kitchen labels!

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I always love all of Martha's stuff.  This morning I saw that she has a new line of office supplies!  I'm definitely eyeing the kitchen labels!

stuck

Well, the table we made has been in use for a while now, but has yet to be finished.  I cannot decide on what color to paint the base of the table...or whether or not the chairs should be painted.  The room is now painted gray, and when we get to making built-in's for our TV area, the room will once again have the antique buffet we've always had in our dining room...so that's a lot of wood going on when you include what's in the living room too.  I've been inspired through Pinterest and two blogs to possible paint the chairs a bright color (turquoise, yellow, or a muted red) and leave the table base white.  I was leaning towards painting the buffet, but I'm not as attached to the antique chairs, and would not be as devastated if they didn't turn out.

What do you think?  We're probably going with a large round burlap shade for over the table, and as far as what will go on the wall with the buffet or the curtains for this room...I'm waiting on finishing the table before I get to that .

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something old

Awhile back I found an old ladder on the side of the road (for obvious taking).  Daniel had even passed it earlier that day and thought that I'd probably pick it up.  :)  It has sat drying out in our garage for about a month now waiting to be used.  I found this idea online and we LOVE how it turned out!

spring?

We are making the most of the beautiful weather that has come our way!  Car washing (followed by lots of puddle jumping), painting, window washing, yard work, lots of outside playtime...airing out the house.  Loving it!

diy night stands

I was talking with a friend the other day about night stands, mostly how I do not think we could live without them.  I've always wanted to use Ikea's Rast dressers.  They're ridiculously cheap ($35), and there are SO many ideas floating around the internet of different ways to make them over.  It just sounds like a fun project to tackle one day!  I always keep my eye open for them to pop up on craigslist.  Anyways, I didn't go into my idea for our far in the future night stands with my friend, but it was fun to check the blogs I read and find that one of my ultimate favorites had posted the perfect Rast hack yesterday.  :)

dining room table

This is technically our first built (by us) project for our new house!

Over a year ago Daniel salvaged some really cool 1970's deck joists from a house he was working on, and around the same time he found four stairway posts at a lumber sale here in town (the decorative post at the bottom of a stairway railing).  We used the boards for the top, and the posts for the legs.  I found some ideas of tables I liked off of Pinterest, and he took it from there.

Right now it is assembled in our dining room and 3/4 of the way finished.  I just put the last coat of poly on today, but the base and legs need some more sanding/filling and a last final coat of paint.  I might distress them a bit afterwards and then go over it with some stain to age them, but want to wait to see how I like them just white.  I'll talk more about how I treated the wood when we post the final photos.

This house so far has been nothing but a lesson in patience and taking it slow.  :)  It really does pay off, and it's so fun to see things come together.  For instance, now that I've seen what the table looks like and knowing the walls will be gray, I'll wait till we paint to decide if we need to paint the dining room chairs or not...then I'll decide on curtain treatments/wall decorations/etc.

The first photos is a glimpse of what the top looks like.  The sign is handmade by a friend here in town (love her work).  This last photo is of the "new" carpet.  The only issue I have with it, is that a part of it was bleached by the sun (they lived on a lake), so there is a definite line that you can see...but still, it was FREE, and is super nice and expensive carpet...so lucky us!