Okay, so hopefully I’m not totally driving you all crazy with my never-ending posts about my redecorating around the house. But it’s been really fun to switch things up and it’s really quite amazing how you can totally change the feel of a space with some minor changes (sometimes by simply moving something in from another part of your home or with a little paint and imagination with an old object).
First, a really simple makeover with our coffee table. No, I didn’t paint or do anything to our actual coffee table. It was the lack of anything decorative on it that started to bother me. I didn’t want to make things so decorative that they weren’t functional, but I wanted to find a balance.
So I took that frame I found a couple weeks ago, painted/distressed the edges and decoupaged some old book pages right over the glass from the frame. Easy-peasy centerpiece!
To it I added a .50 cent bucket I found at a garage sale (which I painted white and now holds our remote controls), I took that blue mason jar I got off Craigslist with the seltzer bottle and filled with seashells I picked up off the beach when visiting family in Florida, and finally a lantern that was originally silver that I painted an oil-rubbed bronze color to house candles for ambient lighting. So simple and sweet and now it prevents me from treating our coffee table as another studio space, ha!
I had an old plaque award hanging in my studio that I really didn’t want to have up anymore and I was trying to think of ways to reuse it…
So I peeled off the metallic, embossed part (leaving just the wood) and tried painting a rustic sign…not in love with it (particularly my fat lettering) but still happy to turn it into something else rather than trash!
And with this first sign done, I decided to try on another piece of wood I picked up at a garage sale.
This is how it looked before…
Painted it gray and painted new lettering before distressing it to give it an old look…
I was planning on keeping it in the kitchen, but after taking pics of it over our mirror, I think I like it there.
And I’m now addicted to making paper wreaths, having made two more and wanting to make more!
On top of this, we are doing a very difficult task of sanding down our railings/log spindles in order to stain them…the high altitude sun and hail are downright brutal on wood and it’s taking the two of us armed with electric sanders 2 hours to do each 6-foot section (and we have 6 in all).
Here's the naked wood after being sanded down...
Before (on the right); we love the look of the naked wood, but as you can see by the big post, which was never stained and only a poly coat applied, it gets sunburn too easily...we learned this the hard way and had to stain the whole house last year; it's a never ending project
Yeah, total suckfest (and we still have to do our whole deck and the whole side of the house that got wrecked in the last hail storm, so this is going to be weeks in the making!) I had about 1/4 inch of sawdust in my hair and in my bra and we could barely get out of bed this morning we were so sore, but what can you do? I try to remind myself that doing this work means that we are fortunate to have a home and for that I’m grateful.
So, I’m hoping I’ve inspired you to shift things around in your home and/or check out your local thrift store/Craigslist/garage sales to give life to a used item before going new. Anyone else have any upcycled projects to share? 
