Projects!!

Sitting around the house for 3 weeks is a real treat [/sarcasm]. It made me realize that

a) I am sick of looking at the same stuff on the walls, day in and day out, for 6.5 years

b) My walls need serious touching up in places

c) The bathroom door and linen closet door are embarrassing - chipped, dirty. They need painting. Bad.

d) The arches were never painted. And they're nasty dirty. Why did I never notice that?

e) My dining room chairs could use a facelift

So I made a project list. I had Chris dig out the original paint so I can take it to HoDe to get all shook up. I brought home a mountain of fabrics from JoAnn in hopes of finding one we liked for the chairs. And I took stuff off the walls and started moving it around.

Here are some photos:

Chair before

With the fabric we've picked

And since I am a total copy cat, I stole Frills, Fluff, and Trucks artwork display idea and put that up

Then I reframed some embroidered Holly Hobby pictures that my great grandma made for me that hung in my (HH themed) bedroom when I was a little girl.

Since they were not a typical size, I would have had to custom frame them. No thanks. I worked w/ what I had

they were awful. Falling apart and frankly, ugly.

I sanded them while I wore a mask because I was pretty sure they were painted w/ lead paint.

Then I rubbed some wax on them in a few areas, painted them a vanilla color, and once they were dry, I sanded them to distress them. The wax really helped! After that, I took some tea ink and rubbed it over the frame and wiped it off w/ a damp cloth. When that was dry, I sprayed them with a clear coat that crackled, to give it an old look.

I cleaned up the glass, mounted them back in, and voila!

Normally I wouldn't put something like that in my daughter's room (I am not a cross stitch sampler or embroidery on pillows and blankets type of gal). But I always loved these as a child and thought it was neat that she could have something from her great-great-grandma.

And finally, I did this for our room. The rest of our walls will be done with some photos that I took once I blow them up and print them. I saw this on a blog and I wish I could credit the person, but I can't for the life of me recall which blog. I remember the blogger saying that she was inspired by something similar she saw at Restoration Hardware. The skeleton key is mine and its for my hope chest. The frame is a cheap IKEA frame that I spraypainted black. I used grosgrain ribbon to hang it.

Stay tuned....more projects to come this week. AND a baseball themed birthday party this weekend!!