Refinishing

This specific bedroom set is very important to me. I spent a good-sized pile of $$ to fly to VA, drive it down to Atlanta, and pick up a ton of refinishing products from Home Depot to make sure it never gets into this condition again. 

The furniture was actually my great-grandmother's. It was given to her for her wedding.  The last time it was used, it was in my father's house when I was in 2nd grade. It has been through a hurricane, basement flooding, multiple moves, and now it has a permanent home in my blue guest room.

Initial Sand Down

Love these little wood details.

Continental Furniture Company from High Point, North Carolina.
This company was founded in 1901-2, and High Point was one of the main hubs for the furniture industry in the South.

Primer stage

First coat of Black High-Gloss

Not a bad clean up. I experimented with the nightstand, using semi-gloss instead.

Refinishing the dresser is my project for this week/weekend. We've ordered new veneer for the top and sides, and I've already done an initial sanding. Once the veneer is affixed, it's ready to prime and paint. Sadly the hand-painted flower detail will not be staying. 

The individual drawer fronts will also be refinished, as well as sanded down to alleviate any warped or swollen wood. The last two drawers took a good pry to get out, even though the drawer boxes are in fantastic shape.

The top hutch will be repainted, and actually has spindles that need to be reattached. They hold a face mirror above the dresser, which is in very good condition. 

Stripping the dresser.

The "To-Do Now" List

To Do now or To Do later? That is the question. 

I go to sleep at night with a million and a half ideas running through my head. A million and half tweaks and purchases and things to Google, all because of this house. I've never been the "go slow" type, but my BF and my bank account have the final say. So all of these projects I want to start are being sorted into To-Do Now or To-Do Later lists. 

1) Finishing the Office
After the weekend, I picked up a couple new prints at the Atlanta Arts Festival. That will bring my count to 9 prints to be framed and hung on for my office gallery wall. The office is dark grey and  in addition to the frames, we are waiting for black and white curtains that my "mother-in-law" has volunteered to make. 

Since we both share the office, it will be an even split down the middle: my glam prints to contrast with his anime swords. Quite the Match made in heaven, or Bento Cafe in Gainesville…

Office Gallery Wall Inspiration

I know there are many DIYs for these curtains online.

2) Finish Kitchen (still)

With everything that we've done to the kitchen, it's still not quite finished. To fix our lack of kitchen storage, we've picked out a table/cart from Ikea. When we eventually buy it, it will be our bar cart and cookbook shelf.

The Forhoja Kitchen Cart from Ikea.

Here's some other Kitchen/Bar cart inspiration:

Style Me Pretty

Apartment Therapy

We still need to buy a new kitchen rug, cabinet and drawer pulls, and some form of spice organization. 

3) Landscaping
October is a prime time for prepping our yard. It's too late in the year to be planting, but we've got our work cut out for us as far as winterizing. The turf builder is going down this Sunday, thanks to the seed spreader our friend is giving us. Troy will also be getting rid of the monster patch of ivy that is our side yard. This will give me the time to rake up all the leftover pine straw in the three front flower beds, and replace it with mulch. 

Next month, we are tackling the back and side yards: planting grass seed, trimming low-hanging limbs, and possibly having a very big maple taken down. If we can get the grass to sprout by the spring, we will build in raised flower/vegetable beds. 

We will also be tilling, since there seem to be a lot of dead things on the property. We are very much still novices at landscaping, so any advice would be very welcome. What can we do now, and what can be left for Spring?

Since the cat doesn't like indoor plants, kitchen herbs will go in this on the back deck.

A House with Stuff in it

Our new Driver's Licenses came in the mail last week, so it is official. We live here.

I wanted to name this blog post "Finishing Touches", but everyone knows nothing is ever really finished. The renovations are finally done and everything has been signed off, inspected and broken in. For the most part, everything has it's proper place, and we have an extensive list of even more stuff to buy and projects to schedule.

The real judge comes today, my grandmother.

Guest Room #2 Before and After

Dining Room Before & After

Front Door and Finished Kitchen

Living Room Before & After

My favorite room so far, The Office.

Putting each room together is a big puzzle. There is still a long way to go before things start looking and feeling complete. At the same time, we have ideas for future remodeling and landscaping layouts, ranging from drawer pulls to tree falling to adding square footage. Here is the down and dirty plan:

The First Two Weeks

The first two weeks have been abnormally slow going. The BF said that it seems more like a vacation house since we are have been half unpacked, waiting for the rest of the carpet and cabinet fronts to be installed. In the meantime, we had a few projects of our own to work on.

The first was a memory board for my office. This was a DIY I found online. I picked a quality canvas that had a solid wood frame. The purple material is heavier and very durable, and I used white fabric ribbon. Everything was stapled with my brand new staple gun, and the gold buttons were sewn in to keep everything taut. Nail in some claw fixtures, and it's ready to hang.

   

The second project was a hidden litter box. There are no convenient spaces to keep a litter box, so we created one. We googled some ideas, and found this toy storage bin at Ikea. Using an electric handsaw, we cut a Shorty-sized door. He had no problem adapting, and the litter box is perfectly concealed and odor-free. 

You too can pick this up at Ikea.

Finally the custom cabinet fronts are in! Clean white fronts with seeded glass panes. 

A nice Before & After shot, but disregard the silverware and kitchen gadgets.

My plan for this coming week is to refinish the furniture set we brought down from my parents house, and to finish unpacking. I'm hoping that once that is done, I can show B&A pictures of all the finished rooms. Stay tuned!