Double Project: One for me and One for him

It all started with Jack Daniels.

Well, a Jack Daniels barrel, really.

For Father's Day last year I wanted to get The Hubs the perfect gift - something he wanted but he wouldn't buy for himself. I finally decided on a Jack Daniels barrel for his man cave. He could fix it up into whatever he wanted, and according to Pinterest, there were a lot of options.

He chose to turn it into a pub table. All he needed to finish the project would be a base to raise it to pub table height, and a glass top. After searching online, he finally decided to fashion a base together using piping, to create an industrial feel.

I would go into detail about he fashioned this base, but I have no idea. Oops.

The glass top took a little longer to find, but a few weeks later he finally found one at Pier 1 for $100.

Hours before he left to buy it, I searched online and found the exact size he needed on OfferUp for $10. Score!

It may not look like much, but I have a vision!

Even better? The perfect sized glass top was actually a coffee table and was attached to a steel framed bottom that I wanted to use for my own project. Double score!

All he had to do was drive halfway across town (Okay, so I might have thought it was in a closer city than it was and he might have driven almost 45 minutes to get it, but....whatever!) and load it up. The glass came off from the bottom part easily, and all he had to do to finish his pub table was place the glass on top and buy some bar stools. Easy and looks spectacular in his man cave!

My project was next.  I had seen how to make a pallet coffee table online and decided to tweak the picture to better fit my style. I had at first wanted to ask my neighbor to weld me the legs for the table, but it turned out that he frame on the OfferUp coffee table was exactly what I needed!

First up, I grabbed one of our pallets that I keep around just for projects like this. I looked for the one that was in the best shape. Unlike most of my other pallet projects, I wouldn't be using just the pallet wood, but the actual pallet itself. I needed the whole thing to be pretty.

I had The Hubs saw the pallet down about 3/4 of the way. This happened to be where on the underside there was a curve, and this made it even on both sides. That left me with five boards on top and gaps in between.

We took a few boards off the remaining 1/4 of the pallet, and combined with a few others we had lying around, we were able to fill in the gaps to make a complete table top.

Whoa. Talk about uneven!

You can tell from the picture, it was pretty uneven, which is not what you want when you're putting your drink on it! The Hubs grabbed his planer and began planing it down. A few minutes later and we had a relatively even top.

I grabbed the sander and went to work. I've worked with many a pallet and the worst part for me are the splinters. Since this was going to be an outdoor table, used by kids and adults alike, I wanted there to be no splinters whatsoever. If you had been around for the Great Camping Splinter Incident of 2015, you would understand. I still have trauma from the screams.

It was at this point that I decided to tried to push my luck with the frame.  On the legs was an awful particle board/fake wood veneer piece.

UG-LEE!

The first time I pressed on it, it wouldn't move, and I thought maybe I would have to texture and chalk paint it. But today I was feeling lucky and I went at it with a hammer.

Success!

After a few minutes of solid hammering, I had popped out all four ugly fake wood pieces and transformed the frame even more.

I was content to leave it as is, but The Hubs the perfectionist convinced me to add two larger wood pieces on either open end to cap off the table. In my pallets, there were two different sized slats. One size fit on the top of the table, the other fit perfectly to finish off the side ends. Don't tell The Hubs I said this, but it did look better his way. He also convinced me to stain it. Multiple times. Ugh.

I hate staining because I hate waiting the required time between coats.

The first three layers worked great with a stain that deepened the pallet wood and allowed the different colors shine through. I was actually getting into this staining, waiting and re-staining process. The fourth layer was a minor setback, though, as I grabbed the the wrong stain and turned my beautiful pallet top a shade of brownish-orange. Oops.

I wound up not being able to completely get rid of the orange top, even with repeated sandings, so I followed up with a deeper stain. It took away some of the color variety I had loved, but seeing as the orange had seeped into the grayer pieces, darker was what needed to be done.

After I was satisfied with the stain, I followed up with a few layers of tung oil to provide an extra layer of protection to the wood from spills and sun.

I was ready to finally have a finished piece and frankly, was tired of doing things the right way, so I fully intended to zip-tie the leg frames to the bottom side of the pallet piece. The Hubs knows my reputation for getting bored with projects though, so he grabbed the coffee table and secured it properly to the bottom with screws.

Here is a view of the finished coffee table in my patio sitting area. Love!!!

A table big enough for everyone to use!

I thought about cleaning up for this pic, and then thought....Nah....

Home Sweet Home!

String Art DIY

Over the toilet at a friends house is a string art picture of a deer I absolutely love.

It's a little bit funky, a little bit strange - considering it's location, hanging above a potty - and totally fun. I thought about buying the same one she had (a Target special, natch), but decided that, like most other things...I could make that.

But a deer, while fun and apropos (the Hubs is a hunter), wasn't exactly what I was envisioning. What picture did I value most? What idea or image meant the most to me - to us as a family?

Then it hit me.

Hmmm..what could I do with this??

I began with a wood plaque piece I had rescued from a garage sale for $1. At the time, I had no idea what I would do with it, just that I needed it. Six months later, I was finally putting it to use.

I was able to print a 12x12 image of my desired picture.  Can you guess what it is?

Drumroll......

I couldn't get the pic to turn but it's pretty recognizable, right?!

That's right. My Arizona home is decorated with my love of Texas. This among others.

I grabbed about 600 nails and started hammering them in around the image. Okay, okay, so it was really only 200+ nails, but it felt like a million. I winged it, hammering oh, about every 1/2 of an inch or so, and oh, maybe 1/2 inch into the wood. I wasn't really worried about getting it perfect.

You can take the girl out of Texas....

**Next time, I will use fewer nails, with a bigger space between them. Adds a little more depth to the piece.

After the hammering was completed, I grabbed some thick red string and wound it around the heart I had placed in the city that still owns mine.

Ah, Lubbock. 

Lubbock, Texas, in the panhandle of West Texas. The place that Mac Davis sang is happiness in your rear view mirror, but to me will always be the place I found my husband and my future. It's a good ol' town filled with good ol' people.


After the heart, I grabbed a deep blue string and began wrapping around the rest of the nails. There wasn't a pattern to this except that there was no pattern. I wanted to make sure each nail was wrapped at least once, and hopefully twice, but in no particular order.

Home sweet home. 

It sits on my fireplace, a reminder of my roots.

A Pallet Sign

Remember all those pallets we had lying around that we didn't use for the Man Cave Wall?  I finally had The Hubs take two of them apart so I could use the boards for projects. Because I didn't have enough projects already half finished......

I decided to start with a pallet sign for Bjorn's room. For years, I have wanted a sign in his room with a particular quote, and since I knew I could make one, I had put off buying it.

Time to git 'er done.

I started with three pallet wood strips. I sanded them down by hand, trying to preserve their wood look, but still taking out all the splinters and roughness. I had to hammer down a few nails, too.

Then I grabbed my ever-faithful chalk paint (to see my first try with chalk paint, go here), this time in primitive gray, and mixed it 1:1 ratio with water. I was hoping for a whitewash finish, to see some of the wood underneath. I will have to tweak the formula a little, for it was still a little too thick for my taste. It was less a whitewashing and more of an all-out painting.

Americana Decor chalk paint. From Home Depot, I think?

I struggled as to how I would put the writing on the piece. Should I have a friend print it on her vinyl printer? Should I hand paint and wing it? I finally decided to print off the quote on my cheap-o printer for tracing. I chose a random font and text size (Times New Roman, 150 font size) and printed away.

Pretty high-tech, eh?!

Once the paint was dry (Which, seriously, took less than an hour - I LOVE chalk paint!), I taped it to the wood. I had to move it around a bit to get the spacing and centering right, and I could have used a ruler, but I don't mind imperfection. Then I took something sharp to etch the letters into the wood. I started with a pencil, but that broke from how hard I needed to press down.. I finally settled on an unclicked ballpoint pen, which worked great. With a faint outline able to be seen on the wood, I was ready to paint.

The hardest part of painting the letters was getting the paint into the nooks and crannies of the wood. It's not a smooth surface, and it took sometimes three coats of tracing in order to get all the niches filled in. But I'm very happy with my first try.

The first of three small pieces to secure along the back

Next, I cut down another piece of pallet piece into smaller pieces to attach to the back of the sign. This allows all three pieces to stay together, and gives me something to hang a wall mount onto. The most important part of this step is to find a nail that is LONG ENOUGH to go through both pieces of wood but not TOO LONG that it comes out on the front side of the sign. It needs to be secure without marring the look.

Strong words. 

When my Hubs gets home, he will hang it in Bjorn's room (And I'll add an updated wall picture then.) I am not allowed to hang things anymore. Something about when we moved the last time and he found the six silver dollar sized holes I had conveniently hidden behind our wall shelves. In my defense, it's hard to hit the exact spot right every time. Or every six times.

Oh, yes. We rock a lava lamp.

While the quote comes from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series, so it can be considered babyish to some, I find it applicable for a 6 year old.  Even at six, in the first grade, he struggles with peer pressure, and with academic pressure. He is caught between a little boy and a big kid. This is a reminder to him each day that he is so much more than he thinks he is, that he can do and be something bigger. It says that I believe in him. I believe in his ability to do great things and be a great person.

Every cloud has a silver lining

I promised the kidlets when we moved that they would be able to pick the colors to paint their new rooms.

I lied.

Peanut chose bubblegum, baby girl, pretty pretty PINK. Bjorn chose red.

Um...no.

I casually steered them towards other colors, all the time making them think it was their idea. (Parenting win!)  After promising Peanut that we could have PINK PINK PINK all over her room (just not on the walls), she chose a pretty lilac.

I was hoping it would be purpler, but at least the girl is happy and it's not PINK!

 I had to promise Bjorn he could paint his side table red (!!!!) before he settled for a sky blue. Because he also now wants clouds.

Note to self: Old sheets triple-folded are not thick enough to be used as drop cloths.

I tried to tell him that Mommy was no artist, and clouds on the wall, while they look easy, were more than mere circles, and had the potential to be the biggest Pinterest failure of 2015. He was insistent on clouds. Then my amazing aunt sent me a link for creative DIY rooms and I hit the jackpot.

I can make him clouds that actually hang from the ceiling.

It looked easy, so I ordered the supplies from Amazon (love me some Prime!!) and the boy and I got to work.

Yup, he helped. Because it is that easy.

10 white paper lanterns (I believe they are 8") for $8, a baggie of stuffing for $5 (at first I ordered quilting batting, but that is totally wrong. You need the stuffing that goes inside teddy bears and such.) and Elmer's Glue (hot glue would have worked better, but then the boy couldn't have helped).

$13 for clouds. A steal.



Technology confounds me. I can't turn this picture. Just tilt your head. 

 

I put together the lanterns, and Bjorn drizzled glue all over the outside, section by section.

He grabbed big wads of cotton batting and stuffed it onto the lantern.

Then repeat from the next section. Turn, repeat. Turn, repeat. All the way around. Let dry and hang from the ceiling with a thumbtack and some string. Voila. Clouds.

He wants the clouds to be shapes. Like the ones in the sky. "Look, Mom! An elephant tap-dancing!"

 

I have three more clouds and I'm pretty sure he will want them over his bed. Except we are putting in a ceiling fan next week, so......

Not to be left out, I picked up a little something at a local resale site for the girl, too.

She asked for either butterflies or Rapunzel princesses on the clouds. Whichever, I smell a craft day soon!

 By far, this was the easiest DIY we have done since we moved into this house. It also makes Bjorn happy, so it is a complete win in my opinion!

How a Few Walnuts Saved my Marriage

In my defense, I've never had real wood floors. Laminate, yes. But real wood? I had no idea how soft they were.

See that shoe there? It's not there because I couldn't take it another 6 inches to the shoe basket. Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I can take my items an extra 1/2 foot to get them to the right spot.

That's another story.

Do you want to see what's under the shoe?

I know you do.

Yes. This.

Oops. Big oops.

We had been in the house exactly 2 days when I tried to move the furniture by myself. Our heavy, long, 7 drawer dresser that still had all the filled drawers in it. I had no idea it was so heavy, and absolutely no frickin' clue that hard wood floors were so insanely soft. I have moved my furniture dozens of times in our past home, with its laminate floors!

2 days. Can you imagine my husband's face if I told him I put a big long scratch in our floor after only 2 days in?!

So to save my marriage and my husband's sanity, my shoe has not moved from that spot in 2 weeks. Until today.

(And of course he didn't notice!)

I had read somewhere - I bet you can guess where; it starts with a P and rhymes with Hinterest - that walnuts could be used to restore wood coloring on old furniture, and, yes, on wood floors. When they showed up on sale at Sprouts, I threw a few in a baggie and $.38 later walked out with the equivalent of a marriage life vest.

 

 

At home, I took those walnuts, got down on my hands and knees and found......

that it worked.

It worked!

See, the scratch is still there. There is nothing I can do about it except pray that we keep our furniture in the exact same spot our entire time in this house. Nothing can take it back. But the walnut did make it so much less noticeable. It is not glaringly obvious when you walk into the room that THERE IS A SCRATCH ON THE FLOOR. Now you must look for it.

And he is none the wiser. Unless he reads this blog.....

Happy Halloween!

Of all the things I strive to be, a Pinterest Mom is one of them. I yearn to have a pretty mantle, a decorative gallery of pictures and wall paint that doesn't look remotely like "tan". I want to blog, takes daily pictures of activities, and those crafts that don't turn out quite as well as expected - I want them to come out much much better.

But I am a Wannabe. Oddly enough,  I'm content here, too. (After all, they know me here.)

See, I pin and search and look and ooh and aaahh, but then I also go out and DO.

It rarely turns out as I hope. It rarely turns out better. It usually turns out like a 3rd graders art project.

And my kids love it.

(There's also rarely any expectations for me. Not like my friend, the baker. She makes ah-mazing homemade muffins and breads to bring to the park. The expectations are set high for her. My Little Debbies snack cake contribution to the play date wouldn't feel right coming from her. It's par for the course for me. I set the bar low.)

Last year for Halloween, I "pinned" a Frankenstein door decor. I had no idea how I would do it, after mentioning it to my boy, it had to happen. You know how that is.. After much searching, I finally found a green trash bag and some poster board. For better or for worse, his door was set.

He left it up until Christmas. (Which is when I let them choose a roll of wrapping paper from the store to "wrap" their door in. Probably the only reason he allowed me to take down Frankie.)

This year he asked to do it again, but I couldn't find the green trash bag.

I found something so much better.

Green bulletin board paper from JoAnns. (Sold in a roll for $7.99. I got almost two doors worth out of one roll. On a side note - did you know that Joann's accepts mobile coupons from other retailers? I had a 50% off one item coupon from JoAnn's and a 50% off one item coupon from Michaels, and I used both on the same transaction. Like a BOGO deal! Fab, right?!)

So not only did he get Frankie again this year, but his sister received a slightly less scary monster - Mike Wisowsky from Monsters Inc. (Which she then made me remove after one night because "the door paper is too loud, Mommy". My little Princess and the Pea.)

It's not perfect. Not by a long shot. But Bjorn loves it.

He came home from school the day I prepped everything for his door (because of course I let them hang it up themselves, that's half the fun!) and saw the mess I made of the kitchen cutting and gluing.

"Well, someone sure had fun making a big mess, didn't they?" he said, knowingly.

He's FIVE, people. Do normal five year olds say things like that?!

But he knows I like to make things. I like to craft. He loves it too. Most days he asks me if he can paint, or cut, or glue or create. Last week he searched the house looking for the perfect box to turn into a puppet theater, and he couldn't start the show until it was cut and glued and colored to perfection. Like mother, like son.

Happy halloween!!!

On a Silver Platter

For Christmas or Mother's Day or Housewarming or something, my awesome Brother-In-Law bought my MIL a cheese tray. A beautiful cheese tray with a chalkboard top, so whenever we have those aperitifs of stinky cheese and crackers that we love, we can know exactly what kind of stinky cheese it is that we are eating.

I loved it.

And I immediately thought, "I could make that!"

So when I saw a $1 "silver" platter at a garage sale recently - with scalloped edges and a simple, flowery design in the middle - I knew at once that it was perfect for a tester tray. I didn't want to spend $20+ at an antique store for a tray that may turn out horribly wrong, so $1 for a nice looking, probably aluminum - but could pass for silver to the inexperienced eye like mine -  platter was perfect.

My $1 "Silver" platter find!

I already had the chalkboard paint from a previous project, and some cheap foam paintbrushes from kiddie crafts. They would do the trick.

After thoroughly washing and drying it, I began outlining the scalloped edge with my paintbrush and chalkboard paint. I wasn't concerned with doing a good job covering completely, as long as my edging was even. I figured I could even everything else out in the end.

The Hubs asked if it was "self-leveling" paint. Guess it looked a little uneven!

After coating it with one very uneven coat, I waited for it to dry. About 1/2 an hour.

I then painted another coat of paint, waited, then another, waited and then another. Total, I painted 4 coats of paint.

By the time the fourth coat of paint had dried, I was ready to draw a little note and set up my new platter.

I love how it turned out! It has a natural scalloped edging, which made the platter a little girly and old-fashioned looking, and gave me a very easy outline to work with.

Right now it is set up on our buffet, marking the spot in our Wine A to Z challenge*. When we have our next cheese and cracker night, it will be very simple to wipe it off and label our cheeses!

I love using chalkboard paint, and I have found that a little goes a very low way. What's your favorite thing to do with chalkboard paint?


*Our Wine A to Z challenge is our challenge to ourselves to be a little more exploratory in our wine selection, to step out of the comfort zone of Pinot Noir, in the brand offered at Costco. Last October, on our anniversary, we began with an "A" wine (Apothic, then Blackstone, etc) - the name on the label, not the type (Merlot, etc). I gave up alcohol for Lent this year, so that slowed us down a little, but as you can tell from the sign, we are currently on "T". The "A to Z" wine shown on the right will be the last one we drink in this challenge (following our "Z"), and then its onto our next challenge......Beers from A to Z!