Cedar Chest Makeover

Hey there dolls - how are you?  How was your Monday?  Great, I hope!  I was supposed to go to the Orthopaedic surgeon today about my knee, but we rescheduled it for this Friday instead - which was nice because that also gives me a 4 day weekend instead of a 3 day weekend and since I have to take off anyway, I might as well use it to my advantage, right?! :o)  Thanks so much for all of your sweet comments yesterday regarding my "freehand" painting.  It was a lot of fun, and not too shabby for a first timer, I thought. :o) 

Now.... today, I am going to show you the complete re-do of the cedar chest I picked up on the side of the road a couple of months back for my daughter's room.  Those of you who have been around a while know that it started out looking like this when I found it on the side of the road:

This is after I began to strip it down:

This is the inside in pristine condition:

And this is the finished product:

I wasn't real sure about painting it White, but my daughter wanted it to match her room instead of just being stained.  However, afterwards, I am really glad I did paint it White - I think it really turned out so nice and will look great in her room.  I used Kilz High Gloss White Paint (from Wal-Mart) as I thought it would look much better with a glossy finish and I was right!  So what do you think?  Please excuse the bad quality of photo but this was taken in my garage and I couldn't get the lighting right on it. *sigh*

I am linking up to this party today over at Coastal Charm.  Go check them out - there are a lot of great finds and great projects going on over there today!

Happy Tuesday my loves - have a great day and thanks for stopping by to say hello!

Lots of love and hugs,

Cedar Chest Makeover

Hey there dolls - how are you?  How was your Monday?  Great, I hope!  I was supposed to go to the Orthopaedic surgeon today about my knee, but we rescheduled it for this Friday instead - which was nice because that also gives me a 4 day weekend instead of a 3 day weekend and since I have to take off anyway, I might as well use it to my advantage, right?! :o)  Thanks so much for all of your sweet comments yesterday regarding my "freehand" painting.  It was a lot of fun, and not too shabby for a first timer, I thought. :o) 

Now.... today, I am going to show you the complete re-do of the cedar chest I picked up on the side of the road a couple of months back for my daughter's room.  Those of you who have been around a while know that it started out looking like this when I found it on the side of the road:

This is after I began to strip it down:

This is the inside in pristine condition:

And this is the finished product:

I wasn't real sure about painting it White, but my daughter wanted it to match her room instead of just being stained.  However, afterwards, I am really glad I did paint it White - I think it really turned out so nice and will look great in her room.  I used Kilz High Gloss White Paint (from Wal-Mart) as I thought it would look much better with a glossy finish and I was right!  So what do you think?  Please excuse the bad quality of photo but this was taken in my garage and I couldn't get the lighting right on it. *sigh*

I am linking up to this party today over at Coastal Charm.  Go check them out - there are a lot of great finds and great projects going on over there today!

Happy Tuesday my loves - have a great day and thanks for stopping by to say hello!

Lots of love and hugs,

Weekend Recap - Home Projects

Happy Monday darlins! How was your weekend?  Ours was great but SO busy!  Friday night after work I met up with my girlfriend, Kathy, to do some arts and crafts at this painting place.  I had SO much fun!  I have never painted (freehand) anything in my life until now.  Here is a picture of what I painted:

Not too bad for a first timer, huh? :o)  But I will tell you - the hardest part of painting was those darn leaves! HA!  They look easy enough to make but trust me - they're not - LOL.  Of course, it had to be something "fallish" because that is my favorite season!

Saturday and Sunday had us getting up by 8 a.m. and hitting the ground running.  On Saturday, hubby and son went to our home in Connecticut to do more yard work while I stayed home and went grocery shopping and then came home to paint the Cedar chest that I had been working on and also spray painted a few things I had been meaning to do for a while..... such as this:

Before: (boring, plain oak)

After: 

Ahhh... much better - dontcha think! :o)  I may even add a cushion to it later on to dress it up more.

On Sunday I got up early again and started working in the kitchen and began cleaning out my large walk-in pantry.  It took me 3 hours to get it cleaned out, organized, re-setup and things labeled.  It looks SO nice and I feel so much better!  Yes, I did forget to take a "before" picture - but trust me when I say, I couldn't even WALK into my walk-in pantry!  The kids have a habit of throwing everything in there without putting things back like I had them.  One of the main things I got rid of out of the closet was all of our suitcases - that helped tremendously!  Then I also tried to organize some of my shelves by holiday too so that I have everything in front of me all in one nice neat place.  Here.... check it out for yourself:

These are built in shelves here:

We added this small bookshelf to the left for extra storage and use it for all of our can goods, etc:

This shelf was also overflowing but I went through and pulled out the expired goods and now it's so much better:

This is another built-in shelf where I separated out by holiday.  The bottom shelf is empty because I am going to put all of my summer goodies away in the next couple of days and that is where it will all go.  I don't know if you can tell or not but the big jar to the right is full of my tea light candles - it was easier to conserve space that way. 

These shelves hold all of my grills and crockpots, etc.  The jars on the top left hold all of my decoration marbles and such. 

Here's another closer look:  The apron on the left is one of my favs and has a cork-screw on the front of it and says:  "My favorite kitchen utensil" - HA!  The saying fits me perfectly though I can't recall the last time I actually had a glass of wine - guess I will have to do that this weekend since it's going to be a long one. :o)

Well, that's the end of my tour of SOME of my home projects this weekend.  Like I said, I was a busy little bee and got a lot accomplished!  Look for those in other upcoming posts.  Tomorrow I have to go to the Orthopaedic surgeon regarding my knee.  Hopefully, all goes well with that and he will go ahead and schedule an MRI for me to see what has my knee so out of sorts.  Thursday is the first day of back to school for my kiddos - WOO HOO - I can hardly wait! HA!  I am, of course, much more excited about it than they are! :o)

Thanks for stopping by to say hello and I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed day today.  I look forward to catching up on your blogs later this evening to see how you spent your weekend.

Lots of love and hugs,

Weekend Recap - Home Projects

Happy Monday darlins! How was your weekend?  Ours was great but SO busy!  Friday night after work I met up with my girlfriend, Kathy, to do some arts and crafts at this painting place.  I had SO much fun!  I have never painted (freehand) anything in my life until now.  Here is a picture of what I painted:

Not too bad for a first timer, huh? :o)  But I will tell you - the hardest part of painting was those darn leaves! HA!  They look easy enough to make but trust me - they're not - LOL.  Of course, it had to be something "fallish" because that is my favorite season!

Saturday and Sunday had us getting up by 8 a.m. and hitting the ground running.  On Saturday, hubby and son went to our home in Connecticut to do more yard work while I stayed home and went grocery shopping and then came home to paint the Cedar chest that I had been working on and also spray painted a few things I had been meaning to do for a while..... such as this:

Before: (boring, plain oak)

After: 

Ahhh... much better - dontcha think! :o)  I may even add a cushion to it later on to dress it up more.

On Sunday I got up early again and started working in the kitchen and began cleaning out my large walk-in pantry.  It took me 3 hours to get it cleaned out, organized, re-setup and things labeled.  It looks SO nice and I feel so much better!  Yes, I did forget to take a "before" picture - but trust me when I say, I couldn't even WALK into my walk-in pantry!  The kids have a habit of throwing everything in there without putting things back like I had them.  One of the main things I got rid of out of the closet was all of our suitcases - that helped tremendously!  Then I also tried to organize some of my shelves by holiday too so that I have everything in front of me all in one nice neat place.  Here.... check it out for yourself:

These are built in shelves here:

We added this small bookshelf to the left for extra storage and use it for all of our can goods, etc:

This shelf was also overflowing but I went through and pulled out the expired goods and now it's so much better:

This is another built-in shelf where I separated out by holiday.  The bottom shelf is empty because I am going to put all of my summer goodies away in the next couple of days and that is where it will all go.  I don't know if you can tell or not but the big jar to the right is full of my tea light candles - it was easier to conserve space that way. 

These shelves hold all of my grills and crockpots, etc.  The jars on the top left hold all of my decoration marbles and such. 

Here's another closer look:  The apron on the left is one of my favs and has a cork-screw on the front of it and says:  "My favorite kitchen utensil" - HA!  The saying fits me perfectly though I can't recall the last time I actually had a glass of wine - guess I will have to do that this weekend since it's going to be a long one. :o)

Well, that's the end of my tour of SOME of my home projects this weekend.  Like I said, I was a busy little bee and got a lot accomplished!  Look for those in other upcoming posts.  Tomorrow I have to go to the Orthopaedic surgeon regarding my knee.  Hopefully, all goes well with that and he will go ahead and schedule an MRI for me to see what has my knee so out of sorts.  Thursday is the first day of back to school for my kiddos - WOO HOO - I can hardly wait! HA!  I am, of course, much more excited about it than they are! :o)

Thanks for stopping by to say hello and I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed day today.  I look forward to catching up on your blogs later this evening to see how you spent your weekend.

Lots of love and hugs,

Summer Harvest

Happy Saturday guys and dolls!  I hope that you are having a great weekend so far!  Today has been such a busy day for us and I got SO MUCH DONE that it's hard to believe.  It feels so good to be home and get so much accomplished.  Now I am laying down resting - LOL   Don't worry - I will have some pictures to show you of my projects from this weekend.  I was walking through the City one day last week on my way to the office and decided to stop and take some pictures of the beauty around me at that moment when I passed through the NYC Farmer's Market.  I love all of the different colors and hope you enjoy the pictures too. (I actually think these pictures turned out really well - they were taken with my Iphone 4)

  

 

 Thanks for stopping by to say hello.  Have a great rest of the weekend my friends!

Lots of love and hugs,