{ Chair Made New in ONE Day }

This chair was given to my friend by her sweet mother in law. We forgot to get a picture of it with the original cushion. I'm bummed too. It was a doozy! I'm sure in it's day it was special and all sorts of sentimental cute-ness but just picture Raggedy Ann's face all over that thing. Yup, Raggedy Ann. This baby needed some love and a much needed fabric update.

Painting furniture is one of my new fav things to do. I've been kind of painting everything I can get my hands on. I just decided to FINALLY do the TV stand in our living room. I am so excited to have this piece done and painted! Stay tuned for a few living room updates soon. I am hoping by the time I get done with the painting, the mantel will be ready to show off too. Crossing fingers on that one. We've both been so crazy busy lately that it's been hard to accomplish anything on the to-do list hence my silence over the last two weeks.

Today though, I wanted to just quick share the after results of this chair because it really turned out so cute, and how many of you have old chairs with really bad fabric cushions that you could do a little work and have an updated chair in only a day. And if you don't have a chair like this, take a trip down to your local Habitat store or Goodwill or Antique shop and you'll find at least 3 to choose from! So.Much.Potential in those places. #keepmeoutormymoneydissapears

The first coat looks a little scary. You will be painting and thinking...oh no, what did I do...I'm totally messing this up. Nope, keep going! Get a good first coat on. 

Like I said in my last post, I've been using a mixture of CeCe Caldwells chalk paint + acrylic paint in the color that I like for the piece that I'm painting. Comes out perfect every time. I'm not a professional painter, obviously, just want to state that. I'm just sharing what works for me. 

Then do a second coat and you relax. It all looks so much better after the second coat. I promise. I've been doing three coats on everything and it turns out perfect. As you can see I just propped up the chair onto some paint cans to get it off the ground. That just makes it easier for me. 

Cool chair, right?! I love the curves on the back and the detail on the arm rests. 

It looks SO good in my friends living room as a done piece.

My friend bought some cute mustard yellow patterned fabric, put it right on top of that old Raggedy Ann fabric. This was all done in one day. SO easy! 

What are you guys painting lately? Any furniture painters out there? I would love to see your pics if you have any before and afters and share them with readers. I know lots of people love to do this kind of stuff and lots of us like to see how everyone else is being creative! Send your pics to me at kasey(dot)rawson @ gmail (dot) com. Looking forward to seeing what you've been up to at your house!

Happy Saturday!

{ The Basement...Laundry Today + Craft Progress }

I've been doing laundry down in the basement now for awhile and it is SO NICE to be able to wash our clothes in this house instead of trecking it somewhere else. It was a pain to take the laundry elsewhere (day to day stuff not so bad but bedding and rugs = not fun) but compared to other difficulties of life, it wasn't all that bad, we survived it - shocking I know! My sincerest admiration goes out to all of you who take your laundry somewhere other than your home to wash. That is a tough and annoying job and I applaud and respect you. 

 To be honest though, I feel a little guilty whining because let's be real, we are SO spoiled by all the "conveniences" that we have. So many mama's in this country and elsewhere would love to be able to do laundry in their own home let alone the people that would love to do their laundry in a washing machine or to just have running water. So while I am jumping up and down to be able to wash my families dirty clothes in our own washing machine, in our own house, even if it is in my semi-creepy basement, my heart is SO FULL with thankfull-ness that we CAN have what we have.

We ARE blessed, aren't we?!

 Sometimes we forget to take a moment and think about how truly nice and easy our lives are. Today, I took that moment to acknowledge those blessings. Oh the things laundry rooms can inspire in me! I know... I'm getting a little sappy.

This brings me to my next thought of the day. I have been struggling with showing you the laundry room because in my opinion it's not even worthy of really calling it an "after" photo or a "done" project. Sometimes I feel the pressure to put out some amazing thing to show off even though I probably have like 2 people that actually read this thing (hi mom and sister!) BUT then I think, NO! This is a laundry room- in an old basement- that was previously inhabited by spider families and other unimaginable things so THIS IS the really amazing "after" photo for you- for now. 

Remember these photos?

Just looking at those makes me want to shudder! Yep, it was B.A.D. down there, gross, and bad. What's even worse is, we painted those walls and cleaned up down there back in August and I am finally just getting around to showing you one measly photo of how it looks today lol. But now it's definitely a whole lot more functional and I use the laundry space every single day. We still have SO MUCH that I want to do down in this laundry room of ours but for now it's working and I'll take what we have over what it used to be anytime! 

Do you recognize that dresser too? I showed you my painted peg board not too long ago with that dresser under it. 

I thought I was going to use it in my craft room but I did a little dresser switcheroo and now this one sits next to the dryer and the one that previously sat in its spot is now in the craft room.  

I'll give you a quick look at what's happening in the craft room too....

Mark's cousin gave us that table + bench and chairs too! I painted the legs of the chairs and bench a mint color and the legs of the table white. I plan to sand and stain the top of the table and bench very soon too. I still need to finish the chair tops with some more mint paint. I think it's going to look really great and I'm really excited about it!! 

Here's what the table started out looking like...

Here's after one coat of chalk paint in mint and in white on the table legs. 

Update: I've had a few people ask me what chalk paint I use and what brush so I'm adding this pic to show you what I use when I paint things with chalk paint. I use CeCe Caldwells Paint and always buy the color "Simply White" then I mix it with acrylic paint in the color that I like. I got my brush at the same place that sells the CeCe Caldwell paint. It's supposed to be best for painting with chalk paint. I really like it and would recommend spending the extra $ for the good brush! The acrylic paint I used for the mint colored legs is the Martha Stewart brand from JoAnn Fabrics called "Beach Glass". 

Can you tell I love the color mint??! It's no secret that it's my absolutely favorite shade currently. 

Here's the dresser that moved from the laundry room into the craft room. This dresser got a coat of gray paint and will get the same stained top as the table. I got this from my great Aunt and absolutely LOVE it. It's the perfect size dresser for holding lots of craft items. The chair to the left of the dresser has a meeting with my paint brush tomorrow! I'm planning on doing a really bright bold color with that chair. The mirror behind it will be getting some fun color added to it too and then it will find a home somewhere down here as well. 

I still have lots of organizing and need to figure out exactly where I want everything to go but we are really moving along down there and it feels nice to finally have a place to go with some of my items that have been hanging out on my kitchen table forever! 

I need lots of space to work because in case you weren't already aware (shameless plug), my best friend and I started our own business this last year, so I literally NEEDED this room to be able to work! I cant wait to start getting things done down there, and the kids are pretty excited too to be able to have some crafting space too! 

ENJOY your weekend!! 



{ Our Year In Review }

 



It's almost 2015! How did this happen so fast?? I wanted to go back through and compile my favorite changes and updates from 2014 to our house. We have worked SO hard. Mark has put in countless hours. We've had friends and family help us. We got to move in and are now getting to live in our little home and loving each and every day of it. Sometimes I forget HOW MUCH work went into our fixer-upper this past year. I am happy to say goodbye to 2014 and look forward to what the next year has in store for us. I look forward to seeing more changes and updates to the house. I look forward to getting organized and really get this place in tip top shape. We want to THANK YOU, for sticking with us during this year of renovations and we look forward to sharing all of our projects with you next year too! 

My #1 Favorite room in our house is hands down the kitchen. I dreamt and sketched and thought about how I wanted the kitchen to look like for countless hours and now that we have it mostly completed I literally walk in there everyday counting my blessings and loving the space. It's calming, and pretty, simple + modern yet comfortable. You can read about the kitchen remodel here, the counter tops here, and my most recent "kitchen today" post here.

One of the BEST THINGS we ever did was decide to hire someone to refinish our hardwood flooring throughout the main level. The company that we choose to go with is Woodsman Flooring. You will NOT regret hiring Michael to re-finish your floors if you are local. He is good at what he does. We absolutely LOVE our floors! Check out our pictures of before and after here!

 

The bathroom was a complete remodel and I love everything about this room. It's our only bathroom and it was really really really (you get the point, right?!) really small. We moved a wall and removed some built in cabinets to open up the room a little. I love the corner tub with subway tile up to the ceiling. I love the vanity, the tile, the mirror and the color on the ceiling. You can see posts about the bathroom remodel here, here, and here.

 

 

 

When we purchased the house, we were planning on saving a lot of money and not doing a ton to the upstairs room. It was full of paneling and old flooring but I figured we could paint the paneling and replace the flooring and call it good. Can you sense a big BUT...coming on? Yup, you called it. BUT...once the previous owners stuff was finally removed we could see just how bad it really was. We decided that since our kids would be spending so much time up there that we would take money that was planned for the exterior and put it into the upstairs. I am happy that we made that choice, it needed to be done. The windows were terrible, the floor was uneven, the insulation was bad and full of mouse poop, the electrical outlets and wires were scary to say the least, and the ceiling was low. NOT a good environment for kids at all. EVERYTHING was gutted, reconstructed, and made new. It is absolutely a beautiful space now for our kids to play and sleep.

 

You can read about our upstairs adventures here and here!

 

 

 

 

Last but not least of my favorite changes of 2014 has been the basement transformation. I've been focusing a lot of my time lately down there and still cant believe how much better it is now than when we bought the house! We have our washer and dryer down there, the walls have fresh paint on them and the DIY floor looks pretty cool! We will be moving furniture in over the next few weeks and really making the basement a usable space that I look forward to for sure!

 

 

You can read about how I painted the floor here and to see some pretty gross before pictures of the laundry area check out this post!

 

 

 

 

I want to say again, THANK YOU, for reading my blog. I'm not sure if curiosity brings you back or if you are inspired by some of my projects but whatever it is, I love that you take a little time out of your day to checkout what we are doing over here. As always if you ever have any questions about anything we've done please feel free to email us anytime! We love feedback so after reading a post- comment away!

 

 

We wish you a very healthy, successful, and happy 2015! May you be blessed in your homes and in your lives and we look forward to continuing to share ours with you!