Tag: family room

Craft Projects

Bird House Floral Decor

Jessica Smith

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! I just finished my fall semester of grad school last night and actually have time to write something that won’t be graded 🙂 WOO!

My mom and stepdad moved earlier this year, and a few months ago they gave us a sideboard that they didn’t end up having a spot for in their new place. My stepdad, being the handy guy he is (and whose birthday it is today!), had built in a wine rack into the middle of it.

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Since we have a wine rack behind our bar already, we opted to remove it. After a lot hard work of figuring out how the heck he even got the shelves in there, we were able to remove them and reinstall the original shelving. I touched up the piece with some black paint, and it is looking sharp in our family room now — especially with all of the crap on it.

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It’s decorated for Christmas now, but a few months ago I made a fun little decoration to incorporate my love of all things birds. I had a birdcage that mom had given me a few years ago that I’d never had anything to do with.

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After a trip to Michael’s, I had a bunch of floral stems to play with. I started with a floral sponge thingy (that’s the technical name, of course).

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That actually ended up not working at all…. so I scratched that plan and started to layer the greenery at the bottom of the cage.

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I stuck some sprigs in and out of the wires of the cage to kid of keep everything secure, ending up with a nice bed of greenery at the bottom of the cage. Realistically, if you turned it upside down, it would all likely fall out. … so I just won’t do that!

I have this FAT mercury glass bird that I love, so I plopped him right on top of all of the floral stems.

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And with that, I had a pretty darn cute use for the birdcage and the bird, both of which I’ve had in random places around my house for years!

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It made for a cute little vignette on our new-to-us sideboard.

 

 

Furniture

Mid-Century Modern Cabinet

Jessica Smith

I didn’t go to enough yard sales last year — New Year’s Resolution to go to more this spring and summer! I find the best things when I go yard saling, like this mid-century modern cabinet I scored a few years back for $10.

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It’s sat untouched in our family room for years until I got around to sprucing it up.

While it’s a little hard to tell in the first photo, the piece was all scratched up.

Scratches on the top:

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Another shot of the top:

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And scratches on the door:

 

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I cleaned up the piece with soap and water before using my trusty Restor-A-Finish to touch up the scratches.

MCM_Top_before

To us the product, I simply put it on a paper towel and rub it into the cracks and all over the cabinet. Let it sit for about 20 minutes, then wipe the whole piece down. To finish, wax the piece using the same technique.

It goes from looking like this ^^ to this:

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The scratches are still in the top, but are far less noticeable.

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It really cleans the whole thing up!

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Now the piece looks great in our house. I still can’t believe I score it for only $10. What a deal.

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Furniture

Stained and striped coffee table

Jessica Smith

Ahhhh, another project so long in the works.

My dad brought me this old table from my aunt’s house in Cincinnati. I wasn’t crazy about it at first — it is extremely heavy — but it started to grow on me. Plus, it’s way nicer than the Ikea table dad got us from a yard sale. So about a month ago I started to refinish this piece.

I really like the lines in the top of this table. I noticed right away the vertical lines in the table top, sandwiched by two horizontal pieces of wood. I had the idea to stain every other plank a dark gray to give this top some pizzaz.

So I went off to Home Depot to pick up some stain — I tried a new stain, Varathane, which I really liked. The polyurethane is particularly awesome.

I sanded the top of the table and then taped off every other slat with blue painter’s tape.

Once I taped off the table, I stained the contained slats a smokey gray using a sponge brush. I waited 10 minutes, then wiped off the stain.

Once the gray was finished, I started to apply the black stain over top of it. The black stain turned out to be more of a dark brown, which I liked. If I had done a second coat of stain, it probably would have been a bit more black. But I liked the contrast between the gray and brown.

This is where I stopped about a month ago — whoops. Between house-warming parties and jam-packed weekends, I just didn’t have the time to tackle this project.

Luckily, I had time this past Sunday to complete this project.

I took the table outside and flipped it over to stain the underneath.

I scraped the little stain drips off the underneath of the table, then stained the bottom black. I let it dry for a few hours, then applied several coats of matte Varathane polyurethane for the table.

I love this table now… it looks great. It feels great. I love the poly finish much better than glossy finishes I’ve used in the past. And, it looks fabulous in our living room. So pleased.

Side note… Has anyone tried the new panorama feature on the iOS 6 software for the iPhone. Look at this sweet picture of our family room.

Isn’t that fantastic? The room doesn’t look too bad either 😉