Hello! Thanks for popping by. Jay finally decided to come home from captain training (I guess it would be more correct to say "Captain Jay") so we were able to bust out a few projects this past weekend. We had three smallish but nagging updates we've wanted to do in our dining room and for various reasons haven't, so apologies in advance for an exceptionally long post.
First, a cute pic of Butters. He's such a good helper. Actually he's a terrible helper but he's cute. I promise Jay has clothes other than that hoodie, hat and jeans, but those are his favorite project clothes, so they're all the internet gets to see.
First, a cute pic of Butters. He's such a good helper. Actually he's a terrible helper but he's cute. I promise Jay has clothes other than that hoodie, hat and jeans, but those are his favorite project clothes, so they're all the internet gets to see.
Now that that's out of the way…
Project 1: Display Shelf for Gallery Wall
Ever since putting up our gallery wall a few months ago we wanted to add a little shelf guy to display the rocks we've gathered from various climbing and mountaineering adventures we've taken together. Like all the projects in this post, this one just kept getting pushed aside because of, I'm assuming, it's lack of sex appeal. Nothing about a little black shelf with rocks on it excites anyone, but it was an addition to the wall I really wanted to make to add texture and to enjoy our keepsakes.
Project 1: Display Shelf for Gallery Wall
Ever since putting up our gallery wall a few months ago we wanted to add a little shelf guy to display the rocks we've gathered from various climbing and mountaineering adventures we've taken together. Like all the projects in this post, this one just kept getting pushed aside because of, I'm assuming, it's lack of sex appeal. Nothing about a little black shelf with rocks on it excites anyone, but it was an addition to the wall I really wanted to make to add texture and to enjoy our keepsakes.
The picture above is legitimately the only "in progress" one I have. You all know how Jay is when left to his own devices. He loses focus of the main goal of awesome blog post when he's building. Sorry, I'm training him but he's stubborn. Briefly, he routed out the rectangle drawn on the piece of wood, secured the metal inside the cavity and cut out a space for the screw heads so it would mount flush with out any visible bracket. Then we spray painted it satin black to match our frames and slapped it on the wall.
The names tell you where each rock is from left to right. Eventually we hope to replace the Austin one with something cooler (sorry every UT person ever) but for now it's a cute little space holder. Please don't tell the Yosemite Park Rangers we took a little rock, they'd be mad. In Tanzania rock taking is encouraged. Overall we spent about $4 on this project.
Project Two: Janky Dark Bookcase
The second project on the list was making our cheapo Ikea bookcase look less black, less boring and less like no one would pay $20 for it on craigslist. Here's an unacceptably terrible before picture. I'm going to go ahead and blame the equipment on this one. My camera is elderly and we were mid project at this point when I realized, oh wait! We have a blog! Soooo yeah. Sorry. It's been pulled away from the wall at this point. You can get a better idea of the before on the Our House page.
The second project on the list was making our cheapo Ikea bookcase look less black, less boring and less like no one would pay $20 for it on craigslist. Here's an unacceptably terrible before picture. I'm going to go ahead and blame the equipment on this one. My camera is elderly and we were mid project at this point when I realized, oh wait! We have a blog! Soooo yeah. Sorry. It's been pulled away from the wall at this point. You can get a better idea of the before on the Our House page.
You guys are going to laugh at what I did. I kept thinking about painting it, but its so cheapo I didn't want to spend any real $$ and effort on paint. Then I thought some cool wall paper would be a good solution but a combination of having to buy two rolls minimum almost everywhere and a lack of finding one I liked stalled this project for months. Finally, when I was buying wrapping paper for Christmas at the Container Store it hit me that the width of my bookcase is almost exactly the same as a roll of wrapping paper (31 inches). I found this cool silvery one that looks almost like tin last week and all we did was pull the flimsy backing off the bookcase and double stick tape the wrapping paper to it.
Sweet action shot. Is this a legitimate long term solution? Probably not, but it works for now and we can easily change the paper if we want. This whole project cost $7 so I'm going to call it a win. It really lightens up the bookcase and reflects the light really well, so you can see the items on the shelf so so much better than before.
Project Three: Bar Rescue
The last project we did we have been talking about since we moved Jay to Houston in July of 2012. Seriously I have no idea what took us so long. This is an Ikea bar Jay inherited from a friend in Florida. It's considered a kitchen island on the Ikea webbie and is $200! It's just plain birch and I'm sure is nicer looking new, but ours was a little loved and had multiple stains/ paint globs on it. We had been storing our booze underneath on the lattice, but it was wobbly and not pretty, so mostly I just covered the whole thing with a table cloth and used it as a stuff holder.
The last project we did we have been talking about since we moved Jay to Houston in July of 2012. Seriously I have no idea what took us so long. This is an Ikea bar Jay inherited from a friend in Florida. It's considered a kitchen island on the Ikea webbie and is $200! It's just plain birch and I'm sure is nicer looking new, but ours was a little loved and had multiple stains/ paint globs on it. We had been storing our booze underneath on the lattice, but it was wobbly and not pretty, so mostly I just covered the whole thing with a table cloth and used it as a stuff holder.
Well no more! Jay and I used his table saw and a jig saw to cut out a piece of MDF into the same shape as the lattice and used small wedge pieces to make the whole bottom flush. Look at it in all it's smooth tan glory.
Next we covered the whole thing with a coat of "Silhouette" by Benjamin Moore (only we used Olympic no-VOC that Lowe's color matched because we aren't millionaires and because I painted it inside). The paint color was inspired by the bathroom vanity over at YoungHouseLove and I kept thinking about how great it would be for this project. Its a really nice warm gray with a strong red undertone that makes it read almost purple in some lights. You can see it looks way purplier in the top pic.
The nice smooth MDF holds our bottles easier and now we get to be fancy bar cart people like our friends Olivia and Carl. Well… their's is fancier. And Carl's a better mixologist than we are, but it's no longer a piece of furniture I want to hide from the masses. This project only cost the quart of paint and the MDF, around $25 total.
So there you go, for 36 bucks our dining room is a happier more pleasant place. We have a few more projects in the works but the weather isn't cooperating so everything is on hold until the rain stops and the temperatures go up! What were you guys up to this weekend?
So there you go, for 36 bucks our dining room is a happier more pleasant place. We have a few more projects in the works but the weather isn't cooperating so everything is on hold until the rain stops and the temperatures go up! What were you guys up to this weekend?