Our "New" Old Bed

I've been slowly working on our master bedroom, getting it to become "us".
My parents bought my husband and I our bed 5 years into our marriage.
We had this gymnasium of a water bed, complete with mirrored/etched headboard that wrapped it's way up the wall to attach to the lovely mirrored canopy.
Oh yes...can you say hideous 70's water bed?
You can!
Then you know why my loving parents bought us our bed.

Anyways, we've had it for 14 years now and it still works wonderfully.
I just wanted to tweak it a bit. It has a head board that basically has a mantel on top, so when you would sit up in bed and lean back trying to read a book, eventually your body would go numb because this little mantel would press against your neck in the most peculiar, uncomfortable way. I had run across an egg top foam mattress pad at Salvation Army for 3 bucks a while back. My hubby had two pieces of foam core from some old company signage, they were the perfect fit. I taped the two pieces of foam core together, folded the egg top foam into thirds and simply wrapped an old white curtain around the whole thing. I pinned the curtain in the back, ran some heavy duty velcro I have along the top and bottom and popped it into place. Yeah, no more numb legs!


This is the foot board, which is what the head board looked like. I'm also thinking of getting some bed risers, I love my new bed skirt, but it is a little long. I like the pooling affect, but it may be a bit much.

I also added the curtain canopy above the bed this weekend and the swing arm lamp.
I love how it all turned out.
Hubby is a big fan too!

I've got a few more "big" things to finish up, like my beautiful crystal chandelier, and hubby's dresser...which is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought. I know we'll conquer it! I'll keep you posted. : )

~nic

Working hard

Hi all!
I've been working hard on two quiet books. One for a little boy, and one for a little girl. It's been fun doing them at the same time. I've finished the boy one, which you can check out here. It has already been given to Peyton, and from what I hear, he loves it! I'm almost done with the little girl one and will post it as soon as I get it finished.

The other project that I finished up, is our bedroom tv unit. It has actually been done for a bit, but I lost my camera to computer cord, and haven't been able to download them..until now! Yeah!

This started out as your typical armoire, with an upper portion that was half shelving, and half small drawers, with doors to enclose it all. So lovely country 80's. Thanks mom and dad! I took out all the guts of the upper portion, filled and sanded. Then painted it all white, with a touch of black here and there. I also papered the upper portion and cut a hole in the back for the TV to be able to stick out. I also cut off the huge hunk of an upper decorative nothing thing. It was weighing the whole piece down and made it HUGE.
I love the way it turned out!
Take a look:






Of course I had to add some items to the top of the unit. The little hat box is filled with all of our high school and Navy letters. There are LOTS of them. The two vintage linens came from my grandmother, which I adore. The picture, well, don't look too closely at that. Those were taken when I was 18 for my hubby. I had gone to a bridal fair with my mom, and signed up for Bedroom style pictures to be taken. This is one of hubby's favorites. The tall candle stick came from a garage sale, for a whole 75 cents, with the Z Gallerie price tag still on it. The love sign was wood from the Salvation army store, painted white and added some cute ribbon to hang it from. The mirror, well, if you know me, I have mirrors. No really. As I'm sitting here typing, I can look up and see four mirrors in my house.
I love mirrors.
And I don't even wear makeup.
LOL!

~nic

Little light table

I bought this little light table from our local catholic school thrift store a while back for 4 bucks. My girlfriend at the time thought I was crazy.
I could see it...in a nursery...all done up...in pistachio!
What do you think?

Before

After
Oh look at that cute green goodness! I love this little guy and really don't want to give it up.

I recovered a cream covered lamp shade to this beautiful blue, green, yellow and white plaid. I added the wood like buttons as an extra touch.



Can't you just see reading to your little one a sweet night time story? I'm really digging working the paint to look old and chippy. I don't know if I can give this one up, but I really don't have anything that matches it, nor a little one anymore. No, wait...he'll ALWAYS be my little one. : )

~nic

A little beachy

I picked up this cute child's rocking chair at my local Savers a few months back. I have one from my childhood, actually I believe it was my mother's from her childhood. (Mom, can you confirm?) I had been wanting to re-do a little rocker but really didn't want to do mine. So when I ran across this one, I grabbed it up quick.
I had one vision for it: beachy and unisex.
I think I achieved it, what do you think?

I made the little cushion reversible so if you didn't want the flowery motif any more, just flip it over and have a nice solid cream ribbed motif.

I added grommets to the ends of the tabs on the cushion, then just flipped the chair over, marked where the grommets landed, added some little screws for the grommets to fit over, and voila!
Reversible cushion. : )

So, if you are in the market for a darling little beachy rocker, let me know!
I've got one I can sell you. : )

Update: I sold this cutie at my garage sale to a sweet elderly couple for their great granddaughter! Yeah!

~nic

I've linked up to:

Should I open shop?

I didn't think it would happen to me.
But I think it has.
I've become a furniture collector!
I can't believe I'm going to show you these pictures of our backyard right now...but hey, this is what blog land is all about, being real.

Amongst all the free furniture I've collected and have plans for, our backyard is also in the middle of a transformation. Above picture is of one of the two free shabby chic nightstands, free round double tier table and free little 5 drawer dresser.


Two sets of drawers, one set (the two that are actually sanded down) belong to my hubby's dresser. Yes, I've got two of the six drawers sanded down. The other three belong to the little 5 drawer dresser.


This lovely picture above has our free white outdoor bar, the rest of hubby's drawers for his dresser($10.00 if you remember), his dresser under the canvas painters tarp on the right, three doors that go on my cabinet in my guest bath that my daddy built me, a little gray and blue child's rocker ($5.00 from Savers) and on the left, facing backwards, is a behind the door coat and purse shelf hanger thing my father built ages ago. I do mean ages, like I think I was 5 or 6 maybe. My daddy built it so that each of us kids, 4 including me, and my parents would each have our own hook to hang bags and coats and such. I've got plans to update it with a fresh coat of paint, add some cool hooks and hang hubby's collection of record bags on it. Also, you can't see them, one is under the tarp and one is keeping the tarp from flying up, but there are also two mirrors out here. One was free and all curvy delicious, and one was $5.00 from St. Justin's and is a HUGE bar style mirror.


Oh yea, and this little number, a very loved free wooden chair. It needs ALOT of attention, but I know I can do it. Ha, you know what else was totally free in the back yard? Our hammock! You can see it shoved up against our patio swing in the first picture. I guess I should give a big shout out to all you CraigsListers out there, you make my day complete! Without you guys, I wouldn't have a back yard full of free unwanted furniture that previous owners just couldn't see potential in. I thank you for giving me your unloved, unwanted children and allowing me to teach them how to act and feel. They leave my hands new children with a fresh, renewed outlook on life.

Okay, maybe I took that a bit far?

~nic

Give me a good weekend, and look what gets done!

After a month of prepping and then going on our summer family trip to Lake Don Pedro, I'm back! I'm relaxed and I've got the bug to get projects done.

Love it when a good weekend rolls around. Things like this get done:

Free chair on the side of the road...thank you!

Free primer and white gloss spray paint from my Big Brother CAP, thank you, Love you!

Free canvas tarp runner that my parents gave me because it was all funky shaped with a plastic slippery liner...thank you, Love you too!

Star material that I've had stored for years, so free to me now, thank me! hehe!

Free lessons on how to use our air compressor and staple gun attachment, from hubby, thank you, love you the best! : )

I can't believe that I did this one! I still have one item left to finish on it, but I was so excited about it, I had to post. I need to finish off the cording around the seat back, which I will have to go buy. I did buy one can of white gloss spray paint as my brother's didn't quite have enough, but if I can find a good deal on the cording, which I know exactly where to go for that, I should have a brand new French Provincial chair for less then $10.00. LOVE! This one is for our master bedroom, which is slowly coming together, piece by piece. But I don't mind, I can be patient and get a whole new bedroom set for less then I EVER imagined.

New dresser for me: 35.00
New dresser for hubby (still working on, it's a bear!): 10.00
New chair for us: FREE
Black crystal chandelier: FREE!! I think this one is my ULTIMATE score.

Two side tables that I picked up months ago from CL's (need to be redone): FREE

Wow! I'm so glad I have this blog to keep track, it will be fun to go back and really figure it out.

Okay, on to my next project.

I've got a girlfriend at work that has recently adopted a teenage daughter. They are actually still in the process of finishing all the paperwork and she mentioned that she is trying to get "her bedroom" put together.
I jumped at it.
I've been collecting pieces of furniture and needing to find homes for them before Hubby up and leaves. Okay, he would never, but you know how hoarding becomes a problem after a while.
I'm just sayin'.

Anyways, I found this darling little end/side table (not really sure if there is a difference) at S.A. for 12.00, again, a few months back. I didn't take a before picture, but it seriously was just a different shade of green, but with some love marks left on it. That sounds a little weird. What I mean is, it had some dings and scratches and a few dirt marks that I just couldn't get out. The two drawers were stuck together with the icky green paint they chose to use and not let dry before cramming the drawers in, so I had to do a little sanding on those. Oh, and it had some spilled wax on one side of it. The new teenager is wanting to use a bright key lime/florescent green color in her room. This is what I've come up with.

I love it.
I think it screams teenage diva.
Justin was walking by as I was staging these pictures in our hallway and said, " Cool colors mom."
Okay, I think I nailed it.
I also painted the candlestick lamp on the back of the table, and the little trinket box next to the lamp. I didn't however, paint the knobs on the drawers. Yup! I actually had two green star handles that fit perfectly! They were from one of Justin's hanging closet organizers that I used when he was a baby. The lamp shade is really a wire trash can that I picked up from the dollar store and wove with black ribbon and then glued on the white trim. I need to trim up the frayed ribbon and do that burning technique so they don't fray. Tomorrow I'm going to be picking up a free chandelier to go with this as well. I've been playing tag with another CL'r on a sweet little vanity that will fit in so nicely. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one! She's also got a dresser that is SOOO similar to mine that I just redid that I'll be taking too, hopefully! I think I've got a good start. What do you think?

~nic

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