Window Shopping at Marshalls

Taking a spin around Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and HomeGoods has got to be one of my favorite things to do.  You just never know what treasures you’ll find and what great deals there will be!

Sometimes I don’t really find anything that strikes my fancy, and other times, I find a gazillion things. These are some of the fun goodies I found at Marshall’s a few days ago and snapped on my cell phone.

How about these great bar stools? Blue and only $39.99 each! Too bad I don’t have a place for them yet.

I also seriously loved all this chalkboard artwork.  It was like Pinterest come to life, and the quality was pretty amazing, considering their mass-produced nature.  They really did look unique and individual.

None of the sayings were quite up my alley, though, so I let them stay at Marshalls.

I did really enjoy this “Row Row Row Your Boat” print, though, too. :)

Again, no kids and no boat or ocean theme meant that I had to leave it at the store.

When I started wandering through the decorative aisles, I found all sorts of amazing accessories.

This clock was right up my alley…sort of industrial and vintage looking.

I loved this little collection of little globes.

And I especially loved this blue artichoke tea light holder. But who needs a tea light when it’s so pretty as is?

I don’t know how or why I was able to leave these things at the store!  (Oh yes, I do. It’s because my Christmas stuff has yet to come down and I don’t want to get accessories like this until I know where I can put them. I guess I’d better do that after I finish writing this post and head back over to Marshalls.) :)

I also found this great metal container. Such beautiful designs. It could make a great planter (with a plastic pot inside?) or just pretty decorative storage.

When I headed over to the kitchen/dining aisles, I noticed that they’ve got the containers I used for my DIY lotion back in stock! Great for gifts, right? The small one (that I bought several of) is only $3.99 and the larger one is only $4.99!

And one of the more drool-worthy finds was this china by Spode. They’re called Isabella and I love them. Luckily (or unluckily) they only had one place setting – so I wasn’t too tempted to buy them (because I do not need any more dishes).  But of course, I looked them up online.

I’ll tell you though, if they’re still there next time I do, and if my local TJ Maxx also has some, I will take it as a sign that I need to own them.

Have you found anything great while you’ve been shopping lately? Do you ever have the restraint to leave the goodies at the store?

Ashley’s Wedding Dress: Behind the Scenes

If you’re curious, I posted a little bit about how I decorated Ashley’s wedding dress over at The Modern Seamstress! :)

Check it out! :)

DIY Pretty Thermostat Cover

So, after all that work putting in a programmable thermostat, here’s how I covered it up. :)

It’s on hinges, so you can open it up and get to the thermostat!

I got the idea from this pin that was for an alarm cover.  I plan on making the hallway where this thermostat is into a gallery of artwork, and this new artistic cover will be the starting point. :) The pin used a canvas to cover an alarm panel, but I knew that the thermostat needed to be able to gauge the room’s air temperature, so I worked on something that I could drill holes into.

I’ve had it installed for about a month now, and so far so good with the thermostat and the furnace trucking along happily.

I was inspired by this paper cut from Etsy that I saw ages and ages ago. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” says the White Queen to Alice, in Through the Looking Glass.

I started by finding this 8”x8” wooden “canvas” at Michael’s.

I printed out the quote several times in several sizes before deciding what I thought would look best size-wise, then taped the paper to the board and used the technique I found from this pin to “trace” the letters on to the board.

The pen leaves a light indentation in the wood which you can then follow with paint.

But first, I drilled holes where the ‘o’s would be to allow for airflow to get to the thermostat. I found that a 3/8” drill bit about matched the size of my ‘o’s.

Then I painted the letters.

I started out with white paint because I was so in love with the idea of the inspiration photo. I knew that the holes would be darker, but I just kept thinking how much I like the light look.

I wrapped some sandpaper around a pen to smooth the insides of the holes.

To increase the amount of air that would reach the thermostat, I drilled holes into the sides of the wood canvas. I lightly drew them out with pencil in a wavy pattern and used different sized drill bits to make the whole thing look designed and purposeful, not just that I’m trying to keep the thermostat working. :)

After sanding the sides, after a few coats of white paint on the lettering, I put about 3 coats of water-based satin clear coat over it for protection.

I did a very light sanding (with 22o grit paper) in between coats and the results were phenomenal.  The whole piece is super smooth and well-protected, but the satin clear coat is so matte, you can barely tell it’s there. It didn’t change the color of the wood at all.

Doesn’t it look so cool?

I wanted to spray pain the inside of the box white, for protection and just in case it helped visibility of the thermostat in any way (white reflects light, right?). So I taped off all the holes (so the spray wouldn’t mist through onto the front) and went to town.

I bought these tiny hinges at Lowe’s.  They’re just 1” tall and I made sure they weren’t really wider than the thickness of the wood.

I placed them and pre-drilled holes. If I was fancy, I could have/should have notched the wood out for the hinges so they’d be flush, but I really didn’t want to take time for that step. :)

It took me a minute and some trouble to really mount it level on the wall, and I just sort of trucked along and maybe said some bad words, so I don’t have pictures of that step. I will say I tried to make marks, level it, place one screw, level it, place another and so on. It turned out pretty good. 

My one important tip:  since the screws for the hinges were so so tiny, much too tiny for any kind of wall anchor, I actually put wood glue all over the threads before I screwed them into the drywall, because I didn’t want them to just pull right out. I know we’ll be opening and closing this cover a lot. As we use this guy, I will tell you how the glue in the drywall holds up.

Anyway, after installation, I had this!

I loved the white letters on the light wood with the light wall. But I sort of hated how obvious the holes looked. I totally wanted to set up some tiny LED behind there so that the light would shine through (like above!) but let’s be real, Victoria. That’s ridiculous.

So I just had to re-think it. I decided to repaint the letters in a really dark blue or black. I ended up deciding on a sort of navy color, and the way the lighting is in the hallway, it really does look cool: it’s very dark, you can hardly tell it’s blue, and the holes blend much better.

So I actually unscrewed the hinges from the wood side, took it down and repainted it. My painting definitely got a little messier since I was painting 2-3 more coats over the white I already had, but it’s okay to be imperfect. And in the hall where you’re really not staring at it, it looks great.

And I’m really happy to have a new cornerstone for my future gallery wall/hall! Now I just need to start hanging the rest of the pictures!

What do you think? Are you willing to embark on this tedious process to cover up your thermostat? :)

Eric and Ashley’s Wedding in a Bar

I know you are dying to hear the rest of my thermostat tales, but we’re going to take a break for a minute to talk about my friends’ wedding in a bar.

You’ve already “met” Ashley, because she’s the one who guest posted about her amazing faux-granite countertops. Today, her amazing wedding from last year was featured on Offbeat Bride!

I’m taking a break to post this, because I totally made her amazing wedding dress. Let me pause while I pat myself on the back. :)

Also, if you don’t already know about Offbeat Bride, check it out. It’s an awesome website for wedding ideas (with lots of DIY!) from mildly offbeat to wildly offbeat. Plus, it’s an amazing community that’s branched out into home and family life.

You may remember, also, that this is the wedding dress that won me a nice blue ribbon in this year’s Lake County Fair.

Now let’s just look at some more pictures because that’s fun.

Okay, fine, so I just posted dress pictures. Check out their featured post on Offbeat Bride to see some other awesome details from their wedding, including ticket place cards, journal-entry guest books, and a cartoon van cake topper!

Installing a Programmable Thermostat

This is a boring, unpretty, but money saving project. Tomorrow I’ll follow it up with a pretty project!

I know that we’re just about the last people to install a programmable thermostat, but in case you’re like us, and you live in an old house that doesn’t have one, here’s how we did it.

(PS – when you really get around to tackling this project, please read your instructions carefully! Brian was the one who actually did this swap out because he totally gets electricity. I tried to pay attention as best I could, but I know my report won’t be as good as a professional’s! Think of this post as a visual aid.) :)

First, we turned off power to the furnace (at the light switch next to the furnace, which most furnaces should have) and took the batteries out of the thermostat.

The thermostat was so wobbly in our wall, and it turns out it was installed without drywall anchors, so we were able to pull it straight out of the wall! Oops!

Who knew it was just that little hole holding the wires?

Once we got the cover off, we could see the wiring inside.

The previous installer wrapped the wires around the screws – and while that is what you do with many electrical projects – this, and many thermostats use something called a terminal block, where the wires click into place and the screws just tighten down on them. So in this case, the installer shouldn’t have wrapped the wires around the screws.

So Brian just cut them off.

Then he stripped the wires so that about 1/2” or less of copper was showing, and since the blue wire isn’t being used in our case, he just cut it off short, so that it wouldn’t be in the way. (The previous installer just left it hanging there.)

We put the back plate of the new thermostat up to the wall and were sure to use wall anchors this time. :)

(And actually, because we were sort of terrible at getting it level, we ended up having to dig out some wall anchors of our own after re-leveling it.)

Once the baseplate was up (still not level at this point, oops!), Brian began installing the wires.

See how they click into the top, then you tighten the screw down on them. We had one wire who kept popping out, so Brian loosened the screw, really shoved it down in there, and retightened the screw on the block. Here’s a better picture:

The wires go straight down into the top of the terminal block, then the screws hold them in place.

It was around this time that I noticed just how un-level the thing was. Luckily, they gave us an extra hole in the back plate, so we re-leveled it, took it off the wall, and added a new anchor.

We put it back up and put the cover on and voila! We were done.

We actually did this project a while ago, but as you can see above, the new thermostat is a different shape than the old one, and it took me quite a while to get that hole filled and some touch up paint onto the wall, but I finally did, and here’s the finished product:

It’s so great that I can program it to automatically turn down the heat at bedtime or when we’re usually out of the house.  Talk about saving money! The power company is always telling me how much money I can save by just turning down my heat by 1 degree. Well, fine, I’ll keep that money for myself, thank you. :)

If this is a project you haven’t tackled yet, I hope this picture guide has helped a little bit (though like I said, please read your instructions!). After all that hard work, next I’m going to show you how I covered it up! :)

So, do you have a programmable thermostat in your house? (And do you actually program it?)

Coffee Table Facelift

Finally! I’ve been working on this small change to our coffee table since June, but being the procrastinator that I am, just got it done in time for New Year’s.

Here’s our coffee table now:

And here it was before:

I know, it’s not the biggest change ever, but I love the new look. It fits a lot better into our new, lighter living room scheme.

I got this coffee table quite a few years ago from Ashley Furniture and I love it because it’s on wheels and the top slides open.

Isn’t that awesome? You can get to the storage inside without having to lift open a lid, meaning you can leave all your junk on the top of the table.

But like I said, I wanted it to blend a little better with all the lighter colors I’m using now, so painting the black metal seemed like a good option.  The coffee table still looks rustic/industrial, but blends with all the satin nickel finishes we have a little better.

I got out some Rustoleum Painter’s Touch Brushed Metallic Paint in Platinum that I bought for something else, a foam brush, and some painter’s tape.

Then I began the tedious job of taping everything off. Prep work is always terrible and boring, but it’s the most important for good results!

Then I brushed on 2-3 light coats of the paint, varying my brush stroke directions to make everything look purposefully uneven and like real brushed metal.

The first coat was pretty thin and you could still see the black through it.

But after I put on 1 or 2 more coats, it was nice and silver.

All that taping and waiting for coats to dry was tedious and I watched a lot of Murder, She Wrote.  (Thank you, Netflix.)

Then, to keep with the rustic/weathered feel of the table, (and to hide any mistakes and imperfections), I got out some Rustoleum American Accents Antique Pewter top coat (that came with a spray paint kit) to add some antiquing.

I varied between brushing it on and wiping it off with a paper towel, and sort of dabbing it on with a paper towel and wiping off with one, too. It was all very imprecise but I liked the look I was getting.

I did have some yucky mishaps. Whether it’s because I am a terrible taper (which is entirely possible) or because of the finish on the table (did I wipe it down with too much Pledge?) I got a lot of bleed through in some places.

Ugh. I had to painstakingly, carefully scrape that all off with a razor scraper. What a pain! Some places came out very clean, but there was enough like this that I said bad words. I even tried Frog Tape with similar results. (That’s why I wonder if it was me/the finish on the table.)  Luckily, since I was antiquing it, I just used some of the darker paint to hide spots where I couldn’t get all of the silver paint off of the wood, so I still love the finished product. I just want to share the reality of the project!

Then, after I painted, scraped, and antiqued all four sides, I left the top looking basically like this for 5 months.

Because I am terrible.

But I finally finished it all! And I couldn’t be happier. Here it is again, with a little more living room in the background, so you can see how good it looks. ;)

Have you finally finished any projects lately? Like me, just in time for your New Year’s shindig?

Happy New Year 2013!

What a year 2012 was! I blogged for a full year, I made over our mantel (including doing tile work for the first time), and just before the New Year hit, I finally fixed a hole in our floor (more on that later.) :)

The four days we’ve already had in 2013 have been pretty eventful for me, too. I rung in the New Year with an impromptu performance of Auld Lang Syne with friends. That was fun.

I’ve already had a root canal. Not so fun.

I don’t really want to post any resolutions here on the blog, (because if I don’t fulfill them, I don’t want you to make fun of me) :), but I have taken a moment this New Year to step back and make myself a list of to-dos. In the 3 years we’ve lived at this house, we’ve already accomplished a lot of the changes we wanted to make, and we’ve got some big ones for down the road. But in the meantime, here’s what I’m hoping to get done in 2013.

For the blog:

• Finally create a house tour already
• Create a couple of other pages that you’ll hopefully find useful and entertaining
  

Big to-dos that are probably down the road a bit:

• Get a new roof
• Create our master bathroom
• Remodel our current bathroom(s)
• Add on to the house, possibly starting with enclosed porches/mudrooms
  

What house-projects I really should focus on in 2013:

• The Sewing Room – I think I’ll make this my main project. There’s a lot that needs to happen there.
• Clean out and organize the 2nd bedroom – this is another biggie. It’s currently the junk room, so I’ll just have to create a junk room somewhere else.
• Finally finish up the details in the kitchen – like cabinet lights and trim, a backsplash, maybe paint the bottom cabinets.
• Finally finish up details in the living room – like curtains, finishing the last bookshelf, painting the lamps, and reupholstering my little chairs.

 

What about you? Do you have any resolutions or big projects for 2013?