hinges???

When we moved into this house one of the things I told my mom that MUST change was the kitchen cabinet hardware. Dirty brass flowers. Ick.

That was in January. Of 2007. A couple of months ago I finally got around to getting some new drawer pulls and knobs. A nice nickel finish.

The hardware was really easy to put in. Basically screwing and unscrewing. No problem.

But then there was a problem.

I realized after putting everything in that the hinges on the cabinets (that show in our kitchen, I've noticed they do not show in most newer kitchen cabinets) were the same dirty brass.


OH NO!!! I CANNOT have nickel knobs and brass hinges. Call me a perfectionist (a slacker one anyway) but every time I went in the kitchen I noticed it. Something had to give. I mentioned this to my mom and she advised me it would not be worth it to change out the hinges (57 in all..that's a LOT of screw-driving).....but I would not be deterred.

So I went to Lowes to get some new hinges.

They have nothing like mine.
Tried Home Depot.
Not even close.

WHAT TO DO???

I looked online but there was no way I would be able to choose the right ones and avoid having to drill new holes.

SO.... while at Michael's one day I noticed that they had silver spray paint and decided to buy a can--why not try it on the hinges--it would probably look nothing at all like metal, but who knows...

AND IT WORKED!!! YAY!!! who knew they had amazing silver spray paint that could instantly turn brass to nickel!!!!

Skip forward through a couple of months and the hinges are finally done. They are a bit shinier than I would like but now I don't totally cringe every time I go in the kitchen :)

Pictures: Take 27

So, awhile ago (and I mean AWHILE. Like months.) I decided I wanted to put some pictures up on one of the walls in Harrison's room. So I bought some cheap wood frames and was going to cover them with scrapbook paper like some super crafty friends of mine had...theirs looked super cute, so I could do it too, right???? Well.....eight frames and 24 pieces of scrapbook paper later. I realized that it was not gonna work. I can't cut out anything that is exactly perfect to fit on the frame. Whenever I use spray adhesive it gets all over. Oh yeah, and I decided to mod podge them so they would have a better more finished look. And that was disastorous--air bubbles all over the place. I would have just scrapped the whole thing but Harrison LOVES looking at the pictures on his wall. So I bought some cheap frames at Goodwill and painted them, and matted the pics (new ones, I had to print new ones because the first set was covered in spray adhesive, mod podge, and harrison drool..) on yet another set of that same scrapbook paper. And it's done. And really it's not that great. But I'm done with it... so...there you go.

Ridding the world of two tone...one room at a time

I know some people may actually like painting their walls different colors...in the same room, but I am decidedly NOT a fan. Not that I haven't seen it done well and not that I don't think it would be possible to two tone in a positive way but given that our ENTIRE house is two tone in pretty much every room.....I've become sort of against it. In my determination to make the world a happier, more monochromatic place...I've decided to paint our guest room yellow (to go with that antique-ish furniture I've been messing around with). The goal is to get it painted this wee. I bought some of that snazzy, primer included paint from Loews, and the dude said I could do it in one coat--so maybe it won't be so bad right?? even if it is already wednesday and I'm going out of town on Friday????

So far--the prep work is done and tomorrow during morning nap I should be able to start painting--YIPPEE!!!

Here are some before pics

Conversation that must have happened between the previous owners of my house:
"So, what should we do with this room?? I think it needs some new paint to spruce things up..."
"I KNOW!!! Let's paint it two shades of GRAY, alternating walls with a little bit splattered on the baseboards for fun!!!"
"That sounds AMAZING!!! "

So there you have it----beautiful gray walls

And the whole room--hopefully after some transformation our house will be a much more awesome place to visit--so awesome that people who live in places that have trees and water and seasons may actually WANT to leave and come to Arizona???? ya think???

THE DRESSER IS DONE!!!!

Ok, it took a bit more stripper than I thought. But it's finally done! YAY!!!
After a lot of scraping and probably inhalation of a bit of fumes, I got most of the paint off the dresser

When I told Cory that I was done scraping off paint (despite a few little spots) his response was..."well, it looks distressed..." Yeah. I guess you never know what you are going to get when you start ripping layers of paint off old furniture. We found lots of different variations in the wood, some white paint or putty, places where wood had been scraped off, etc.

So...smooth surface or not, I moved on to white paint. It took three coats to get the dresser covered to the point of looking somewhat decent. At beginning my only thought was, there is no way this is going to look presentable enough to be in the house and not the garage... however three coats later--not bad. One tip from this stage: I started painting with a brush and second two coats I did mostly with a roller. WOW that is a time saver!




After the white paint I took some glaze that I had mixed brown paint in (just a little brown paint goes a LONG way) and painted it on and quickly (the tutorial I found online says within 15 minutes...but it dries WAY faster than that) wiped it off with a an old towel. PS you need a LOT of towels for this. A LOT. Luckily we have no shortage of crappy old towels in our house :) I did the dresser in sections because really once you paint even just the top it starts to dry and you need to wipe it off so you have a white "antiqued" dresser and not a glazey brown dresser. After it was done I splurged a little and bought some new drawer pulls that I thought matched well. I'm really happy with how it turned out. The brown paint stuck well in the crevices which is what I wanted. FUN STUFF!!!!

a necklace and a headband

Ok, so we're on the third can of stripper (ok the second can was an aerosol bottle which SUCKS by the way, definitely get the stripper you can paint on it's cheaper and goes much further) with the dresser and the salmon paint is ALMOST gone. In the meantime, I've made a couple of things that I may or may not ever wear in public....

The Necklace
a year or so ago I decided I was going to make stuff with beads so Cory decided to encourage me by buying me this book--he's so thoughful

I read through like a page of it and decided it was WAY too complex for me--I just wanted to put beads on string and look pretty, not buy wire and pliers and seed beads and little rings that go between the beads and what not. So I made some necklaces and bracelets "my own way" ....I gave some stuff to friends one christmas (you know, cheap homemade presents, right??) and pretty much they all broke on like the first wear..oops....sorry guys.

So, in trying to reinvent myself I opened up the book again and picked a couple of designs to try. I then marched myself down to JoAnn's and bought all of the lame stuff they said was required.

And I made this (see, it's the one from the cover...basically..)


I thought it turned out ok. Although I haven't exactly "mastered" how to twist wire into itty bitty little loops to go through the clasp--I don't know if you can tell in this picture but the connection is pretty GHETTO..oh well :)

The Headband
I was blog stalking the other day (like I like to do, tell your friends to beware) and I ran across this and I thought it looked easy and fun--who doesn't need a headband right? So I cute up an UGLY shirt I've never worn and made this
ok it looks pretty lame but It's really cute-yet to wear it because I'm a little fashion nervous...requires the right kind of person and the right kind of outfit..time will tell.

My Blog

I've been busy every day of my life since I was sixteen. REALLY busy. I was always the girl who took on far far FAR too much. Job, school, two jobs and school, internships, externships, school, job that required 12 hours a day, pregnant with a job and school, baby and school, baby and studying for the bar....and now...

I have no job (ok sort of a job but it has required nothing of me for over a month and will require a few hours tomorrow and pretty much that's it).

I have no school.

I have a baby that is now mobile and can play by himself (and by "play" of course I mean go find cords and little pieces of dirt and cat hair and put them in his mouth). He also naps for about four hours a day. And is asleep by 7:30.

I've been trying to find a job but have struck out so far. Maybe it's the economy. Maybe it's the fact that I'm hesitant to apply for just anything because of the little person I would have to leave to go out in the world and work. Maybe it's because I didn't study enough during law school(see paragraph #1) to get the kind of grades that will guarantee you a job...whatever...point is that for the first time in a LONG time I have time on my hands. I know everyone thinks they would be so happy with some free time on their hands--this is something we ALL want right??? well, yes...until it happens.

As I struggle to accept my new (albeit temporary.......maybe...) situation I've found that I need to really really make goals and plan things to do or I start to go a little nuts. I become a crazy person who drinks far too much diet coke and spends far too much money in an effort to just get out of the house. So I'm starting this blog to document some of the projects I'm working on. It's for me--it's a way for me to be accountable for what I'm doing. To tell myself that although I have far too many student loans to not be making a monetary contribution to my family there are some things I CAN do.

Let the Rennovations BEGIN

(Let me just preface this by saying I'm NOT crafty. My scrapbook looks like a 12 year old did it. I cut corners. I don't often take the time to do things right. I spill. I make a mess. No reason to put any credence in what I have to say about home renovation. You may just silently laugh to yourself if you wish--I'll never know.)

When you're home all day you start to notice all the things wrong with your house. This leads to A LOT of cleaning.

But when that's done you start to think constantly about how you can make your home a better place. A cooler place. The "updates" you could make if funds were endless. Of course they're not so you start to brainstorm about what you could do on a shoestring...and thanks to HGTV, the internet, and lowes and home depot there are tons of ideas out there.

This has happened to me. Lots of plans in my head. Painting our bedroom blue and putting up crown molding. Re-covering a nasty bedroom chair. Getting a sewing machine and making a new duvet cover. Stripes in the bathroom in two shades of brown. Painting baseboards. New cabinet hardware in the kitchen. New light fixtures that aren't brass. And the list goes on and on and ON....

One of my first obsessions was with antiquing our kitchen cabinets. According to the internets this involves painting a surface white and then applying a coat of tinted glaze on top--then you wipe the glaze off to make it all worn and weathered and what not--cool right?? I wanted to try the technique out before begging my mom to paint her cabinets (did I mention we're renters) so I tried it out on a side table we had lying around (luckily we have tons of furniture in our house that has been inherited over the years---who knows where it came from but no one really cares if you mess it up).

I'm pretty excited about how the table turned out

The brush strokes on the top are FAR from perfect but that's kind of what I like about it...

Cory though my table was pretty amazing as well but maybe not the best for the kitchen. I decided to forgo the cabinet idea for awhile and redo an old dresser the same way. I'm thinking we can put this antiquey white furniture in our guest room and fix up the paint and color scheme to match--it'll be awesome.

How to make over a dresser in antique white, by Amber:

1. Find a dresser in a gross color that no one will care about if you ruin. Salmon--color of the year 1995-perfect!!!!


2. Get yourself some stripper (SOME stripper, not A stripper silly).

3. Take the dresser downstairs to the garage during naptime. Do this quietly or you'll regret it.
4. Try to take the hardware off. If some of them don't come off given that you're not too adept with the screwdriver, it's all good, that can be dealt with later. (see picture above)
5. The directions say you need to wear gloves while stripping stuff--you have no gloves..oh well, just wash your hands before your skin starts dissolving if you spill, ok?
6. Before you start, make sure you are appropriately dressed for this kind of work--probably not a good idea to be wearing your nicest jeans when dealing with paint and chemicals.... oops...


7. After a battle with the child proof cap pour some stripper in a metal tray


8. Take a brush and paint the dresser with the stripper. After a few minutes the paint will start to get all bubbly and stuff.

9. Then you simply scrape the old paint off--easy right??

Probably--but for me, I've done this several times and there is still a lot of paint on there--I guess waiting a few hours because you're child woke up before you finish scraping stuff off is not the best idea. Plus I may need to get some more stripper, but it's a work in progress...TO BE CONTINUED