.  Unfortunately, I have no real before photos of our condo.  Many of these were taken the night we signed the papers, and we wasted no time getting down to work.  We ate the infamous "first night in a new place" meal of pizza and beer and started cleaning like crazy.  We also patched all of the holes in the walls.

 

View of our kitchen from the living area

 

Fireplace

 

View from the master bedroom

 

Master bedroom bay window

The pictures below were taken while our floors were being refinished before we moved in.  It's the only project in our home that we have hired professional help for thus far. 

What we have done since:

• Installed in-wall power and speakers for TV above the fireplace
• Painted every wall and all of the trim
• Refinished the cabinets
• Built custom curtain rods for our master bedroom
• Refurbished a Salvation Army hutch to use as a buffet in the dining room
• Hacked some Ikea dressers to use as nightstands
• Built and upholstered a custom headboard

And those are just some of the bigger projects.  There are many, many smaller ones that we've done or are planning to do, and I will share every step of the way!