I took that leap…

I signed up to be a vendor at the Ruffles & Rust vintage market!

(click on the picture for more details)

There are no refunds, so I guess I’m committed now…

…or maybe I should be!

The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 3 ~ The Dresser!

Today is my son’s birthday—the one I am creating “The Handbuilt Bedroom” for (see part 1 here and part 2 here).  His birthday pie has been started, and all that’s left to do now is to clean the kitchen—but I thought I’d rather blog about his bedroom instead!

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I sold everything out of his bedroom in one fell swoop!  The dresser, the desk, the chair, the bed, AND all the bedding…gone.

The boy was living out of boxes and sleeping on an air mattress.

So despite the fact that I’ve only built simple pieces like tables and benches, it became necessary for me to jump into something more complicated—like a chest of drawers (or dresser, whatever you’d like to call it)!

We had already planned out furniture placement in his room, and the chest had to fit on this little short wall next to the window.

Naturally I turned to Ana White for plans, but didn’t find anything that exactly suited mine—and my son’s—requirements for style and size.  So I altered the Wide Cabin Dresser plans to make a narrow cabin dresser instead.  Almost like I knew what I was doing! 

This is the completed frame of the dresser…

And this is the first drawer!  I was so excited.  I installed the slides and it all worked perfectly.

Call it “beginner’s luck.”

And that’s because it took ages to get the next three drawers to work.  Ugh.  Turns out I hadn’t been careful enough in selecting straight boards for the drawer boxes.  A word to the wise—when purchasing your boards, lay several down on the floor next to each other and see how the straight those edges are.  It helps!  But I didn’t do that for this project.

With the help of a few several well-placed washers, I was able to get everything shimmied around until the drawers opened and closed without falling off the tracks.  It was loads of fun. There is a reason Ana tells you not to attempt drawers as a beginner project.  But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Here’s my cruddy cell-phone picture of the dresser after I put on the drawer fronts (which is a two-person job) and painted and stained it.  The color was a little too bright for me, so I glazed over everything with black stain.

I “reverse stenciled” the numbers on the drawer fronts—meaning I stained the front first, then applied vinyl words before I pained over it.  I chose to stain the top and the bottom shelf because they’ll get the most abuse, and I think stained pieces handle it better!

I bought two of these baskets from Amazon for the bottom.  Someday I may “age” them a little, but that’s not today.  And the idea is to make tags for them that say “five” and “six” to continue with the number theme.

This dresser is oh-so-far from perfect.  The top drawer has a tendency to stick, for one thing…but it is keeping my son’s clothes off the floor (mostly), and let’s be honest…isn’t that all we’re really asking a dresser to do??

This is not the first time I’ve painted a red, numbered chest of drawers, I remembered!  You can see the other one here.

 

Linking up here:

The Scoop!	Elizabeth & Co.
My Repurposed Life	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	Common Ground
Sawdust Throwdown	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
From My Front Porch to Yours	All Star Block Party A Little Knick Knack

New Stools

I know I should be updating on The Handbuilt Bedroom, but it’s too grey to take pictures in my son’s room right now.  Instead I thought I show my new kitchen acquisitions…I have stools!

Although our previous home did have a bar of sorts, we never had any bar stools because it would have been too crowded with the table right next to it.  In this home, though, the island is perfect for some extra seating.

I scoured Craigslist for some stools I could paint, but never did find anything with enough “pizzaz” for me—or that came in a set of three—or that was the right price!

I had about given up on the hunt, when I walked into Pier 1 and saw these beauties:  the Weldon stools. 

They come in both bar- and counter-height--although I personally think “counter-height” ought to be 26” rather than 24”—and they come in a whole bunch of great colors!  I fell in love!

I couldn’t choose a favorite…can’t you tell??

Thanks to a 20% off coupon, they came home with me.

The kids love them, and even I will take advantage of the extra seating now and again…especially when there are warm cookies on the counter!

*****

Not a paid advertisement…I just like the stools!

The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 2

So the goal is to build all the furniture for my son’s bedroom, as explained in Part 1. 

Here’s a reminder of where we started:

I listed all his bedroom furniture on Craigslist:  headboard, frame, mattress, bedding (including the pirate quilt I made—that was hard to part with!), dresser, desk, and chair.  It sold all as a set, so he ended up with a bare room pretty much overnight!

That was OK by me, though; it’s much easier to paint an empty room!

My boy wanted stripes, and this was the quilt we were able to agree on for the basis for his room.

The first thing to get painted, though, was the CEILING!  In this house the walls AND ceilings are all the same beige.  I am NOT a fan of beige ceilings, so someday they will ALL be painted!

It’s amazing how much a just changing the ceiling color lightened up the room (I used Sherwin Williams Eminence Ceiling Paint in Creamy).

We decided to pull the green out of the quilt for the wall color.  Again, we were trying to lighten things up a little (color is Sherwin Williams Super Paint in Rice Paddy).  Sorry for the cell phone picture here!

Next step was the give the walls a little character.  I taped off a wide stripe and painted it the same white as the room trim…

…the I used MORE tape to divide that large white stripe into some smaller stripes.  I looked really good climbing around the room with three rolls of tape on my arm, like bracelets!

And this is how it turned out!  I have to tell you that the paint bled LIKE CRAZY on the red and blue stripes, and I have no one to blame but myself.  You can get good results if you really seal the edges of the tape well with a plastic scraper or credit card.  You get GREAT results if you do that AND paint over the edges of the tape with your base color.  You get lousy results if you skip step one, even if you do step two.  Ugh.  I had a lot of touching up to do…

…but you can’t tell now!

Next step….I promise I actually BUILD something!

The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 1

We’ve been in our new Washington home for almost five months now.  Our home has four bedrooms on the second floor, and one bedroom on the main level of the house.  Looking forward to the day when my parents will visit, I knew that I wanted the main-level bedroom to also function as a “guest room,” even though my teenage son occupies it most of the time.

This is what his room looked like for the first few months after we moved in.  Not too special, is it??

The furniture was transferred out of the never-quite-completed “pirate” bedroom in our Utah home (below), and it was put together for a different son!  You can see, though, that a thirteen-year-old boy might not be as excited about the same decor.!

So I had a brain-storm.  Obviously I have been on a bit of a furniture-building kick (that may be an understatement), and I said to myself, “How would it be to build all the furniture for my son’s bedroom??”

Oooh…challenge extended….

…challenge accepted…!

There has been some tricky navigation going on between me and my son…I want him to have a room that he can enjoy, but something that also will be suitable for guests…AND it has to be something that I can get excited about working on!

So one of the first steps was to decide on colors so I could tackle the painting.  Stripes were a must, as well as healthy dose of red.

I bought and returned three quilts/comforters before I came across this one at Home Goods, which we could both agree on!

With that as a start, it was time to start painting! 

Stay tuned for part 2!