A Tale of Two Lamps

Hello friends - hope everyone has had a wonderful week.. it's rainy/gloomy looking here in metro Atlanta, but I still have to go to the grocery store. Yuck, it's my least favorite thing to do...

Before I go I thought I would share a quick story about two lamps..  they used to live at the Goodwill and Saint Vincent de Paul stores, but now they have been adopted and live with us.  I think they're happy here, too, because they get a lot of attention and provide a much needed service - light!

Here they are, in my old, pre-pink dining room when they first got here..

First up is the $8 art deco blue... which came with that lamp shade that's up-side-down behind it...

And then we have $6 skinny 80s brass with the tallest harp in the entire world and no lamp shade....

Both were in pretty good shape and they both worked - the brass lamp has some bad spots on it and I toyed with the idea of painting it, so it sat around for a while.

Ms. blue had a great shape and the brass accents were cool with me, but I didn't like her color, so I used some spray paint..  I taped off the parts I wanted to keep and took her to the yard for a dose of black..

I found a lamp shade at Ross for $7 that matched the shape..  now she lives in our family room on the round table that hubby made years ago - and she's very happy. I had a skinnier lamp in that spot for a long time, and I really like the way she is heftier.  Yay for new lamp for a total of $15!!

Ms. 80s Brass just sat around for several weeks because I just didn't know if I wanted to paint her or not.. then I was at Target on my lunch hour last week (I frequently go to Target on my lunch hour and browse the Clearance end-caps - you never know what you're going to find!) and I found a beautiful black Nate Berkus lamp shade.  It looked like it had been bought and returned, and it was marked down to $7.49!!  I snatched it up so fast - like nobody's gonna pry this from my cold dead hands haha!  I knew it would be perfect for ms. brassy brass!  Well, when I put it on the lamp, the circle holder thingy was too big!!!

I had to figure out a way to make the shade work.. so I ask my hubs to fix it!  He had a roll of some high-temp rubberized stuff left over from his days working in the airline maintenance industry. He wrapped it around the socket and used a zip tie to hold it in place..  it works perfectly and you can't see it unless you're looking inside the shade :)

So I decided to leave her brass and now she is living in the prettiest room in the house - SHE'S AWESOME!!

I hope you've enjoyed this little story about two homeless lamps.  Remember, you too can find lamps and give them a new life, and do it much cheaper then buying new!

Love ya,
Kelli

In the Pink - Pink Walls That Is...

Hello my friends!  It has been a month since I've written anything.. It has been crazy around here! My sister came to visit for three weeks and it was wonderful! We also had a baby shower for my sweet daughter at my house so we have been really busy..

One of the things (among many) that my sister is really good at, is painting.  When I say she's good, I mean she's really good!  She cuts-in with no tape!

So I have been wanting to paint my dining room pink ever since I saw Cassie's dining room.  The navy served us well for many years but it was time to lighten things up.  My husband was a little skeptical at first. But when I showed him her room he was sold.  Besides - I wanted just one itty bitty room in my house that I could "glam up" and this was the perfect one! 

This is what it looked like a few weeks ago - messy and full of thrift store treasures!

When my sister came over and started priming the walls she did NOT want to use the blue tape and was only doing it because she though my hubs wanted her to. She didn't even want her picture made with the tape on the trim haha!  We only used it right there, on that one wall. The rest she cut-in by hand - she's awesome. Here she is posing for her glamor shot - love her!  You may remember, she helped me with my sexy bench redo, too ;)

What a trouper!  She primed those walls in an hour. We used Valspar High Hiding Primer.  We used only one coat to prime over that navy blue.  Wow!

She painted the pink when I was at work one day so I came home to find this!

My sideboard/buffet looks awesome with the pink.

I am in love.  I feel like I'm in Charleston or something! I am sooo very happy with the way it turned out - I used the same color as Cassie did, Sherwin Williams Verbena.  This room faces north so during the fall and winter it is rather difficult to get a good picture - not a whole lotta sunlight gettin in here..  but you get the idea.. 

Well I'm no interior designer/decorator, but I think this room is the bomb!  Thank you a millions times to my sweet little sister!!!  

I still need to paint the two chairs sitting in the corners on each side of the piano (and cover their seats), and figure out what to do with the unsightly table under the black tablecloth, do some curtains, and probably find a rug.  Lots to do, but that's the fun of it all, isn't it?  The thrill of the hunt!

Let me know what you think - leave me a comment!  I looovvveee to get comments!  So Happy!!

Love,

Kelli

LInking up with Thrifty Decor Chic! And That DIY Party !

Beautiful Gold Shelf Unit - Another Spray Paint Masterpiece!

This is another Pinterest story.  I wanted a shelf to hold my stereo receiver and CD changer.  It has been sitting on a wee bitty table over in the corner of my family room since I moved in here.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of the wee table in the corner with my stereo on it, so here's a pretend pic..  and pretend it's in the corner too

Enter Pinterest where I spied this beautiful thang and fell in love!

Sooo pretty, right?  It's from the blog For Chic Sake and she calls it an Etagere~~  That sounds waayy better than just a shelf.  It's an Ikea unit and costs $40.  My hubs and I went to Ikea last weekend to look at some other things and when I saw the shelf etagere I started jumping up and down "oh oh this is it, oh oh I need this" so we put it in the cart.

Hubs put it together and I painted it - spray painted that is, with my new favorite Valspar, shiny "Brilliant Gold" - same paint I used on my frames in the dining room. Here she is in the garage before getting painted..

It's a very bad picture so here is one from the Ikea website. It has three glass shelves in the middle and solid on top and bottom.

And here is mine!  All dolled up with a stereo and some other fun stuff (really hard to photograph that corner, mind you)

For Chic Sake actually removed both solid shelves, replacing the bottom one with a mirror and the top with clear glass like the rest.  Since I was putting a heavy piece of equipment on the bottom I left it.  I still have the top solid shelf too, but plan on replacing it with glass. I just love the way it turned out.

So for a little Before & After (ah-hem, just humor me here on the "before")

Shame on me for being so excited that I forgot to take the "before" picture, but you get the idea!  I think we'll probably get another one in the near future to put over on the other side to balance things out.  We will probably have to rethink the plant and the round table on the end.  Maybe a smaller one..

So, whada think?  You like?

Linking up at Thrifty Decor Chic!

Love,
Kelli

On a Roll with Spray Paint!

Hey!  How have you been?  Hope all is well - the weather has been mostly beautiful lately and yesterday was no exception!  Now, Saturday was another story, but it didn't keep me from spray painting another project.

I bought these bird prints last April while on a girls-weekend trip to Blue Ridge, GA. Got 'em for $3 each!  But it took me months to find two frames.  Not because there are not frames out there, but mostly because I kind of forgot about them and wasn't looking.  Once we finished the buffet it reminded me that I had these pictures that needed framing.

I looked diligently around the flea markets and thrift stores but could not find two that matched that I liked.  So I got these from Walmart - they were $20 each.  The red sticker says "ready for display OR add your own photo"  garsh! I could have gone with the Golden Gate Bridge, huh..?

 Then, of course, I took them apart and painted them gold.  I used this spray paint from Valspar.  It is WONDERFUL.  I sprayed another smaller wooden frame last week just to see what it looked like - Love!!!

I had to spray them in the garage because it poured down all day..  but that's okay, I sprayed away

After they dried I took the picture, lined it up on the mat where I wanted it, taped it to the back, and popped them in the frames.  I love them!!!

Look at the finish ...  it is sooo pretty!

I'm so happy with the way they turned out.  Now I just need to paint the room!  It's gonna look totally different once that's done..

 

And here's a look back at what this little corner looked like a couple of months ago... I moved the old cedar chest into Rachael's room when we finished the buffet..

and now it's this..

 

 I am loving the gold I tell ya - how about you?  Is gold calling your name yet?

Linking to That DIY Party!!!

And Thrify Decor Chick! 

Love,

Kelli

Refinishing a Dining Room Buffet

I really never thought I would actually get to sit down and write this post.  Really. I'm not exaggerating! We bought our buffet back in March (yes, March) and I talked about it here.  I was so frustrated that it had been like, a whole two weeks and we weren't done yet! Ohhh little did I know how long it would take.. So, yes it really did kick our butts.  This is how she looked when we brought her home from the flea market...  I'm sorry, who paints anything this horrible interesting combo?

I'm tellin' ya, I don't think I will ever do it again.  Let me see if I can even remember what we did - We used some of the chemical strippers, and they did okay, but the stuff coming off was really nasty and goopy and I kept running out of places to wipe off the gunk, and my plastic scrappers where wearing out. Sorry to whine be so detailed, but I think I needed to take a class before I started this project!  What really got it moving was using Hubby's heat gun. Now I know not everybody has a heat gun sitting around - he used to work in airline maintenance and he has eeeeverything... (and he's just a great guy ta boot) so he brought it out and I stood for hours holding the gun, letting it heat up and bubble the paint, and then I'd scrape it off. Hours people.  I know you love our professional set up below hehe..

But even with the heat gun it was hard to get the paint off of certain areas.  So I would work on it, and work on it, and work some more, and it was just a hard project for me. Then the weather had a huge impact on productivity.  Anyone of you from the south will know exactly what I'm talking about.  It has been the rainiest summer in about 15 years!  And it always seemed to rain on the weekends when we had planned to work outside on the buffet. Le Bummer. So most of the time this is how it looked, standing on it's side in the downstairs hallway.

We finally got to the point where we started sanding it (and what a pain that was - look at all the detailing, yuck for sanding!) and then Hubs sprayed it with primer. Then it sat another few weeks until it stopped raining again and we had picked out the color.  We chose Sherwin Williams Dovetail.  I absolutely adore it!

Primer

 Paint

Hubby was not in love with the hardware that came on the piece - I was thinking oh it's not too bad, lets spray paint them and same money!  Nope - he'd have none of it.  In the end I'm so glad he insisted because I picked out some gorgeous drawer pulls!  I really wanted them to be gold and of course when things don't come in the color you want you paint them, right?  Heck yeah you do - Rub N' Buff Grecian Gold right here, baby.  They rock my socks now!  I love how hefty they look and feel.  The Rub N' Buff takes a little longer to do, but I really like the finish - it just seems to have more depth.  And since these pulls were going on a piece of furniture in the dining room it just made sense to use the same thing that I used on the light fixture.

So. Finally here she is in all of her glory.  Ahhh.. it's so nice to say that it's finally finished!  The room still needs painting so that is the next thing on the to-do list.  I am super excited to have a place to store my glass plates and seasonal things without dragging them out of the attic.  YAY!

What about you?  Have any projects that are kicking YOUR butt?  Ones that just linger on like a bad cold??  Do tell!  I need to commiserate!!

Linking up at Thrifty Decor Chick , Savvy Southern Style and at DIY Show Off!

Love ya!

Kelli