From Drab to Fab!

The packing craziness is almost through....which only means that the unpacking craziness is about to begin. I figured I would fill you in with a few pictures of the DIY projects that I have been working on.

First off, there is this little table from THIS POST. My sister, dad & M. helped me sand it down to the un-finished wood. My mom helped me pick out the bluish green color -- a pottery barn color that turned out really pretty. We put a lighter beige-y color as the first coat & then after painting on the blue we roughed up the edges a bit to give it an antiqued look. The picture above left shows the entire table & I added the picture to the right to show a little bit of the detail of how we worked with an antique finish! I found this table next to the trash at M's old apartment building!! It's in perfect condition & now it will serve as the perfect side table in our living room of our DC apartment!

The second project was to refinish a table (also a piece that was going to be thrown away) that my mom found outside of the furniture showroom she works for during market. The table is BEAUTIFUL & my mom was kind enough to give it to me & M. to use as our kitchen table. I knew I wanted to keep the table a simple color (for now at least) & I absolutely love the antiqued claw foot base. My dad kindly sanded down the entire top of the table -- we decided to keep the antiqued base just the way it was. I painted the top of the table the same beige-y color I used on the smaller table & then mixed up a glaze for the top. At first it was too dull so I added a little bit of burnt umber acrylic paint from our craft closet which made the perfect contrast to the base color. I am SO excited to put the table in the new apartment & M. & me will eat many meals together here!

Finally, an unexpected project...I was planning on rigging up a headboard for the bedroom in the apartment, but instead my mom lugged out an old headboard from the attic. The picture to the left shows the original headboard -- with a little missing fabric on the top half). We decided to recover it using some fabric matching the color scheme of our bedroom, which is white/beige/and a restoration hardware robin's egg blue. I love the combo because it is so clean & fresh! We bought some pretty fabric from a local store, a little beige grosgrain ribbon from Michael's Craft Store & some decorative nails from Lowe's....& this is what we came up with! How pretty did this turn out?!!? I love DIY projects and this is by far one of my favorites! To the right is a close up of the nail heads we added to the headboard -- they definitely made it look AMAZING! So inexpensive too -- $1.30 for a box of 25! Total, this project cost about.....$40...& I had the chance to spend some quality time with my Mom (probably the best part of all!) Love love love!

T-minus 3 days until the big move! :)

Hope everyone is having a stress free, fabulous week so far!