Thrifting Adventures

I’ve been wanting to write a post about thrifting for awhile now. Maybe I’ll make it a regular thing! Because let me tell you, there are few things I love more than thrifting. I go to a local thrift store usually once a week, but if I can’t go that often I definitely go at least twice a month. It’s too hard not to!

One thing that there is never a short supply of at the thrift store is vases. Lucky for me, I am a vase junky. With that said, here were my findings from my weekly trip today:

I can never have too many vases. I love them. I just really enjoy having flowers throughout the house; whether they’re artificial or just something I picked from the yard, I don’t really care. They’re just pretty to look at.

One reason that I love the thrift store is that everything you find has a story. Anyone can go to Target or other big brand name stores and find cute house things, but then everyone just ends up with the same stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Target, but I also love originality. Take this mug turned vase for example.

It’s hard to capture on camera, but it is unique. It is obviously old and difficult to see, but there is a ship on the front and some writing that says “Santa Monica, CA.” It’s interesting to think about where this little vase has been over the years, and now it’s in my home!

It’s no secret that I love vintage things, hence my frequent trips to the thrift store. I’d like to think that my home is developing a “vintage modern” type of feel. Here’s a few of my other thrift store favorite finds from the past few months:

This old teapot and a couple cute white mugs. I’ll probably never use them, but I think they’d look really cute on a shelf above the kitchen sink.

This awesome pillar candle holder. It has a real vintage characteristic feel to it. I love it!

This one actually was gifted to me from my good friend Sarah, but I noticed the 1.99 price tag sticker and recognized it from the thrift store! It fits in nicely with my bedroom décor. And yes, that is a little of my own creative photography in the frame.

So there they are, just a few of my many finds. Some people find it difficult to actually stumble upon cool or interesting things when they go thrifting, but not I! If I could offer a couple pieces of advice it would firstly be to DIG! You can’t just casually walk through a thrift store and expect to find gems. I look through every nook and cranny of that store when I go. Things are often picked through and switched out, which is why I go so often. I do think that finding good furniture can be difficult, I rarely see pieces that I like or think I could change. But finding the knick knack stuff is what’s fun anyway! My other advice would be to go wherever  your eye draws you to. When I’m looking at the shelves of items, I step back for a moment to take it all in and that’s when things start to catch my eye.

Thrifting is a fun way to get creative and most of my favorite pieces in my house have come from a thrift store. And you can’t beat those prices! My grand total for those three vases in the beginning of this post was $2.98. So if you’re into finding unique, one of a kind items, I suggest hitting your local farmer’s market or thrift store! Have fun!

Staining End Tables

So for awhile now I have been searching for the perfect end tables for my living room with no luck. I've been in and out of several Marshall's and Target stores, stalked craigslist ads, and browsed online for hours. After getting pretty frustrated, I decided to make do with what I already had! For going on two years now, we've had these two ugly end tables sitting around being useless.

I think they were originally from Pier 1 but I'm not sure. Regardless, they were in pretty bad shape. But I had always liked the simple clean lines and just thought they had really good bones. I just never got around to doing anything with them. Maybe I was a little too scared of how damaged the wood was (and still is)...

See what I mean? Pretty bad. Anyway, I had never stained anything before and it was quite an interesting process. Here was my list of supplies:

• Minwax Wood Finish in "Red Mahogany"
• Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane
• 60 grit & 150 grit sandpaper
• A cheap 2-inch paint brush
• A bunch of rags

Then I got down to business. The first thing I did was sand the entire first table with 60 grit paper. Then went over it with the 150 grit. If there was ONE THING I learned from the entire staining process, it would be to sand more. Sand, sand, and sand some more. Be extremely thorough! After you're done sanding, be sure to wipe off the table with a wet rag. After it's dry, you can apply a THIN and even coat of the stain.

I let the stain sit on the table for about 20 minutes. During these twenty minutes is when I started to realize this wasn't going to be the easiest thing in the world to do. I noticed that the table wasn't completely soaking up all the stain. This brings me back to saying, SAND, SAND, SAND! If I had sanded the table more, the table would have soaked up a lot more.

After twenty minutes of soaking, I took one of my rags and starting wiping up the excess stain that had not soaked through the wood. Be sure to wipe the rag in the direction of the wood grain. Unfortunately for me, the process was not going so great. I ended up needing to do three coats of wood stain to get the desired effect I was looking for. And each coat needed at least six hours drying time so this turned into an ongoing process. I ended up moving the tables to one of my unfinished back rooms to dry.

The above picture was what the end tables looked like after applying the polyurethane. When you are completely satisfied with the wood stain and it has been allowed ample drying time, you can apply the polyurethane. This particular Minwax Wood Finish requires the polyurethane to seal everything and give it a nice glossy finish that will make it easy for wiping clean. What I really like about the above picture were all the dark corners - the wood stain actually made the damaged wood look really antique and actually kinda cool!

So there they are! I think they look ten times better. Am I 100% happy with them? No. I am even less happy that we rearranged the furniture in our living room and now my newly stained end tables don't really fit. Isn't that just my luck? Either way, they'll work for now and I'm sure I'll end up putting them somewhere else in the house. Here's one more unedited picture for you so you can see the true red mahogany tones in the tables:

All done! You can certainly see the damaged wood still, but at least they have a much prettier wood stain. I have definitely learned from this experience, and although during the process I swore I would never do this again, I think I will. Most likely on wood that isn't so damaged, and preferably when I have an electric sander!

Built-In Shelves

Ever since we moved into our new home this past November, I have been painting EVERYTHING white. Well, everything meaning all the trim. What can I say, I just love those crisp clean white lines. It really just makes the wall color pop.

Over the past six months, I have tackled about three quarters of the house’s trim. It was just plain, ugly brown wood. You’ll see in the upcoming pictures. It has been a grueling process. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but once you start you really can’t stop! My basic method for painting trim goes like this:

• Wipe down and clean the wood with some furniture polish and a wet rag.
• Fill in any holes or damaged wood with wood filler. If I was fixing trim that was already painted how I wanted, I would color match the type of filler with the color of the trim. In this case, it doesn’t really matter what color the filler is because I’m just painting over it anyway.
• Sand down the trim thoroughly. I just used 120 grit paper and it worked fine.
• Once again, wipe the wood down with a wet rag to clean off all the sanded particles.
• Start painting! I used Behr paint & primer in one. Most of the trim that I painted only needed two coats but some areas needed three.

If you’ve never painted trim before, don’t get scared off by the list. It is a long process but it’s so worth it! Each room looks so different than it did before I painted the trim.

Anyway, we have one archway that I have not yet painted white and it connects to some built in shelves we have. So, one evening I decided to get the ball rolling and just go for it.

This is what the shelves looked like before.

 If you’re looking for a good brush to use when painting trim or something like this, I would highly recommend this brush which I purchased at Home Depot! The short handle and angled brush almost make it easy enough to not need painter’s tape.

 So after cleaning and sanding down the shelves, I got to work painting. Like my rubber band tip? Put a rubber band around your paint can for an easy way to tap off excess paint from your brush.

After the first coat, the shelves were looking pretty rough.

After two coats, they looked MUCH better.

At this point, I was about two hours in and decided to call it a night. Do I think the shelves could use a third coat? Absolutely. But for right now, they look pretty good and I can live without a third coat for a few weeks. So I started organizing the shelves with some of my décor and a few favorite books as soon as they were dry.

After everything fit in nicely, I really started to like the outcome.

Although, I am prone to changing the way things are set up on pretty much a weekly basis. So I’m sure in a few days the shelves will be completely rearranged with some new items too. Oh, and please take note that the rest of the archway that the shelves are connected to are on the project list. Along with those ugly sea foam green walls with the terrible border. Yeah, that’s been there along with some terrible wallpaper in the kitchen for the past 6 months. It’s proved impossible to remove. But that’s another story!

Ta-da! Pretty white shelves in about two hours. One more project checked off the list…

The first post

Welcome to the blog! I guess that this is going to be my own little nook of the internet where I share all my projects from home improvement to baking cookies. Nothing fancy, just another crafty blog with hopes to show family and friends what I’m up to around the house!

A little about me: twenty years old, about to graduate from cosmetology school, just bought a house this past November, and happily engaged with the wedding just four and a half months away! We are a tight knit little family; me, my fiancé James, and our two beloved pets, Frankie and Flea!

A little visual reference:

Frankie is that adorable, cow-resembling pit bull and Flea is our fluffy kitty. If you’re wondering how Flea got his unique name, well…he was just that. The poor thing was infested with fleas when we adopted him and the name just stuck. I think the name gives him some character!

Anyway, here it is. The blog I have been pondering creating for several months now. For those of you actually reading, I hope you enjoy the many posts to come! Please feel free to comment on any of the upcoming projects. Here’s hoping you’re having a great day.