Home Decor Archives - Page 11 of 21

Archive of ‘Home Decor’ category

21
Jul
2014

Painting Kitchen Cabinets Part 1

Written by: Grace

For about as long as I have been nagging my husband to let me paint our kitchen cabinets, I have been researching everything there is to know about painting kitchen cabinets (read: pinning copious images on Pinterest. Seriously, what did I do before Pinterest?)

There are a ton of options, and tons of opinions and supporters for each option.

Lisa painted her kitchen cabinets with Rust-Oleum Transformation three summers ago. She enjoyed the finished product, but she said it took some time, which is not always something I have ample amounts of with two young whippersnappers running around the house.

Liz the of naptimedecorator.net did the real deal and primed and painted. Her kitchen is as dear as can be.

And Sherry and John broke down their 15 day kitchen cabinet painting project (15 days!?!). Their results are awesome; their kitchen turned out gorg. If I had the time/patience, I might have considered that route, but I didn’t.

Instead,after reading about satin and flat finishes, cabinet coat, poly, wax, etc, I chose to go with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, and here is why.

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint is awesome because there is virtually no prep work involved (aside from a good old scrubbing of your cabinets). This means no sanding and no priming, which was a huge selling point for me.

The paint itself is a little pricey, but it really goes a long way!

Painting was a breeze because of this paint and Lisa. Somehow Lisa agreed to help me (thanks, Liser!). With Lisa’s help, she and I managed to paint all the cabinets in less than 6 hours, which I think it pretty stellar. Now, before you run out to your nearest ASCP retailer, please keep in mind that I was not finished because I still needed to wax the cabinets (more on that later).

Here are some before shots of my very ugly kitchen cabinets. Can you understand my constant desire to paint these suckers?

Horrible right?

Lisa and I made the executive decision to leave the doors on the cabinets and paint the hinges. Now, I know most of you must shake your heads at me, but I wanted to see what it looked like, and if I hated it, I figured I could just put new hinges on later.

Here are some during shots…

This was just after the first coat of paint. I was getting a little nervous, but Lisa was quite the ray of sunshine. We pushed on.

I wanted to have a two-toned kitchen. Grey base cabinets and White uppers. This is after the first coat. Lisa and I both said this finish would be good for a beach cottage’s kitchen.

Here is what the cabinets looked like after two coats of paint. Excuse the mess; this isn’t the big reveal. Vast improvement, right?

Now, I loved the two-toned look, but when Ethan came home, he wasn’t too keen on it. Now, after some soul-searching and texting with Lisa, my mom, Rona, Katie K, Bailey, and Carrie, I decided to be a good wife, and change the upper cabinets to match the base cabinets. I figured he was kind enough to put up with my nagging, etc. that I should listen to his opinion. That’s love, people!

Stay tuned for my next post, where I talk about waxing (my cabinets, silly) and revealing updates on the kitchen.

In the meantime, weigh in with whether you liked the two-toned kitchen or agree with my husband.

P.S. Are you ready to take the ASCP plunge? Check out The Purple Painted Lady–her site is informative, and she is super helpful

03
Jul
2014

Burlap Webbing American Flag

Written by: Lisa

When I first saw the red ticked burlap webbing that we received from burlapfabric.com, I immediately thought of two things: Christmas and American Flag. Since it’s a bit early for Christmas crafts, I’m going to share the Burlap Webbing American Flag that I envisioned and was (happily) able to create.

I knew the webbing would be a great fit for a rustic style American Flag—perfect for our home décor.

What you need:

Canvas (I suppose you could use wood too)

Red Ticked Burlap Webbing

Blue Burlap Garland (found in floral section of craft store) – or any leftover blue fabric you may have

Hot Glue Gun

Scissors

Optional- something for stars

Step 1:

Cut your strips down to size so they fit your canvas. I chose to wrap my strips around the sides of my canvas so the white edges weren’t exposed. I did not wrap the bottom, as it will be leaning on a table or shelf, but I did choose to wrap the top. In total I needed 5 strips.

I also cut out a rectangle from my blue burlap garland to serve as the blue part of my flag.

Step 2:

Layout your strips next to your canvas. As you can see, the strips are quite a bit taller than the canvas, so you have to decide how you want to layer them in order for everything to fit on the canvas.

I wasn’t crazy about the uneven spacing between the red lines and burlap color, so I decided to layer my strips to hide the top red line on each piece of webbing. This would give me nice even red/burlap spaces.

Step 3:

Fire up that glue gun and get to work. With each strip, I glued the left side of the canvas and simply worked my way to the right, again adhering it to the side of the canvas.

You can see how I cover the top red line on each piece of webbing in the photos below.

Step 4:

Grab your blue burlap rectangle and glue it to your flag. Since the blue burlap had bigger spaces/was more see through, I was worried that gluing the entire rectangle down would show through to the surface. Therefore, I chose to glue down just the edges of the blue fabric—it stays on there just fine.

Step 5:

Decision making time- stars or no stars? At the moment I have no stars on my flag and I think I will keep it that way. Reason 1: I like the simplicity of the flag without the stars

Reason 2: I made several attempts to cut small stars out of good old burlap, but each ‘edge’ of the star unraveled, leaving me with a 3 or 4 pronged/misshapen star. Perhaps if I see some pre-cut burlap stars that fit the bill at a craft store I will buy them and see if I like how they look on the flag.

I just love how this craft came out! Currently it’s on the foyer table instead of its intended shelf destination—we’ll see if it stays put.

Happy 4^th of July!!

27
Jun
2014

PB inspired Patriotic Burlap Banner

Written by: Grace

Have you guys seen Pottery Barn’s patriotic decor yet? As usual, it’s on point. If you can’t wait for the patriotic burlap banner Pottery Barn features to go on sale, you can make one yourself for less than the cost of shipping!Seriously.

This is a cheap and easy project, with which my oldest kiddo helped me. It took me less than 30 minutes to imitate Pottery Barn’s Patriotic Burlap Banner (I still don’t know if this is considered bunting–what’s the consensus on this matter?).