Dresser Discovery

Recently I acquired this used dresser...

It has dovetailed joints, made out of solid wood and tons of character. Some of the drawers slide easily and others need a bit of work, but otherwise its a great piece.

The guy we bought it from (for less than $30) didn't seem to really know much about it, except that it had been in the family for many many years. He had painted it himself black a few years back, but the paint job isn't great.

After seeing these neat pieces, we might want to paint this piece a funky colour...

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But this one is still my fav (obviously for the colour):

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What colour would you pick?!

Vanity Table?

Im not sure what to do with this table:

I bought it off Kijiji a while ago for $10.00 and planned on using it as a vanity/make-up table in my bedroom. It started out looking like this:

I sanded it, primed it and painted it:

I haven't put a gloss or any sort of finish on it yet, so I can change the colour or do whatever I want to it still. I dont know if I want to keep it white, change the colour, distress it....

Its been sitting in my bedroom collecting dust for the past few months...and I need some suggestions!

There are a few pieces of inspiration I have... love this piece (taken from the Nate Berkus show), but Im not sure if I want to do this to it:

Because if I could, I'd probably paint everything I own turquoise...

Plus, its going in our bedroom, and our bedroom walls are going to be a sea-foam green/turquoise colour so I dont want to have too much of that colour in the room.

But honestly, doesn't that colour just look amazing?!

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However, the white does look nice and clean...maybe it just needs some funky hardware.

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What would you do?

Leave it? Add funky hardware? Paint it a colour?!

Suggestions please! :)

Coffee Break

Ive been a terrible blogger. I wont bore you with my millions of excuses (one of them being the FABULOUS wedding I was just at in Kentucky last weekend!), but that is a pretty good excuse I think?

Anyho, our major focus lately has been on tiling to master ensuite bathroom, but I'm forcing myself to hold off posting pics of that, until its fully complete.

So in the mean-time, here is our new family room coffee table!

Urban Barn

We'd been saving up for this table for a while now, and it FINALLY went on sale at Urban Barn. I actually never thought it would, but Ian was browsing the website one day, and saw that it was on sale! Yippee!

We loved it from the first time we saw it. Its a great size, allows for storage below, and we loved the rustic/handmade look of it.

So its going in our family room. The style for this room, is going to have a bit of a warm, earthy feel.  Think cream, taupe, reclaimed wood, greens, relaxed, etc.

For those of you who know me, your probably thinking, "really? that doesn't really sound like a melissa room..." and to be honest, its probably not my most favorite of colours, but we've compromised by making sure we use creams/whites and taupes admist the wood pieces Ian loves so much. Plus, the living and dining rooms have more of a "glam" feel, so there had to be some give and take somewhere!

I actually love the idea of incorporating woods and natural elements into every room, so this room will just have more of that!

The coffee table is just the start...I have an inspiration photo, which I'll attach soon...to give you a better of idea of what we are thinking :)

For now, check out the Urban Barn sale...some pretty great stuff on sale right now!!

Before and After

First off, I have to appologize for my absense lately with the blog.
Let me give you the low-down:

1. Our "fixed" countertop for the kids bath came in, and its wrong...AGAIN (this is counter-top #2 for those of you who are not aware- this time the hole is CLOSER to the centre, but still off by inches...sigh)
2. Our poor puppy Clover got quite sick and we were watching her like a hawk
3. Ive been selling a bunch of our junky old furniture on Kijiji
4. We sold the shed in our backyard- you try fitting an 8x10 shed out a tiny little side gate....
5. Our vanity for the master ensuite arrived....WRONG (doors are cream, frame is white....sigh again)
6. Ive been working on 2 (yes 2!) DIY projects, which I will feature on here next week :)
7. We are in the process of laying out the marble tile for our master bath- its like a puzzle nightmare
8. Stupid possible postal strike- We are in the process of working on our bedroom and ordering some furniture, but I need a fabric swatch to come in the mail before I order and we can move ahead with anything...


I know, excuses, excuses but I do promise 2 new projects featured next week!

What I want to feature today, are some incredible before and after photos :) I pretty sure my love for "upcycling" or creating something new from something old, came from my love of crafts as a kid.

I always loved crafts, colouring, painting you name it. I was crafty. I wasn't that "lets go play in the mud" kid, or "lets eat dirt" kid. I liked nice, clean crafts. My mom will attest to this. Not just the crafts and me getting up early in the morning to colour, but being spotless. She always said she could send me to a birthday party in a nice white dress, and Id come home without a spot on me.

Last weekend I was in the midst of working on one of my latest crafty projects, and went to hammer the paint can lid shut. As soon as I started hammering paint starting spraying everywhere. Oh heck, I thought, I still have to paint the entire piece so Im bound to get white paint on me at some point. Nope, not a spot. It was literally everywhere but on me.
I feel like the clean gods watch over me.

Those crafty finished projects will be coming soon!

In the meantime, I wanted to share some amazing "Before and Afters" that I got from Lindsey at Better Afters! Check out her amazing blog here. LOVE!!

Here are just a few of my fav's that she's featured. She links to all the blogs for these projects on her site too :)

Amazing transformations! I bet all these people are super crafty. They must be ;)

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Cabinet Reveal!

Ok, Im on a roll with the reveals right now-lol.
Ive been dying to finally post these pictures for a while now, so please bear with me, as many reveal posts are still to come.

Ive mentioned many times about searching through kijiji for great finds. Well recently I haven't seen much, however, when we first started looking on kijiji for furniture for our new home, we came across this cabinet:

Ok so It doesn't look like much, and to be honest, it wasn't in the best condition and we probably over-paid for it a little....we just felt bad for the seller I think-lol! She was the young, single mom with a little boy and an adorable golden retriever, and it was Christmas time, and she said she was trying to sell things to make money for Christmas presents.... (I swear even the dogs big sad puppy eye's were saying "please buy our cabinet so we can have money for Christmas" lol).

Maybe I caved...maybe. Plus, she lent us her car to drive it home in (who does that?!) so we really felt bad saying no. We did like it, we just weren't totally sure, but as the reveal shows, it actually turned out pretty good ;)

The cabinet is made out of walnut and has dovetail joints, however, part of the cabinet is veneer and this made for a difficult time when spraying it with paint.

We took this piece to a painter we have been working with for some of our other pieces and she has been fabulous. This piece gave her a lot of grief though, unfortunately. Apparently back in the day (whenever that was, yesteryear, maybe?! lol) they used a shilack to cover wood and it was partly composed of bug guts?! Anyho, this composition does not react well with paint, and often after painting you will see pink or orange colours bleed through the paint.

So of course after lugging this thing home (in our painters van, which she lent us- again, such nice people out there!), after a few days we began to see pink spots all over the cabinet. We had to bring it back (again in her van) and she primed it 2 more times before painting it again.

Now, it only has a bit of a yellow tinge to it in some places...but only if you really stare. So I just dont stare at it....for long.

We thought we could just leave the inside unpainted, but of course when I saw the outside sprayed all gleeming white, I had to paint the inside white...myself. That actually turned out ok, but it does make the drawers stick a bit, so I would not recommed doing that.

The inside had 3 pull out drawers, and there are 2 large drawers on the bottom. Our plan was to use this piece in our office as storage for the printer, paper, etc.

The final product:

Again, we matched the crystal knobs to the ones on the desk, and we are so happy with how it turned out. Office almost complete!

Linking up to:

 

Patio Lanterns

Yea Spring!!! We finally had some FABULOUS and I mean FABULOUS weather this past weekend :) It honestly felt like 30 degree's out! Im sure it was only about 14 or so, but with the amount of snow and cold weather we have had this year, we'll take anything above 10 degrees to be summer-like!

And with the spring weather we are getting just that much closer to SUMMER and patio weather!! Yippee!!!

We recently purchased some new patio/dining furniture for our deck (got a pretty great deal on it at Home Sense) and are pretty excited about it.

Here is our inspiration (and a sneak patio at what our furniture looks like!):

Im also on the look-out for some other key essentials:

YEA for Spring!!