Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Last time I posted about our vanity, the mirror was sitting on the vanity top and it wasn't completely finished yet. So I finally got my act together and finished it up.

That's right people, the mirror's actually up on the wall now. I convinced Ian to use a hammer and put a nail up....only because I know he'd kill me if I tried to do it myself. That, and I'd probably miss and put a massive hole in the wall that Clover could fit through....so the only solution was to bribe Ian to do it for me.
Food usually works for that.

Anyho, got the nail up, put the mirror up and presto- mirror on the wall!

I also added this cute little lamp from HomeSense:

It was on clearance and the colour was perfect. Only problem? I brought it home and it didn't work. Switched to a new bulb...still didn't work. Boo.

So I went to return it at a different store, and found another lamp exactly the same...also on clearance. This one better work! Brought it home, flipped the switch and ta-da! Worked perfectly!

Not only now do I have a mirror up on the wall, but a light so I can actually see what Im doing at night. SO much better for everyone involved here....

So there you have it! A finished project which only means we're one step closer to our master bedroom reveal.

For those of you who dont follow us on Facebook or Twitter (and why not I might like to add?! Join in the party!)- I often share sneak peeks of what we're up to on our Facebook page before I post about it. Think of it like a VIP club, where you get special privileges and cool stuff. Although ours is free and right now the bonus' are pretty limited...but again, isn't it cool to be a VIP? I like to think so.

So here's another small peek that I posted on Facebook this week, of our *almost* complete master bedroom...

Whatcha think?!
Thats all for now...I'm off to finish up that room people!

Master Ensuite Curtains

Hi Everyone!

Its been a while since Ive been on here- we have a lot going on right now, but there are so many things I have to share with you. Many of these projects we've completed a while back, and some we have still yet to finish.

Most of you will remember seeing our Master Ensuite reveal, and we are very much nearing completion on this room! We only have 2 things yet to complete, and Im so happy its almost done!

One of the major things we wanted to finish, was the curtains for this room. We found some incredible fabric on my favorite fabric suppliers site: Tonic Living, and felt that it went perfectly in the room:

Bethe- Robins Egg (Tonic Living)

It matched our tile choices nicely and helped to really tie the room together. Here's what the ensuite looked like before the curtains:

and here is the after:

We chose to create 4 smaller panels rather than 2 or 4 large, based on the size of the room. They fit the opening of the window perfectly and add a nice amount of pattern and texture to the space.

We chose to create simple panels, and hang them from the curtain rods with drapery clips. I found this was the most simple way to hang them while keeping the style modern and clean.

The curtain rods were from Lowes and the drapery clips from Boucliar Home. We used 3 packages of 7 drapery clips (leaving 1 to spare) as each panel needed 5 clips. Thankfully, the rods and drapery clips were a perfect match.

In order to make the panels, I used my Singer machine (which I LOVE), and followed these steps (which I made up as I went):

1. Take measurements of your windows and fabric to see what you have to work with. My windows were 45 inches wide and my fabric was 54 inches wide, so I knew I had just enough fabric to cover my window. I figured I could cut the piece in half, and with seams and cutting off the raw edges would end up with just enough. 

2. Lay the fabric down on a large surface (my dining table worked well!).

3. Cut off the raw edges.

4. If you are creating small panels like I did (24 inches wide), fold your fabric in half and iron the crease.

4. Cut your fabric down the middle to create 2 large pieces

5. Figure out how tall you want your panels to appear (I wanted to hang mine closer to the ceiling (my curtain rods were already up- which was risky!- but I measured how tall I needed them to be from the rod to the floor.)

6. Cut the fabric to be just long enough, and put your extra fabric aside. I had purchased enough fabric to create 4 panels.

7. You should now have 1 large piece thats just long enough, cut in half. Sew all your edges to create 2 large panels.

8. I went the extra step to make sure my patterns matched when I closed the panels, but you dont need to do this.

9. Once I finished my first 2 panels, I used one of them as a template to create the remaining 2.

Its not a difficult process, it just takes time to sew, iron and measure when you are working with such a large amount of fabric.

Im really happy with how the turned out, and am now working on a roman shade for our "kids" bath and 2 more curtain panels for our guest room. Our guest room is getting close to being finished and so is our master ensuite so those will be up soon.

For now, I can enjoy a nice relaxing bath in my washroom...without giving the neighbours a show anymore :S

Enjoy this sunny day everyone!

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Dresser Update

So our master bedroom is getting pretty close to completion....that is with the exception of no headboard, magical endtables that we will probably never find, and unhemmed curtains...so all and all not bad :)
Anyho, we recently finished updating our Ikea dresser...I guess you could say this is my first true Ikea Hack...yippee! Boy are we ever glad its finished (and still in one piece as we refrained from kicking it several times while remaking it :D )


Soooo....here's what we began with:


The Ikea Hemnes 8 drawer dresser (ours was a honey colour, which they dont actually make anymore):

so we wanted it white...and didn't feel like forking out the $300 to get a new one...soooo we decided to paint ours.

I have to say this dresser was probably the most difficult piece we've worked with yet. It involved a bunch of steps and we dealt with a bunch of challenges after each.

First thing we did was sand the dresser down completely.

We took apart all of the drawers so we only had to paint the drawer fronts.

We then primed the entire piece and all drawer fronts with an oil based primer. This helps when you are trying to get the paint to level-out better, however for us it didn't work too well. We ended up stripping the entire top of the dresser and trying again with a water-based primer. After that, we sanded the entire piece again, and started with our paint.

We used "Simply White" in a satin finish by Benjamin Moore- which is the same colour as our trim and other white furniture- so we kept it consistent.

We constantly seemed to have dust and little blue particles from our drop cloth sticking to our pieces, so we were continuously wiping the pieces off and painting again, and again and again.

(Sorry for the lack of pictures on our progress, but I completely forgot to take some during our frustrations! lol)

After 3 coats of paint, we ended up with this:

We changed up the hardware a bit...

and we're pretty happy with how it turned out!

Dresser complete! We're almost there with this room friends! Up next- headboard re-do!

Vanity Reveal

Hi Friends,


So lots going on lately, as you probably remember from my 'blogging note' post, however, this weekend we've been working away once again, and I managed to finish my vanity and vanity chair. I love it, and I can't wait to be able to actually use it now!


You might remember me introducing you to my $10.00 vanity that I "picked" from Kijiji last summer, here, or my antique vanity chair that I also found on Kijiji for $10.


Let me remind you of the "Before's" anyways...


Here's what I started with:

and here's how it turned out:

I sanded, painted and reupholstered it in new fabric. I actually ordered that fabric for our Master Ensuite curtains and used what I had left for the chair- worked out perfectly. The fabric I used was 'Bethe-Robins Egg' from Tonic Living and the paint colour is a light sea-foam green called 'Smokey Slate' in a satin finish by Behr . I actually didn't even need to prime the chair- I used Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint which has a built in primer. It worked beautifully. I honestly might have gotten away with 1 really good coat- its that thick. I did 2 coats though, and that was more than enough- the paint went on really well. 

Now, here's what the Vanity Table looked like before:

I spent some time fixing it up and painting it ("Simply White" by Benjamin Moore). I also added some new hardware to the drawer that I found at Home Sense:

and now it looks like this:

Added a few accessories for now...

I found this mirror at a second hand store for $7.00. Its super heavy and has a solid wood frame- someone had painted over the previous finish, but I think that with some paint, it will look perfect over my vanity....

I'll update you all once I've painted and refinished the mirror, but for now, I'm looking forward to having a nice spot to sit in our bedroom to get ready :)

Total cost for the make-over:
Vanity Table (Kijiji)- $10.00
New handle for drawer (Home Sense)- $11.00
Vanity Chair (Kijiji)- $10.00
Fabric for Chair (Tonic Living)- remnant from curtain fabric
Paint (Home Depot)- $10.00 (HD coupon)
Mirror (second hand store)- $7.00


Total: $48.00


Other Accessories (already owned):
Flowers (Home Sense)
Jewelry Drawer (Home Sense)
Vanity Tray (Second Hand Store- $0.99)

All I need now, is a light, a small mirror and to fix up the drawer, so I can actually put all of my make-up inside :) I'm planning on using some wallpaper that I'll have left over from our bedroom closet make-over (post coming soon!), to do the drawer (I know no-one will ever see it but me, but that's ok right?!)


So what do you think?!
What else would you make sure to have on your vanity table?

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A Sneak Peek...

Before I give you a sneak peek into one of the projects that we finished this weekend, I want to send a very special thank you out to those who commented on my last post. I really appreciate those who took the time to write me a little message- it honestly meant so much. Its people like you who keep us bloggers going! Sending each of you a big virtual hug :) Thank you to all of you who are new followers and those who have been following for a while now! I want you to know I really debated writing that post for quite some time, but I felt as loyal readers you all deserved to know what was going on with us, and what might be going on for the next little while :)


However, last weekend we managed to work on a bunch a projects (even with one of us being a bit "under the weather"), we have a lot to share with you over the next while!


For now, I'm going to give you a sneak peek of one of the projects we finished...


Here's the before:

and here's a peek of the after:

sorry for the fuzzy phone photo! I'm saving the good pics for the official reveal!


As well, over the holidays we acquired a new little....correction BIG project that we'll probably be working on in the next year!


Here's a clue as to something we "might" have sitting in our basement moonlighting as a balance beam right now (Clover's practicing for the dog Olympics in her spare time)...lol:

source

So there you go! A few sneak peeks and a BIG thank you :)


As well, we're going to dedicate a special post to our favorite Canadian retailers soon! So many of you comment on how you love hearing where we source things, being from Canada and all, eh!? So we figured it would be great to provide you all with a list of where we tend to find great things, who we go to for specific items, etc. So watch for that post soon!


That's all for now! Hope you all have a great week coming up!