Painting

November 26, 2012 3 Comments

Helloooo! As you may have noticed, I took a few days off for Thanksgiving. 🙂

Since this is the first year in our new house, we hosted Thanksgiving. It was lovely. Needless to say, I was busy, busy, busy! From cooking, to cleaning, to crafting, I was doing it all!

A big part of the “rush” would be because we just finished building our breakfast nook bench! Eeekkk!

It’s turning out wonderful and I can’t wait to show you the end and “final” result.

However, this post if all about building the bench.

Here’s how it went down:

First off, we cleared out the room and pulled up the existing baseboard.

Next, we measured, and double measured, the length of the wall and my Mr. built the bottom frame of the bench.

(P.S.- I totally apologize for all my “orange” pictures… we were mostly doing this project at night and I’m still trying to figure out all the settings on my new camera. Of course, I figured out how to take better pictures at night AFTER this project was over… SORRY!)

As you’ll notice in the above picture, we had to notch around our existing vent. The best way to do this was to build around it.

Once the base of the frame was down, he started adding the sides.

After the sides were up, we added the front and back supports.

Just like the vent, we had to notch around the two electrical outlets…

With the frame finished, my hubby started cutting the MDF for each “box”.

After the front was covered, he started cutting the MDF for the top of the bench. The top of the bench, or lid, sits on top of the frame.

This picture doesn’t show it, but we framed a box around the vent hole and used a narrow roll of insulating foam to go around the bottom of the frame. After that, it was completely air tight and we attached the new vent cover to the front of the bench. Easy peasy!

Once the entire thing was covered with MDF and the lids were cut, we started drilling the holes for the lids.

With the holes drilled, the hubby started trimming out the front.

After caulking, it was finally time to paint!

I know that in my original post I talked about making the bench out of pre-made cabinets. After doing a whole lot of research, I found that it really wasn’t that great of a deal. We needed three cabinets which would have made the cost around $230. And that was just for the cabinets. As well as the price, I really didn’t like the idea of using cabinets. The storage capacity didn’t seem that great and I wasn’t digging the idea of the doors opening into the furniture. I felt like I would have to move the furniture to get the cabinets open, which would make it hard to actually use the bench as storage.

With that in mind, we designed this bench to be a power house for storage. Since the lids open from the top, I can just lift them up and stick things inside. Perfect!

We spent around $90 on the bench, which is WAY better than the $230 that the cabinets would have cost. Plus, I LOVE ours! I can’t even remember the breakfast nook without it. That makes it pretty awesome!

Next up is the cushion. This room is coming together just like I imagined… maybe even better!

Big Smiles!

Linking up to:

A Bowl Full of Lemons

Home Stories A to Z

House of Hepworths

The 36th Avenue

There’s No Place Like Home

November 19, 2012 7 Comments

I’ve had a major crush on homemade signs and have wanted to make my own forever. I love how customizable they are to whatever space you want to add them to, plus you can get totally creative!

Honestly, this project would have been done sooner, but I had major indecisiveness when picking the wording… It was a problem and one that ate at me day and night. I had a list a mile long of potential wording, but nothing seemed right, or “fitting”. Then, one day randomly, it struck me!

There’s No Place Like Home.

How completely fitting for us. Especially since we are homebodies who think an awesome night is one spent at home. 🙂

Really, this sign was a labor of love! To say that it was extremely tedious is an overwhelming understatement…. BUT, it was totally worth the 10 hours it took to paint! (I wish I were kidding….)

Here’s what we did:

First off, we headed to Home Depot to get our lumber and frame supplies. I showed my drawing to the hubby and he basically figured out how he would build it. We ended up with cedar tongue and groove planks that slid together. I was a bit hesitant about having grooves for the painting process, but honestly, they didn’t effect it.

$24.00 later we were on our way home!

Once we got home, my hubs got busy building the frame. The size ended up being a large and in charge 32″ x 42″.

Once it was all nailed together we started the staining process.

While Anthony wiped on the stain (Minwax Early American), I took pictures, waited, and then wiped it off.

Once we had the color we wanted, which was one heavy coat, we let the stain dry completely. In reality, a day or two would be fine, but since I was in the indecisive mode and couldn’t pick a font or saying to save my life, ours sat for almost a week. Needless to say, that baby was dry!

After I finally decided on the saying, the next hardest step was picking a font… I must have tried at least ten, but nothing felt right. Finally, I ran into a font called Aubrey and instantly fell in love. It’s like the stars were finally aligning!

I typed up my saying in a word document and kept adjusting the size of the letters to fit on the boards. After several trial and errors, the letters ended up being the size 500.

I printed the letters on thick card stock and them cut them out, which was… time consuming… and placed them on the boards.

After playing around with the wording arrangement, I decided to align them on the right side. I used the yard stick to make sure the letters were evenly spaced throughout.

With the letters in their place, I used small pieces of two sided scrapbook tape to hold them in place. Once all the letters were stuck down, I took a pencil and traced them.

I ended up with a faint outline.

Next up was painting!

I must admit that I had to give myself a pep talk to start this step. I was so scared that it wouldn’t turn out the way I envisioned it. Fear struck me and I just knew I was going to ruin our lovely stained wood and all our hard work up to this point.

After telling myself repeatedly to “keep breathing” I dipped the paint brush into the paint and… sat there! Seriously, scared. I put the paint brush down, got a drink of water and told myself that there was no way I was stopping now. So, without giving it one more thought, I started painting.

As a side note, I ended up painting the entire thing by hand…. hence the 10 hours. I would have loved to use painter tape, but it didn’t work. I tested one small area and when I removed the tape it pulled off some of the stain. I quickly decided there was no way I was going to use it. I sucked it up and painted every single letter and curve with one small paint brush.

Sure, some of my letters don’t have the straightest lines ever, but you honestly can’t tell when it’s on the wall. Plus, I really like the handmade look of the sign.

I love the rustic vibe to the sign! And I totally didn’t mess it up! Sure, painting it was tedious, but I didn’t ruin it! Quite the opposite actually! And to continue the rustic feel, I didn’t give the white a solid coat of paint. I left spots of the wood peeking through and that’s probably one of my favorite things about the sign.