OFFICE RE-DO!

I'm so excited! If you are personal friends with me on Facebook (and I know some of you are!) you probably saw where all day yesterday I was doing a major re-organize/re-decorate in my little orange chevron office.

It's about 1:30 on Tuesday morning (it's my brother's baby girl's due date... Aunt Missy is patiently- impatiently- waiting!) and I've been at it for about 15 1/2 hours... it was a major clean out in my office closet, I've been putting that off for years, and I moved a piece of furniture and am making a space for a new one, and I'm creating a full on crafting space... as well as ridding myself of the bright orange chevron. I hate the color orange. I love the fruit orange, but hate the color orange. Yuck. I have just never seen anything in orange that I really liked. Of course part of that could be the fact that I am a die-hard University of Kentucky fan. But anyway....

What does Missy do when Missy wants to redecorate but can't afford it? She pulls out the spray paint!

I've been spray painting since about 8pm... I ran out of one color around 9:30 so I had to pull out some left over regular paint that just happened to be the perfect shade for what I was doing.

I've got to go pick up my new crafting table (thanks Mama!) tomorrow and while I'm out I need to stop and pick up some contact paper to cover my table tops, all of them. I have three tops to cover: my desk, I love the desk but I'm apparently a very oily person, so I'm rubbing the finish off the top where my arms rest when I type. The table next to my desk, where I used to have my printer, which doesn't work. So I moved it and set up a bill/to file station. And then, of course, my crafting table. I want the pretty black and white floral contact paper, cause it will go with my color scheme, and it will brighten up my dark furniture. I'm also purchasing a large cork bulletin board to go over my crafting table, it will be a pretty edition to the room and my plan is to use it as my "IDEA" board, I even hand lettered a cutsey little "Idea" sign earlier in my evening. (I did go ahead and washi tape the dimensions off on my wall so that I could get the "feel" of having the board up until I can order it.)

So, does anyone have any guesses as to what my color scheme is?? It probably won't take a genius to figure it out. Aqua and Pink. Along with some black and white of course. And I'm talking, eventually, all shades of pink. It's my favorite color for me and aqua is my favorite color for decor at the present.


I got inspired on Sunday afternoon when the sight of my orange lampshades nearly made me vomit. So after about a second and a half of searching on Pinterest for ideas, I quickly, very quickly, hatched a design. I'm excited to get this project finished, entirely, and show it to you. A LOT of this project has been DIY and I'm only giving myself a $40 budget to completely redo the room, and most of that budget is going to the large cork board. The room still has to house my treadmill, so I have that to take into consideration, but I think my plan for my crafting table and desk, which I am not moving, should actually give me a lot of room to use the treadmill.

It's pretty late and I have a ton of things to get put away, the tool box, a few containers, the paint (Lord, the paint) and I'm dying of thirst and, to be honest, quite smelly. You love me for my honesty, you know you do. I'm sure my poor, poor, sweet, dear husband wishes I would shut off the music, and the lights, bathe, and get in bed. But, you all know me, I'm a clean freak, and until I can walk into this room tomorrow with my craft table in one hand and my contact paper in the other, and not have to stumble over anything (except my things for Goodwill and my things to sell online) I will not rest.

I'm a happy little lady tonight, but I'm beginning to run down, so I'd best get to hopping before I fall asleep sitting here at the desk!

I hope you all are as excited to see this super DIY office as much as I am excited to show it to you!

The Power of Spray Paint at 2am

I tend to be a very impulsive person. If the notion strikes, I go with it. If it doesn't, tasks that I think I may want to do get put on the back burner for an indefinite period of time, which also classifies me as a procrastinator. (As if my shameful lack of posting on this blog wasn't enough evidence for you.)

Yes, I've got a chandelier in a box sitting in the corner of my kitchen waiting to be put up. Yes, it has been sitting there for a week. Yes, I've got two light bulbs out on my car port that I've been meaning to change for a while. Sure, I could probably stand to clean out my office closet.... you get where I'm heading with this? Yeah.


So here's a quick little backstory for ya! For the past 4 years, in our bathroom, I've kept all my daily used products in a mirrored tray sitting on the vanity. Things like my night time face routine and my eye cream, my BB Cream lived there along with our can of hair spray and my daily lotions. But it always felt cluttered and not very well organized to me. I'm an OCD clean freak and I was constantly having to clean the tray and what was on it to keep from stroking out. Plus in the mornings my husband would use the hand towel and, instead of hanging it back up, he'd toss it down on the vanity, on the tray, and therefore knock everything down into a big jumble. I hated it. We have limited cabinet space in the bathroom, and I've used every method of organization I can think of in there in the past 4 years, but there was never a good place for me to have my every day things that wasn't on top of the vanity.

This is an old photo from when we first repainted the bathroom, like the paint was probably still wet here. You can see the tray on the vanity. Also, be aware that now we have a green  curtain hanging over the window and a pink and green floral shower curtain for spring/summer. We use the brown in the fall/winter.

Until....


So about a week ago, it's 2am - I'm an extreme insomniac, I don't sleep more than 3 or 4 hours nightly. - and that's usually when I'm forcing myself to get sleepy. My husband is in bed, and I'm in the living room with the iPad going through Pinterest. We'd been to my sister in law's house that night for the SEC Championship Basketball game (our team lost, we were devastated), and she had just finished redecorating her kids/guest bathroom. It had been a lime green beachy paradise with surfboards painted on the walls and tiki style accents. But now that her kids are both teenagers, they wanted something more adult, so they chose to paint it all a really nice blue.  Long story short, she had only a large picture frame and a tall candlestick with a blue candle sitting on the vanity top. I loved it. In fact, I went upstairs to use the bathroom during the game instead of using the one downstairs where we we all were, just so I could look at it again. ;)

So at 2am, I'm looking for a large candlestick and nice decorative picture frame like she had, because I simply loved it, and the idea struck!! I knew I had an old, yucky gold picture frame somewhere, so I quickly dug it out.

 

Ah, yes, most hideous. This was maybe $5 from Family Dollar a while ago. But I love the scrolling around the edge of the frame and just knew it would look good painted! 

So next I dug out my candlestick. I bought this in a set of two from Big Lots in 2009 before we got married, and I don't remember at all how much they cost, but they were super inexpensive.

Excuse my copy of Wuthering Heights to the side. And my Germ-X. ;)

 Next I came up with a game plan. The look my sis in law had was very distressed, and I looooove that look. My personal, home decor style has evolved so drastically in the past for years, it's funny to think about it. When we moved in everything was crisp and modern and dark colors, and now I'm all about light, and floral prints and "old stuff," as my other sister in law once called it. The good thing is, spray paint works on almost anything!! I decided against actually spraying the paint, 1) because I was working on my kitchen counter tops, and 2) I had better control over the "distress." Just so happens, as well, that I keep a stash of spray paint in our utility room for when a 2am craft session erupts. 

I chose Krylon's Ivory in a satin finish. So I just sprayed a little on top of my Frog Tape container and used a little paint brush and started dabbing away at my picture frame and my candle stick. No sanding, just step one, dab.

And here is the frame after one go-round. I put two layers on it, just to be on the safe side. Now, instead of an ugly gold frame, I have a cute, scrolling farmhouse style frame! And I didn't have to spend a blooming nickle.

Below are the finished products after they were placed. The paint dried SUPER quickly, so I had them set in their new homes before I went to bed that night-- ok, that morning. All it took was a little creative thinking on my part and I found a home for everything on the tray, inside a cabinet, drawer or closet in the bathroom, making way for my pretty new additions on the vanity top.

The picture of us was taken a year before we were married in October, 2008! We were newly engaged!!

Also, while I was at it, I decided to paint my accent lamp that I keep in our kitchen. I miss my Mom's under-counter lights. This lamp was a wedding gift, and I'd always LOOOVED the shape of it, and how tiny it was, but it was the same color scheme as the candlestick, and it simply didn't "go" with my house anymore. I'd been wanting to paint it but I'd kept putting it off and putting it off. For this one, I did actually spray the paint on. I just rigged up an old bath towel across my step-down into my utility room and sprayed away. No overspray on ANYTHING. The lamp was dry in minutes!

 

Shop whatcha got people! I'm so proud of my handiwork every time I walk into the bathroom or turn the little lamp on! Instead of spending any money, I put a little thought into it and turned things I already had into what I wanted. Do it yourself, you will love it all the more when you are done!

Happy DIYing!

Missy

Thank you, KRYLON, for making spray paint!