November : Finishing Up New and Very Old Projects

November was project month. First off I refinished this sweet table that I found at a yard sale I accidentally drove by. I bought the table and four chairs for just ten dollars. The whole thing originally looked like this.

 After a date with the orbital sander, some paint, stain and polyurethane it looked like this.

 It fits perfectly in the nook in our bedroom. I got this chair at D.I. for five dollars. I painted the frame and with a gift card from my awesome Grandma Murray to Joann's I got this striped fabric I used to reupholster it. I also got this lamp at D.I. and it was perfect without any work. Now it is a perfect place to have a tea party with your baby or write a letter to my favorite missionary.

 While I'm talking about my room, I also found these night stands at D.I. years ago. I painted them up, added new pulls and covered the backs of the shelves with pages from a ballet dictionary. Using book pages is one of my favorite tricks.

Your are going to think that everything I own is from D.I.. Well if you think that you are pretty much right! I also got this coat rack at D.I.. I had been looking for one forever. I even considered buying new (that is unheard of here)! But I couldn't find one I liked or one that was under $100. But my sister "Eagle Eye" Jessie spotted this one shoved in a corner in D.I. for just $10. Just a little tightening up by Dustin and some spray paint by me and this thing looks brand new.

Every project is my favorite but this one really is on the top of my list. After Dustin graduated from BYU we moved back to Cedar and lived in my Grandma June's old house. Out in the shed I found this high chair that I remembered being in her house when I was younger. I'm pretty sure it was my Dad's when he was a baby. I gave it an intense cleaning and let Trev take it for a spin.

Circ. 2007

But eating food off of the chipped paint from the sixties highly bothered me. So I took it all apart and attempted my second refurbishing project (the first was a dinning table and chairs that was hand-me-down to us while we were engaged. We spent hours sanding it down and Dustin's brother Jesse stained and finished it in his woods class for us. We still use it today!). Well my first attempt on the high chair was an epic fail. I spent $60 dollars having the seat and back professionally reupholstered and I painted it with oil based paint and a brush. Ahh if I only knew then what I know now. I gave up and put it back in the shed.

Well Mckay was getting old enough to need a high chair and my mind immediately went to the pieces of high chair in a box in the basement. We moved it here with us but lost a leg in the process. I pulled it out of the box and went to town with a little more experience under my belt. It turned out beautifully.

Unfortunately it only had three legs. But fortunately our newest neighbor is a welder! Dustin approached him and within a couple of weeks we had a fourth leg and for free! It was just an old scrap. It doesn't match perfect but it does the job, thanks Funder Welding and Design!

So the project I started for Trev is finally done just in time for Mckay! Better late than never!

Mckay loves it but I love it even more. It is smaller than any high chair that you can buy today and much sturdier and will last much longer. Look how long it has lasted already!

Also notice in this picture the painting the background. This wall really needing something as you can see in this before picture below.

So I spent a day on pinterest and found and an idea for a piece of art that I could do myself.  We built a canvas and Trevin and I painted it out on the deck. When we hung it up it was a little lopsided so we laid it down on that awesome refinished hand-me-down dinning room table that love so much and fixed a few screws in the canvas. Well we did too good of a job and sent one of those screws straight through the canvas and into the table! Good thing we do a lot of projects and had all of the supplies to fix a really big boo-boo.

Story Break - I never knew how much Jessie liked me until Dustin and I got engaged. She was really mad that he was taking me away, we had been room buddies and we even shared the same bed for 10 years! You'd think she'd be happy to get the bed to herself. Anyway, the summer before we got married Jessie and I did a project or activity with each other everyday. Now that I think about it why didn't we include Heath? Sorry, Heath. Laura was just a baby so we didn't need to include her. It was really fun and we made tons of memories. Well I was feeling that the mission was taking Jessie away from me! So we decided to bring back the projects and activities. Our first project was a big one.
A few years back I was showing Dustin my Grandma Murray's awesome and scary basement when I saw this super cute desk. The color drew me to it. I love green. I thought about it for months, then I finally got the courage to ask her if I could have it. She didn't even realize that she still had it.

She said that her mom, my Great-Grandma Nina, bought it for her when she was a little girl. Then my aunts had it their rooms and it ended up with my mom. Her older sister had painted it really cute but over the years that paint started to chip and peel.

As always I started the project for my house but then lost enthusiasm and didn't finish. Jessie saw it and casually said that it would look really cute in her room. Immediately I saw her vision and knew that her room was the perfect place for it. Jessie took the reigns and finished up all of the paint removal. Then we sprayed it black, put on new knobs and glaze it with gold glaze.

We were excited to have it out of our garage and into Jessie's room just in time for Jess's birthday.

This was a big project to start off our list of activities. After this all of our other projects seemed minor. Among other things we built an entire Barbie village using every Barbie item we own, had a Just Dance Party / Teen Beach Movie sing-a-long, made a New York banner for her farewell, made lots of small décor items for her room, made and ate a lot of food and treats and just plain made a lot of memories.