Summer Projects

This summer I have taken it upon myself to start and complete a few home decor projects. For those of you who know me, know that I am not the most artsy fartsy person around. However, I do enjoy redecorating and redesigning. So, this summer, I made an effort to turn over a new leaf and try my hand at a few home DIY projects.

Project number 1 of the summer was my dresser. I found this gem at a garage sale a few years back for a whopping $5. I loved the detail of the dresser and the mirror, but it lacked some TLC and needed some revamping. Finally, years later, I fixed up the dresser and I love it. 

Before:

 After:

It's amazing what a can of paint and new hardware can do to a piece of furniture. As a humorous little side, I will mention that I accidentally grabbed the can of primer paint and proceeded to paint the first 3 coats of the dresser with it. Some family members may have poked fun at me, but after some re-sanding and checking twice that I grabbed the white paint the next time, I ended up with a pretty awesome dresser. Sometimes you need to learn your lessons the hard way :)

Second project of the summer was redoing the basement bedroom, where I am currently residing. My brother had it before I did and because he is a guy who could care less that his room was painted poo brown, he did nothing to change it. I however, could not stand the colour on the walls and so a face lift was needed. Over the course of a weekend, the room transformed itself drastically. I am in love with the colours on the wall and after a trip to Ikea and Home Sense for some decor items, I ended up with this:

One of my favorite finds at Anthropology

Unfortunately I was not on the ball and completely forgot to take the before pictures. But just picture this, 4 walls, completely covered with poo colour brown. Gross.

My last project of the summer was recovering 2 chairs. The first chair I picked up at MCC for the low low price of $2 and the second chair I found at a garage sale for only $3. Score! I had a vision for each of the chairs as soon as I laid my eyes on them. After a stop at Joann's fabrics in Grand Forks, I found some phenomenal fabrics (which also happened to be on sale). Because I knew essentially nothing about recovering chairs, I watched a few tutorials on YouTube - some helpful and others not so much. I needed to find a way of recovering the chairs that did not involve any sewing as I know next to nothing about working a sewing machine. After only a few hours, I ended up with these beauties:

Again, due to my forgetfulness, I failed to take any before pictures. The first chair has some definite room for improvement (I am technically not quite finished this chair as I need the assistance of my Grandma to finish the corners of the seat - it turns out you can't staple gun fabric to metal, so I need to figure out another way to attach these corners), but I was very happy with how the second chair turned out. Go me. 

I am hoping this is just the beginning to many projects yet to come!