House ADD

I have mentioned this before...See, before we moved to this house (or should I say pre-children)...Shane and I bought and sold a house every two years... I wouldn't call us flippers, I would just call me "antsy"...

There is a certain thrill of getting rid of the old and starting over...the smell of new paint...rearranging furniture in a new space...hunting flea markets to find the perfect pieces to complete the new house...

But I really like our house, and since we committed and dug that hole in the backyard, I know we'll be here for a while ever...but I sat in this house for two years STARING at this furniture, and examining the imperfections and even worse watching HGTV...

so I've begun a major overhaul, and by major, I mean labor intensive, yet fiscally lean...  Here is an example...

I love the style of my dining room table, but three years ago when we went to Disney World, Ironman didn't want the house to burn down from a "Plug-In", so he un-plugged it, and set it on the dining room table.  While we were in Disney, the fragrance drizzled out the side and kindly took the varnish off of the table...It only took me three years to remedy this with some Annie Sloan paint and wax...

here are two before pictures....please forgive me for living with is like this for three years...there were some rough times in there and I didn't have my usual energy...

 

said "plug-in" debacle...do you think the house would really have burned down???

 

Now let's discuss Annie Sloan paint and wax...I LOVE the results, but I didn't LOVE the process - especially the backache that resulted...I love that I have a new dining room table for $100 (cost of paint, clear wax and dark wax) rather than purchasing a new table (remember - I'm frugal).  But achieving a smooth even finish on a large area was tedious.  I would repeat the process in a heartbeat on a smaller object... as for a large table...well, maybe it's like pregnancy, and I'll forget...

 

So here is the finished product....

 

 

plus a new table runner from Pottery Barn and some Mercury Glass Accents.  The hutch in the back got a face lift with new red accents too.  Previously the room had turquoise as the accent color, but I'm a red girl, and as hard as I tried to like another color, it didn't work...I had to go back to red... here's the hutch... (here's a tip...scrapbook paper can be used in many places...can you spot it?)

 

 

and my mantle got a little sprucing too... I've been checking out mantles for a while, trying to figure out what to do...finally I just started pulling things from all over my house and throwing it up there...I like it...at least it's something new and different...

 

 

oh, and my front door even got a new wreath...

 

 

I'm not trying to win any awards or get featured in a magazine, but it sure is fun to do something creative... I've been so preoccupied with decor that I haven't been scrapbooking, but I'll get back to it soon... Just a few more areas need a lift...

 

Luckily my mom helps me a lot...most of the time we laugh at my ridiculous ideas and then she actually makes them work...you might just say she's the more practical one...But it does seem that I'm always the one on the ladder....