The Dresser That Started It All

This is the dresser that got the ball rolling. Before this dresser, the notion of upcycling was like a completely different language for us. Sure, I had read up on the subject, I'd seen many a blog posts about redoing pieces of furniture, but if it had a ding in it or looked slightly used, I didn't think it was possible for it to make a full transformation. But seeing Sherry and John succeed with their Chesterfield dresser inspired us to reuse a piece of furniture and save some insane dough in the process (most dressers can run up to $300 or more, we spent less than on $100 on supplies). 

I'll be honest: when we received this dresser, I thought all hope was lost. Half painted and half banged up, it seemed impossible to redo. It's really difficult to see a used piece of furniture and believe that it can be turned into something beautiful with work and time - I think it's an acquired talent. But, we had gotten the dresser for free courtesy of Chris' sister and after the success with our nursery rocking chair, it was worth attempting. Who knew that this...

Could become this...

After some hard work and determination, the ugly duckling of a dresser was turned into a solid piece of furniture with beautiful curves that could double as a changing table. Needless to say, we're incredibly thrilled with the results and totally psyched to start on our next furniture upcycling project.  

*By hard work and determination, I mean my pregnant butt had nothing to do with this project aside from watching it progress. The dresser transformation was courtesy of my husband and my incredibly helpful father-in-law.

For those of you interested in attempting this on your own, here are the steps we took to redo the dresser:

First, Chris removed all the drawers and marked the inside of each drawer. That way, once the dresser and drawers were painted and done, getting them back into their appropriate slots wouldn't be a huge challenge. Whatever work he did on the actual dresser, he also did on the outside of the dressers. Then he removed all the knobs and the handles. Our plan was to save even more money by avoiding the purchase of new knobs and simply spray painting the old knobs. Sanding started with 100 grit sandpaper to remove the paint and smooth out the roughest portions of the surfaces. The nasty painted surfaces like this:

Began to look like this:

Who knew such nice wood would be under all that gross exterior? Luckily, my father-in-law let us use his orbital sander with an attached vacuum to make sanding quick and mess free. Hello lovely!

Then, Chris filled all the holes and dents using Carpenter's Wood Filler.

Since some of the corners on the dresser were a little busted up, he also recreated some broken corners with the wood filler. 

After the wood filler dried, Chris sanded the whole thing again with 180 grit. This smoothed out the finish even more and helped to even out the filler. He couldn't use rougher grit on the filler because it would rip the filler right out of the holes, a medium grit like 150 or 180 is best. Several of the curved surfaces (like the top two drawers) were a challenge to sand with the machine so they were sanded by hand. He fashioned a couple of sanding blocks to match the curved surfaces, like using an old pill bottle and wrapping a piece of sand paper around it. The final sanding was done with 240 grit, a fine grit best for finishing the dresser and leaving it a smooth, glass-like surface. 

Once he was ready to paint the dresser (white, to match the rest of the nursery furniture), he fashioned a paint shield out of old cardboard pieces in order to protect the other things we had in the garage. The last thing we'd want is a burgundy Mazda speckled white. 

He primed the surfaces and let it sit overnight to dry. To make things easier, he used my father-in-law's paint sprayer. Paint sprayers cover surfaces extremely well, so only one coat of primer was needed. In fact, Chris was so impressed with the paint sprayer that he went out and bought himself one! 

Then he painted the dresser and drawers with two coats of Behr Ultra Pure White, waiting overnight between coats. Everything was sealed with a coat of Polyurethane stain blocking sealant. 

He stuck the knobs and handles into a styrofoam block for better coverage and spray painted them with a Rust-Oleum all purpose spray paint. 

Once the knobs and handles were put back on the dressers, we were almost finished. I didn't love the look of the bare and speckled drawer insides and decided to paint them as well. 

I painted the inside of each drawer with two coats of primer, waiting overnight between coats. Before doing this, I also made sure to mark the backs of the drawers since the paint would be covering Chris' original markings. Since I wasn't so keen on Baby Z's clothes touching the paint in the drawers, I sealed the inside of each drawer with Mod Podge, a water-based and non-toxic sealer and finish. 

Easy peasy! 

I can say that because I didn't do much thanks to my "I'm pregnant" excuse...tee hee.

A Very Homemade Baby Shower

Do you remember these invitations that I made a while back? They were for my sister's baby shower this past weekend. She and I are a month apart in our pregnancies. My mom and I planned the little shower together and I thought I'd share some pictures.

In case I went into labor early, my mom had all the finger foods prepared and frozen ahead of time. She's awesome like that. We set up the little finger food table in the kitchen.

I had a booklet of scrapbook paper called Margarita that I used to make most of the decorations myself. The scrapbook paper colors and the notion of spring kinda became the shower's "theme". I made little flags for the food using the scrapbook paper, glue, and toothpicks.

I used some scrapbook paper to make little place card holders for each finger food, so people knew what each type of quiche and pita were. 

Then on the other side of the house, we set up the dessert table. Since I'm so close to my due date, I wasn't able to make a full fledged dessert table like I had hoped. Standing up to bake and prepare food is a lot harder when your swollen toes look like sausages :( But I did manage to make some spring cookies and red velvet cupcakes. I used more mini flags to decorate the cupcakes. 

I didn't make the cheesecake - that was courtesy of GFS. And boy was it tasty!

We kept it simple and charming with the decorations. I decorated a few vases I had with scrapbook paper and ribbon and my mom cut some yellow flowers from her backyard so we could fill each room with bright dots of yellow.

I made two bunting garlands with the scrapbook paper and ribbon and I must say, I was very happy with how they turned out! I've been meaning to try bunting for a while now and I'll definitely have to do some more now that I see how cute they turn out. There's just something so cheerful about bunting! 

I had some paper lanterns left over from my sister's bridal shower so I placed those around the house for added pops of color. Always nice to have leftover decorations to use!

I thought the colors in the decorations, flowers, and food turned out nice together - it had a very "spring" feel to it. I liked that it felt more like a homemade baby shower than one that a major party store chain supplied (homemade parties are always so much better). 

Now...let's all encourage my little bean to come out soon! 

Better Late Than Never

The collage above Baby Z's crib has finally been hung. Please ignore how crappy the photos in this post are, I was battling sunset and a general I-don't-know-how-to-use-my-camera-ness.  

Seriously. It's been how long since I posted the first DIY nursery art project? At least it's made it up on the wall before Baby Z's birth. In all fairness, I wasn't sure capable of hanging each individual piece so I had to wait until I could wrangle the husband for the task. And with all the other "nesting" projects in motion, the collage was just placed on the side for a while. 

*Speaking of the husband, he has graciously pointed out that I've been calling it a "mural" when it is in fact a "collage". My bad. I didn't graduate from the University of Michigan with a degree in English for nothing folks! 

Since it's been so long, here is a little recap of the DIY art projects that came together to create the collage. 

The wall letters:

The button art:

And the embroidery hoop art:

All made (mostly) with things I had at home. 

To start, we laid out the art and decided on grouping/placement. You can always adjust this later as necessary, it just helps to know what you are aiming for before attacking the hanging process. 

Then I traced each piece on paper and cut the shapes out. This is helpful for two reasons: 

1) You can tape the "pieces" to the wall and play around with the arrangement without the damage and permanence of hanging. Getting a visual for how things will be laid out is extremely helpful. I have my good friend Stefanie to thank for this. *Again, ignore the terrible photo. 

2) You can put the nail directly through the paper and tear the paper away. This way you avoid the tedious job of measuring, guessing, marking the wall, etc. 

I wasn't 100% sure that the colors and styles of the various art projects would work together once they were hung up on the wall. I was ready for it to be a total failure. I have to say though, for how cheap each project was and how quickly I put them together, I'm completely and totally pleased with the little wall collage Baby Z will soon be looking up at.  

Pretty Little Dividers

Closet dividers: not 100% necessary but too adorable to pass up. Especially when they end up being so cheap to make. 

There are several ways to make your own closet dividers and many tutorials out there. My only problem was that I have this contraption in the nursery closet: 

The whole hanging contraption is attached to the wall in numerous spots. There may be a way to remove the hanging rod, but I wasn't brave enough to attempt it. Therefore, DIY closet dividers like these or these were out of the question because there would be no way to place them around the rod. I wanted to make closet dividers like these but I couldn't find any ready-made dividers that were affordable and I didn't feel like ordering them online. So I took a quick trip to Joann's for inspiration and found these bad boys for $1 a pop:

Since these hearts were hung with twine it would be easy to just loop them around the curtain rod, avoiding any unnecessary damage/work. Once I got them home, it was a matter of removing the twine from each heart so that I could paint and Mod Podge them. 

I painted the sides of the wooden hearts with the green paint I had leftover from the DIY nursery wall letters. I chose to cover both sides of the wooden hearts with scrapbook paper. If you don't have enough scrapbook paper or would prefer to only cover one side, at this point you would paint one side of the wooden hearts as well. 

Once the paint dried, I traced each heart on the back of the scrapbook paper. 

If you are using any wooden shapes, make sure you trace each shape separately on the scrapbook paper. When I was ready to glue the scrapbook paper to the wooden letters, I realized all the wooden hearts were different sizes. It was no big deal, all I had to do was trim the paper pieces down as I glued them, but knowing this beforehand would have saved me even more time. I used Mod Podge to glue the pieces of scrapbook paper to both sides of the wooden hearts. I was able to use the leftover scrapbook paper from the nursery wall letters project and save even more money. 

Once the sides were dry, I placed the # stickers on each wooden heart for the necessary size (0-3, 3-6, 6-12, 12-18, 18 & up). At one point I ran out of the necessary numbers so I had to cut some stickers and do some rearranging. So if you run out of numbers, don't get discouraged and immediately go out and buy more - try to cut and rearrange them first. Then I put two coats of Mod Podge on both sides to make sure the scrapbook paper and stickers would not peel off. One coat probably would have sufficed but for some reason...2 coats always makes me feel better when it comes to Mod Podge (it's weird, I know). 

Easy Peasy and Oh So Cute! Once everything dried, I looped the twine back through the wooden hearts and hung the hearts in the closet. 

Total cost of the project? Just the $7 + tax I spent on the wooden hearts and the # stickers - heck ya! 

I've Bin Crazy

Nesting has officially taken over. As if I wasn't a neat freak already, now I need to organize and reorganize everything in the house. This week I attacked the linen closet. A small feat, yes, but it has momentarily appeased my inner clean freak. 

This is what it looked like pre-organization session. It's looked like this since we've moved in - I've completely ignored the poor thing.

After a trip to Target for clearance/sale bins and a trip to Joann for some medium sized tags, things looked much better. I took a few minutes to separate the linens into their appropriate bins and then labeled the tags and attached them with some leftover twine from this project. 

Now the husband doesn't have to wonder where everything goes and I don't have to spend the night giving him the stink eye. He says I've gone "bin crazy". Personally, nothing makes me happier than everything in its rightful place in a bin. I'd put everything in a bin if I could. And when Baby Z is old enough, she'll be able to read and learn where everything goes (yes, my child will be as neurotic as I am). I'm still pondering what I'll do with those robes in the upper left corner. They're so bulky and we never use them, maybe I'll be able to part with them eventually. 

The bins are the most expensive part of this project, but if you can snatch some on clearance or even find some at your local thrift store - even better. It's a quick organizational redo that everyone can feel good about. The best part is the reusable tags. They can be flipped over in case the contents of the bins ever change or completely replaced if need be (since I chose not to write anything on the actual bins). So when we no longer need "baby linens", I can change the contents and the labels. There's also still plenty of room at the bottom of the closet for additional bins (tee hee) or maybe a mini vac. 

I'm on to obsess about the next organizational project :)  

Persistence

Every day I tell him to get out of our bedroom. 

Every day he finds a new way in. 

He's even figured out how to pry certain doors open. 

When I tell him to get out, he gets ugly.

And threatens to eat his appendages. 

Then he digs his head in the blankets as though that makes him invisible. 

Telling him to get out breaks my heart every time. Just look at that face.

And...then...he tries to ignore me and go back to the same spot.