Outdated Nightstand Makeover

MCM is really gaining popularity.  I have to admit, several years ago I just wasn't a fan of the style, but lately I have really begun to appreciate the look.  I have had this set of nightstands for awhile now, and I finally got around to giving them a makeover; I guess you could even call it a major facelift.  Somebody before me had attempted to refinish this in an interesting forest green color. Check out the before and after picture:

Almost unrecognizable, right?  Let me show you how I completed this transformation!


First, I removed the hardware and patched the holes.  Then I added trim around the drawer fronts. I purchased the trim at Home Depot, it is thin enough that it wouldn't stick out too far but added some depth to the piece.  I cut the trim to size and then used wood glue to attach it and clamped it overnight to the drawer to dry.

Its already starting to look better! It needed a new top though, as the old top piece seemed nonexistent since it sat flush with the first drawer.  I cut new wood to size and then used screws and wood glue to secure.  Then let it sit overnight and sanded it all smooth.  Here is the piece ready for paint and stain:

I did this to both nightstands.  I stained the top a mixture of General Finishes Weathered Gray and Espresso water based stain.  I sprayed the drawers and base with General Finishes Lamp Black Milk Paint, then sealed everything with several coats of General Finishes High Performance top coat in Satin.  New holes were drilled and the hardware was replaced with new knobs.  Here is the final product:

What do you think?  Do you like the transformation?  To see more pieces like this, follow me on Facebook at Flipping Unbelievable

I bonded with Bondo!

Bondo has not sponsored this post in any form, but I'm just so amazed at how well this product works that I had to share!


A client brought me a table to paint.  It was missing a big piece of wood on one side, and it was slightly obvious because there were 3 other matching sides of the table.  See picture below with the missing area circled in blue:

I needed something that would be durable, and since woodworking is not my strong point, I didn't trust my skills with cutting a new piece from wood.  Keep in mind this piece was going to be painted, so I knew I wouldn't have to worry about staining over it.  Then Bondo walks into my life, and I foresee a lifelong friendship between us.

I was cleaning up my craft area, and noticed that my glue gun made a mess everywhere.  I thought it was going to be difficult to clean up, but it all stuck together and came off easily.  This gave me the idea for making a mold with hot glue!  I sprayed the area I wanted to use for a mold (luckily there were 3 other matching sides, so finding a duplicate was easy), then I covered it in layers and layers of hot glue.  After it all dried, it came off really easily!  Now I had custom mold!

Here is a picture of the mold, keep in mind, its not the most beautiful thing but it gets the job done.



Next you will need to work quickly, as Bondo is extremely fast drying.  Sorry I didn't get pictures as I was worried about the time.  Mix the two parts together as instructed, it will be very goopy. Spoon the mixture into the beautiful mold.  Then place it where you want it and hold it in place while it dries.  Keep in mind this just takes a few minutes.  You can let it dry further if you want, but I like it to be just a little pliable to make the final touches to shape it as required.  You can sand it smooth.  It turns out to be a pinkish color, but since I knew it would be painted over that was fine with me.

Check it out, perfect match!  Also, this stuff dries super hard.  After awhile I had a hard time sanding it down any further as it fully dried.  After I primed the entire piece, I asked my husband to guess which side had been repaired, and even he couldn't tell!
Here it is with paint.

Here is the finished product!

Does anybody else get as excited as I do to try new stuff and is beyond delighted to find out it works better than expected?  Seriously this opens so many new doors for me.  Okay not really, but I already have many other ideas to use this stuff on.

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What the Deck?!?!

When we first looked at our house before buying it I thought, wow-that's a lot of deck!  A few years later and we realized, it was time for the deck to be re-stained.  Like everything else about the house, we liked the deck but didn't love the color.  It had an orange-ish look to it.  Also like everything else about the house, we chose to use a gray color for the stain to change the look.  Check out the results below:

This was definitely a labor of love.  We went through 15 gallons of stain.  Everything needed two coats of stain as we changed the color.  We chose Sherwin Williams SuperDeck Solid Stain in Caribou.  We waited until they had a 40% off sale and bought the stain.   They said they would honor the price if it wasn't enough.

It was NOT enough.  We went back a month later and they still honored the price.

We have two decks in our yard, one right off the dining room with a set of stairs and then another deck connected by a wood path that surrounds the pool - including a pergola (more on that nightmare later!)  Here you can see how badly chipped the existing finish is on the deck:

The first step was to remove everything off the deck and then clean it.  For the initial cleaning, a broom or leaf blower worked well for us.  Then using 80-120 grit sandpaper, we used a palm sander to sand the floorboards and handrails of the deck, along with any random spots that needed attention.  It wasn't necessary to sand the existing stain off completely, but just enough to remove all of the chipped pieces off from the existing stain.  Then we used a deck cleaner solution to wash the deck completely and hosed it off with water.  Look how much better it looks already!

Due to the fact that I enjoy painting, I own several spray paint guns.  This was crucial in re-staining the deck since we had no less than 5 million spindles that needed to be stained.  The upper deck off the house was phase 1 of the project.  I tackled the spindles with my spray gun and my husband got to work on the deck floor and supporting beams.  This deck went relatively quickly, and even with applying two coats we were able to finish the same day - about 7 hours.


Here is a picture of the upper deck as we waited for it to dry.

Phase 1 went well and gave us false confidence that Phase 2 would follow suit.  I spent a couple hours the following weekend staining the pathway that connects the two decks and the stairs on the pool deck so that we wouldn't have to worry that we would tread on our only entrance to that deck later on.

We repeated the steps of removing everything from the pool deck, cleaning, sanding, and washing.  Then it was time to stain.  This took several days...much longer than the previous deck.  The pergola took a day by itself.  I used my spray gun and got on a ladder and sprayed each slat in the pergola and then moved the ladder to the next area.  Every section, both sides of the slates, two coats.  I was ready to kick down that pergola.
Here is after just one coat, you can still see some of the orange showing through:

We also had to be careful around the pool and some of the other permanent fixtures like the pool slide.  For those areas, I hand stained so that there wasn't a risk of getting a lot of stain in the pool.  The area in the back of the pool simply consists of spindles around the edge, no deck floor to stand on.  This required a somewhat Spiderman type feat to successfully stand on the spindles while using the spray gun to stain the area next to it, and repeat.  Perfection was not the goal at this point, we were just looking to finish.  So there may be a few "orangish" spots that may need some touch up down the road but for now we would rather enjoy the deck than continue to slave away on something that gets accumulates rain and bird poop on an almost daily basis.


Did I mention that we went through 15 gallons of stain, broke one air compressor, broke one spray paint gun, and wondered why we were crazy enough to buy a house that had a deck of that size?  Oh the joys of home ownership.


Well here it is, in all its glory.  In the end, I'm really happy with the results and love the outcome.  The neighbors have also told us how much better it looks as well so some could say we raised the overall property value of the entire block...
So who is crazy enough to want to tackle their own deck?  Did I scare you away from doing it yourself?


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DIY Toddler Bed

Big changes are happening in our household!  My twin toddlers are about to turn 3 next month and we have decided its time to get them out of their cribs.  They currently share a room, not because we don't have extra bedrooms in the house but because they actually prefer to be together.  We knew this had the potential to cause problems once they were able to "run free" but took the chance anyway.  Keep reading to find out how I created these adorable toddler beds for the kids!

First I went to Home Depot and purchased the wood that I would need.  I love Home Depot because they will cut it for you with their huge saw, making nice straight lines and allowing it to fit in my vehicle.  I measure the crib mattress and allowed for an extra room on the sides so that it wasn't snug.  I purchased a 3/4" thick sheet of 4x8 plywood.  Home Depot made the cuts for the bed bottom and the cute little headboard.  I also purchased 1x6" boards for the sides of the bed, making sure there was enough to go around the perimeter of the bed bottom.  2x4s were also needed as well, I used this to support the bottom piece of the bed.  I already had some on hand so I didn't need to buy any.  Since I have twins I had to make two, so this is what I ended up with:

Once home, I measured the bottom piece of the bed and cut the 1x6" boards with a miter saw to fit around the edges.  Once they were all lined up nicely (measure twice cut once - believe me when I say this so that you don't have to make another trip to Home Depot like I did) I measured the length I would need to cut the 2x4 supports.  I used two for mine, and felt like it was definitely sturdy, but you could always use more.  I then laid the frame and supports out on the floor without the floor board in it.

To secure the frame without having nail or screws visible from the outside, I used an inside corner brace that I also purchased at Home Depot.  Its probably better to build the outside frame with a little wiggle room in order to allow the corner brace to fit inside with the floor board.  I also used a corner brace to attach the 2x4 supports as well.  Once this was complete, the bed was ready for stain.  Even though I know the majority of the floor board wouldn't be showing, I still stained it anyway and once dry did several coats of polycrylic in semigloss over it.

While I waited for the stain and poly to dry, I started working on the headboard.  First, I stapled batting to the headboard to give it a little more cushion.  I didn't put the batting all the way down to the floor but instead left about 5 inches to allow for it to be secured to the bed frame.  I covered the batting with a gray linen home décor fabric and secured with staples.  Side note, I love my pneumatic stapler and I can't believe I didn't buy one a long time ago instead of using my hand stapler!  I love the upholstered fabric look for headboards, but it was still a little too plain.  My new obsession is nailhead trim, which I decided to add to the headboards to give it a little something extra.  I cheated though, and bought nailhead trim on a roll.  Its much easier, you only need to hammer in nails every 5th one.  Its also thin enough that it can easily be cut to go around corners.  If the 5th nail didn't match up perfectly at the edges, I just used my hot glue gun to attach.  I was very careful about making sure to keep a straight line and equal distance from the edges.  Here is a picture of the headboard in progress:

I choose to assemble the headboard to the bed frame once they were both in the bedroom.  I simply drilled pilot holes in the headboard from the back and then drilled in 6 screws to keep the headboard in place.  I added felt pads to the bottom of the bed frame, and then put the mattress on.  The first thing the twins did when they saw their beds was jump on it like it was a trampoline, but I suspected that would happen.

I had been prepping the twins for their new beds for a few days, so they knew it was coming.  They watched us dismantle their cribs and assemble their new beds.  They were both very excited to be tucked into their new beds that night.  I moved the security camera into their room to monitor their newfound freedom.  I felt betrayed honestly.  They both went to bed so nicely and told me they loved me and said goodnight, and the second I shut their bedroom door they both got out of bed giggling and running around!  At one point there was a lot of dancing going on and then they decided they needed to "organize" their closet and remove all of the clothing and throw it in the middle of their bedroom.  I went in there several times asking them to go back to bed and even cleaned up all their clothes and zip tied the closet door shut.  Every time I went back in their room they made a beeline for their beds acting is if they had been in there the whole time, without any clue I had been watching them.  They finally feel asleep in their beds (even though it was a couple hours past bedtime) and I felt it was somewhat successful.  Until I got up in the morning and checked the camera to see them sleeping like this:

So I guess the moral of the whole blog post is disregard everything I just wrote, get rid of the cribs and just let the kids sleep on the floor, right????
Addy only had a minor issue the first night and after that slept great in her bed.  Jax seems to prefer the floor, as you can tell by the collage I put together of Jax during the first week:

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DIY Magnolia Wreath

DIY Magnolia wreath for less than $10!

Any Fixer Upper fans out there reading this?  I have to admit I'm a huge fan of the show.  I love Joanna's style.  I needed a new wreath for the front door of my house, and love the look of the magnolia wreath.  Although I don't love the price tag of the Magnolia Wreath for sale at Magnolia Market:

So I decided to make my own.  I'm pretty excited with how it turned out, and the low cost was worth the risk, which was even better.  I'm going to share how I created my own magnolia wreath.

Supply list:
Wire Wreath from Hobby Lobby
Magnolia Garland from Hobby Lobby
Green Painter's tape (or any type of tape, green preferred)
Hot glue gun


First I cut off all the individual leaves from the garland.  Then I wrapped the wreath wire frame in green painter's tape.  It doesn't have to look fancy, I just wanted to have more square footage to adhere the glue/leaves to.

I was then ready to start gluing the leaves on the wreath.  I just did the best placement I could, and added leaves to bare areas once the entire wreath was covered.  I tried to place the leaves in different directions while also doing my best to cover the green tape.

It didn't take me very long to finish, I worked on it during an episode of Fixer Upper and finished before the show ended.  I bought the wire frame using a coupon and the garland was 50% off.  I had the glue and tape on hand so the total cost was less than $10!  Here is the finished product hanging on my front door.

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How to Paint Wood Cabinets

First off, lets get to the good stuff.  Before and after pictures of my kitchen cabinets:

 

And just for fun, here is a before/during/after collage, paint makes such a huge difference!:

 

Now lets get to the details.  This is lengthy, but bear with me as there is a lot of information provided.  This is my method and what worked for me (and believe me I painted a lot of OAK cabinets!), but if you find something better that you prefer than go for it!  So, let’s just dive right in!

 

Prep:

I can’t stress enough how important this step is.  This step will most likely take you longer than the actual painting itself!  There is no such thing as “no prep painting”.  It is important to clean very well.  Paint will not stick to a dirty surface.  I recommend wiping down the wood with a cleaning solution and then letting it dry.  Then sand with a 220 sandpaper and wipe down again.  For very dirty wood like an old piece of furniture or kitchen cabinets, I would recommend using TSP substitute to clean with.

I find it easiest to remove all cabinet doors and drawers to paint.  It is extremely important to number each cabinet or drawer before you remove it so that you know where it goes when its time to put it back!  Especially for older wood, those pieces can sometimes warp on their hinges or in their drawer slot and won’t fit well anywhere else.

Tape and cover anything you don’t want to get paint on.  Be cautious of anything even remotely close if using a spray gun as there is a great chance of overspray.  Remove any hardware.  Take your time and be very thorough in the prep work.  The key to a job well done is all in the prep work and is important to have a professional finish.

 Priming:

I use BIN Shellac Primer when spraying, or General Finishes Stain Blocker when hand painting.  When painting oak, I always use 2 coats of primer because it really helps to fill in the grain.  After the prep work is done and the wood is dry, I apply the first coat of primer.  This can be done with either a spray gun, brush or foam roller.  With primer, I don’t think there is a major difference in the finish with whatever you choose.  Warning: my usual “panic” sets in after the first coat of primer goes on.  Primer usually looks horrible and with only one coat it is not completely covered so a lot of the wood still shows through.  Take a deep breath, walk away, and don’t worry ‘cause it will be okay!  Don’t put the first coat of primer on too thick, it is better to have several thin coats than one thick coat.  After the first coat of primer is dry (usually about 30-60 minutes), I inspect the surface of the wood to see if there are any cracks or chips in the wood that should be repaired.  If there is, I apply a wood filler and let it dry and then sand it down.  Then I apply a second coat of primer.  After the second coat of primer is dry I again sand to make it smooth with a 220 grit sandpaper.

 Painting:

When the primer is dry and sanded smooth it is time for paint!  This is the fun part where you will finally see progress and it gets exciting!  I use General Finishes Enduro White Poly paint for cabinets.  I have tried other brands but this is my preference for wood.  I like that it has a shorter dry time between coats compared to some other brands, it does not need a topcoat, and it is water based.  I prefer to paint cabinet doors with a spray gun, but if you don’t own a spray gun then a good brush (Zibra brushes are my favorite!) for any small detailed areas and a foam roller for any large smooth areas works fine.  Like the primer, it is better to apply a couple of thin coats rather than one thick coat to avoid drips.  If you happen to get a drip, and its still very wet you can try to smooth it out with the brush or roller.  Otherwise you can leave it and let it dry and then sand it smooth.  It is important to keep a “wet edge” with the paint and work as quickly as possible.  I typically only sand between coats of paint if there are any imperfections, otherwise I just dive right in to the second coat of paint after the suggested drying time has elapsed (review the can for more info).  I typically let the paint dry before removing painting tape, but I always use a utility knife to mark the edge of the tape so that it doesn’t peel the paint off along with the tape when removing.  If any touch ups are needed, I usually just use paint over the small touch up areas.  It is best to wait 48 hours at a minimum for the paint to dry before reattaching or putting anything on it.  Keep in mind paint usually takes a few weeks to fully cure, so be careful with freshly painted surfaces.

Protective Finish:

Polycrylic vs Polyurethane – the difference is that Polyurethane is typically used over stains whereas polycrylic is used over paints.  The reason being that Polyurethane is meant to yellow over time and polycrylic stays clear, so you would not want polyurethane to yellow over a fresh coat of white paint!  General Finishes is a great brand and they stand behind their products. I especially like the High Performance Top Coat. I believe applying poly is an optional step if using the paint that I referenced above.  Personally, I prefer to use a satin or semi-gloss over the cabinets and I have not had any issues with any chipping and is easy to wipe clean if there are any spills.

Helpful Hints:

• Always stir your paint before pouring from the paint can.  The color tends to settle on the bottom so stir really well

• There are ideal temperatures to paint in.  Consult the label on the paint can for exact information, but I believe it is 50-80 degrees and no humidity.  If you paint outside these guidelines you might expect slower drying times.
• If you are painting cabinet doors and remove from hinges, I always prop on scrap wood to keep them off the ground.
• Always paint the backside of the cabinet door first, this way you get the hang of it before you get to the "good" side and also when you flip the doors if there are any marks from the 2x4s they are on the backside so it is usually okay for small flaws.
• I rarely paint the inside of the cabinets or drawers unless they are in very bad shape and have a lot of stains.
• ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use a mask if spraying paint!  The fumes are very strong and you want to protect your lungs!
• Off the shelf white can be too harsh of a white to use.  Sometimes an offwhite color is better for your home.  You would never be able to tell it is offwhite and will look much better.  Just trust me on this.
• Add water or accelerator to paint to help thin out the paint if needed.  This gives a much smoother finish and a little bit goes a long way.

 

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A Quick and Easy Way to Update your Fireplace

Like everything else in the house, my fireplace was very outdated.  It had ugly brass that I knew would need to be changed.  I found a very cheap and easy way to fix that quickly!  Unfortunately, I don’t have too many before/after pictures of mine, but I recently updated another fireplace using the same technique that I will share with you today!

I didn’t realize how easily the fireplaces can be disassembled.  Its very easy to remove the pieces in order to paint.  Here is the before picture of the fireplace that I updated.  See the shiny silver part?  The owner was not a fan of that and wanted it all black.

The first step is to remove the pieces that need to be painted.  In this case it was very simple, only the top and bottom pieces needed to be removed.  The top came off just by lifting up and pulling out.

The bottom came off easily by flipping it down (where you access the pilot light) and then unscrewing it from the hinge.  See what I mean, super easy!

The next step is to clean very well.  These pieces usually are very dusty and dirty.  After cleaning it off, I brought it to the garage and prepped for painting.  I used Rustoleum High Heat in black.  This can be found at Menards or Home Depot.  Its important to use the High Heat kind since the material to be painted is surrounding the fireplace, which can get hot.  After two quick coats and some drying time, it was ready to be put back together.

 

Now for the after picture!

 

Do you think this is something you plan to tackle in the near future?  I promise you won’t be disappointed.  And if you are my mom and reading this you may think, wow that fireplace really looks familiar.  Yes, being the sneaky good daughter that I am, I snuck into my mom’s home this weekend when I knew she was out of town and painted her fireplace.  She hasn’t mentioned it yet, so not sure if she noticed but if she is reading this blog I’m sure she will notice now!