Ok, I'm a Chicken

In the past I've painted all kinds of things for many different reasons. I'll share some with you to show you just haw ridiculous my chicken behavior is.

Brick (Yea, that's me :S )

Walls for other people.

Paper (Sorry about the photography skills, working on them)

And the list goes on. I love painting, drawing, trying new things, getting creative and just about all things crafty.  So what is it that I'm such a chicken about? Painting my girl's room. It was pretty cute for a while. We chose not to find out if either of our daughters were boys or girls until they were born so the pallet was simple and gender neutral. It went with just about everything and it was light and airy until.....

Yep, that's permanent marker :)

My lovely little girl was supposed to be taking a nap when she stumbled upon the wonder and glory of a permanent marker. Oh, glory. This is what the WHOLE room looked like. The walls, the furniture, some of the carpet, the toys, the books, and EVERYTHING else in site. It looks like she missed her blessing dress, don't let it fool you. Thankfully her sister wasn't in the room! FYI Mr. Clean Eraser took it off of all the furniture amazingly well. However, the walls and the carpet didn't make it. I couldn't take the marker on the walls though so I did paint a solid color. You can see it in my Monogramming and Craigslist Chair posts. That's about all the progress I've made since the permanent marker fiasco.

So now that we are all caught up on 1) I am reasonably artistic 2) I am perfectly capable of painting and 3) Why I am in this position in the first place, the question remains. Why am I being such a chicken about digging in and getting this done? I honestly don't know. What I am telling myself is that I want to wait until I can get the girls older kids bedding so I know how I want to paint around it. The reality to that is that there is pretty much only one place where I could fit a bunk bed in there and not having a bunk bed is not an option in a room that small so I should just dig in and get it oder with already. *sigh* Alright, I guess it's just time to pull out the big girl panties and a paint brush. Ready...Set...GO!

Habitat for Humanity

     So yesterday was the first time that I had ever been to Habitat for Humanity. What an AWESOME place! If you haven't been Google for the location near you! 

     HFH is a resale store that sells, for rock bottom prices, all kids of house hold goods. The location I went to has a TON of doors and paint right now. I will never buy paint at retail price again!!! The best part? They say that as soon as spring hits here they will get a flood of more stuff in! As if all the cabinets, sinks, trim, molding, nails, light fixtures, calk, hinges, hardware, windows and on and on was not enough. 

    I got a cabinet door and some spray paint for a project I will show you soon and a LARGE section of wire grid stuff that I'm going to grow my peas on for $10!  The cabinet is in still-in-the-store shape, the spray paint is full and the grid stuff it BEAUTIFULLY rusted. 

     Guess where I will be after breakup. That's right. Anchorage Habitat for Humanity.

Craigslist Chair Reveal!

First of all let me say that reupholstering a chair is NOT easy BUT the sense of accomplishment was well worth it! First lets start with a few before shots just as a reminder:

This poor chair reminded me of the cheer that was on the preview of Bicentennial Man. 

U-G-L-Y  

You ain't got no alibi, 

You ugly, 

Yeah, yeah, yeah you ugly!

LOL, I have no idea why that's stuck with me so long. I don't think it's even in the movie. Any how...

I started taking apart this lovely thing and it was just as ugly on the inside as it was out. It had more thumb tacks in it than an Office Depot! 

Oh, and SURPRISE!! It had been refinished before. These sweet little buttons were inside holding the upholstery buttons in place when I took it a part! My question is who picked the color?

Since this was my first go-round with anything like this I had my mom help me out. Thanks Mom:) We staple this poor little thing to death covering it for the inside and then stapled the out side over it come more!

And when we needed a breather from that I pounded in a little more metal with upholstery tacks!

It's so pretty! Nice and neat.

You can see some of my staple job on the back here too. AND your first glimpse of the ruffle I actually sewed!!!! To you this may be nothing but sewing machines and I have a long hard history. Not a good one. 

 I had originally planned on using these little beauties to replace the old ones and decide didn't like the look. If you know me though, you know I found something else to do with them:) 

How cute is that, right?

OK. 

Are you ready for it?

A before and after?

You're sure?

Alright then, here she goes.....

Yeah, take that for a first timer. 

And again... 

And one more time....

Not bad. I'm definitely not ready to give a tutorial or anything but hopefully this will encourage you all to do something new.

Here's to trying new things.

I linked to

Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday