A Week of Projects

This past week was one of basically playing catch-up on some projects.  My husband and I dropped the kiddos off at the grandparents’ house and headed home for our “staycation.”  We had originally planned to travel somewhere, just the two of us, so we could spend some time together again.  Well, once I began thinking about all the things I now had the distraction-free time to do, and began thinking about the costs of a trip, I decided the project-completion outweighed the travel.  Sure, it was not exactly the romantic, reconnecting trip I was hoping for, but we did get to spend some time together, and we went on a few dinner dates—I ate HOT food at a restaurant!   Ah, yes, It’s the small things.

I had a lengthy list of projects I wanted to complete last week.  Ever since we have been married, my husband and I have only purchased two pieces of furniture new (at least until the kids came along).  Everything else we had was hand-me-downs. There is nothing wrong with hand-me-downs; in fact, I usually find more character in the hand-me-down furniture.  However, I was getting tired of furniture not matching and, well, getting tired of the “tired” look.  Basically, there were many projects I wanted to accomplish: painting a highboy, painting a rice bed (lots of little details), finishing a nightstand, painting my son’s bedroom, painting my bedroom and bathroom, recovering the seats of four chairs, getting started on a bookshelf-to-dollhouse makeover, and updating my coffee table. 

The kiddos would only be away for four days, five counting the traveling time, so I was either brave or naïve in believing I would be able to finish every single project.  Did I finish?  Absolutely… most of it.  With help from my husband, we were able to knock out everything except for the chairs, the dollhouse, and the coffee table.  

I forgot to get a before picture of the bed, but you can still see some of the design in this "during" picture.  Also, if you look at the wall behind the finished bed, you can see the color we painted our master bedroom.

{Bed During}

{Close-up of Bed Details After}

The dresser was a lot of work with all the different details, but I love the finished project!  I spray painted the drawer pulls to give them a rubbed bronze finish.

{Drawer Pulls Before}

{Dresser Before}

{Dresser After}

I have yet to style the top of my dresser and I still need to fix a couple of drawer stops, but I think I did pretty well with my progress for now.

As for my daughter's nightstand, it belonged to the same set as my dresser that we refinished.  I removed the original drawer pulls and replaced them with three different ones.  My husband filled in the original holes and then drilled one in the middle of each drawer for the new pulls.

Believe it or not, I gave up color-control to my three-year old.   I showed him my fan deck and told him he could choose ANY color he wanted for his room.  My heart was literally racing as he made his decision.  His color choice in and of itself was not bad, but it clashed with what was in his room already.  However, I could not give up complete control, so we painted a design on one wall to make an accent wall.  I am getting kind of tired of all the chevron designs, but I really liked this one because it was different.  I prefer not to consider it chevron, though, because I am stubborn.  Let's just call this a variation of herringbone. (Please ignore the not-so-flattering picture of me taping.  I had no idea my husband was taking my picture right then!)

{Taping off the design}

{The Accent Wall After}

The picture of his room is not in its final stages.  I still need to buy his window treatments and bed covering and then style his room. 

Yeah, after this past week, I have sworn off painting furniture for a while, but I loved the outcome of the projects and thoroughly enjoyed doing it all with my husband--I had a lot of projects, but my favorite was catching up with him!