As promised twice (here and here), I’m letting you in on the final pics and whereabouts of the dresser my dad handed down to me.  For the sake of before-and-afters, let’s take a look at the original.

It had great lines but the orangey wood was doing nothing for me.  After some sanding, priming, painting, polyurethaning and knobbing (adding new hardware), here’s the final product…

My favorite part?  The rustic knobs that I got at Hobby Lobby for $6 total.  (They were 50% off!)  I read on a blog recently (I’m sorry, I can’t remember which one!) that Hobby Lobby was the place for quirky knobs.  I thought I’d check ‘em out and I was not disappointed.  I had a hard time deciding on one style.

I liked the ounce of warmth it brought to the all-white, glossy piece.  Have you figured out where the dresser lives now?  I originally thought the dresser would go here…

…at our entry.  But it felt and looked crowded.  Plus, once the dresser was complete, it seemed a little too playful for our living room.  (Our front door opens right up into the living room.)  Immediately, I knew where that little dresser would fit.  In the guest/playroom!

See it over there by the door?  I think it looks cute-sy.  When I’m in there playing with my boys, I like looking over and seeing it.  It reminds me of when I was a kid (it’s from my dad, remember?).  And I love that I made it work with our home, so we can enjoy it for years to come.

It welcomes our guests to their room too.  They can set their purse, overnight bag or glass of water on it.  I’m already scheming to add fun artwork above it.  With all the white going on, it needs a splash of color, don’t ya think?  And since the dresser makeover only cost me $6 (the cost of the knobs), I can spare a little change to bring in some personality.  Stay tuned to see how the dresser comes into its own with a few accessories!

At the beginning of the week, I introduced you to the secondhand dresser my dad so kindly gave me. 

As promised, I’m back to share some pics of my progress.  However, (and I apologize) due to an overzealous almost-2-year-old (thus an exhausted Mama) I’m not quite as far along on the dresser’s makeover as I’d like to be.  Still, I’m a woman of my word.  So, here’s a sneak peek…

Okay, not really a huge surprise…I painted it white.  And those are Hobby Lobby knobs (say that 3 times fast) to replace the old hardware as soon as the second coat of polyurethane dries.

And as for where this new addition to our furniture family will go, let’s just say it is a ‘welcomed’ piece.  Yep, that’s a hint.  Here’s hoping it’s a productive weekend!

Aaahhhh.  It’s finally Friday, and I’m sharing pictures of the finished laundry room!  Here was the boring builder utility room just a few short weeks ago…

It wasn’t awful but it was blah.  After some painting, re-organizing and accessorizing, this room has a little personality.  Check it out.

I’ll take you on a tour of my small but happy laundry room.  Let’s start at the door and work our way around in a clockwise fashion.  Just inside to the left is where my Etsy-fied ironing board found its new home.

I nearly fainted over this handmade cover.  Sorry, Handy Hubby, I still probably won’t take up ironing.

I hung the Goodwill mirrors that I spray-painted to the left of the washer in an asymetrical arrangement.  In my book, mirrors are a must-have for every room…even a laundry room.  I must say I never realized how ‘domestic’ I look while doing laundry – until now.  Ugh.

Look down and there’s the IKEA stool that I stained and polyurethaned.  (If it had been a snake, it woulda bit ya!)

Not only does the stain look great, but that stool has purpose!  Keeping the washer door open to prevent mold growth and giving me a lift to reach overhead storage.  (The rugs in the laundry room are also from IKEA but since I had them before the makeover, they aren’t getting much airtime here.)

On to the space above the washer and dryer…

I made and hung two curtains from a tension rod to hide all the water hoses and electrical cords.  For interest, I added geometric borders and a stenciled ‘knot’ onto each.  (More on stenciling the fabric next week!)  Yup, that was my big surprise for ya – the handpainted knot.  Or had you already figured that out?  Originally, I hung the curtains with just the contrasting borders but quickly realized that was too much bland, brown linen.  These geometric knots were the perfect inexpensive solution!  They are the focal point in the room.

Doesn’t the new hardware give the cabinets a polished look?

To the right of the dryer is Layne’s artwork.  I like that it pulls from the yellow in the ironing board cover without exactly matching hue for hue.  And it makes me smile.

Discreetly hidden behind the door is my secret bra-drying hook rack.  No more lil’ boys running around the house with my wet bras on!  (Okay, it is funny.)

That brings us so quickly back to the door again. 

I’m lovin’ the way the wicker laundry baskets play off the baskets above the cabinets.  All rooms need some texture. 

And that, my friends, is how I tweak a laundry room…for about $125.  Enough eye-googling, there’s laundry to be washed!

After painting the walls and putting everything in its place, I was crazy excited to work on the details of the laundry room.  The room totally functioned after re-organizing it, but it needed style.  Looking at the space, it dawned on me that there are a lot of unsightly things in a laundry room.  Mainly, the appliances and all that goes with them:  metal water hoses, the hot/cold water shut-off valves and the ginormous electrical cord/outlet for the dryer.  I’m all for the ‘industrial’ look but this was a little more ‘utility’.  Handy hubby was afraid I was going to paint it all!  I had a better idea…

I considered adding some sort of backsplash below the cabinets to disguise the hoses and cords.  However, after looking at the options, I decided it was too much money to spend in a room that was rarely seen.  (Plus, I’d rather save the moolah for a kitchen backsplash.)  I got to thinking it’d be nice to hide the uglies all together but still be able to access them.  Since our laundry room is on the second floor, I only turn the water on when I’m using the washer.  (Handy Hubby and I had waaaaay too many bad experiences with water mishaps from our first home that we’re over-conscious about leaky hoses.)  Instantly, it hit me!  I could hide them with fabric…a curtain-esque backsplash.  And since I had picked up a bunch of clearanced linen last summer, I could use something I already had!

I can sew but I’ve never used a pattern.  Then again, I’ve probably never made anything intricate enough to need a pattern.  Basically, I just make curtains, bags, aprons, slipcovers and shades.  Pretty easy stuff.  For the laundry room, I cut two rectangles (out of the solid fabric) to fit the width of the back wall.  I made them just long enough to reach the tops of the washer and dryer.

Then I sewed on a 2″ border of the geometric fabric and finished the edges.  I made sure to leave a small envelope at the top for hanging purposes.

I simply hung them from a tension I got at Walmart.  The two ‘curtains’ hid the uglies perfectly.  Here’s a glimpse.

I’m still able to reach the hot/cold water valves…

…the dryer controls and electrical cord.

Pretty nifty, heh?  If you were paying close attention, you may have noticed that I had Handy Hubby add hardware to the cabinets, too.  They’re similar to the ones we used in our kitchen renovation.

Once the uglies were hidden, I turned to the walls for added style.  In a room without furniture, the walls are about the only place to inject some personality.  Believe me, I thought about throwing some pillows on the washer!  I hunted down a few mirrors at Goodwill for $10 total.  They were brassy in color but I knew a little spray paint could turn things around.  Here’s the “Oh, crap!  I almost forgot to take a before picture!” picture.

I hung them to the left of the washer in hopes of bouncing light around the tiny, dark room.  Well…I had Handy Hubby hang them for me.

To the right of the dryer I hung some happy artwork that Layne made in preschool.  It makes me not so upset when I’m washing his “accident undies”.

Last, but not least, in the detail department was recovering my ironing board.  I fell in love with a handmade cover from Etsy.  At $24, it was my splurge for the laundry room.  Ironic, considering I HATE ironing.  Here’s a sneak peek.

Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see the rest…along with full room views of the complete makeover!  And a twisted surprise.  Know what it is?

So, remember me dreaming of a white kitchen?  Well, I finally got me a white kitchen!  And I didn’t spend a fortune on it either.  Take a look at our builder basic kitchen before we painted the cabinets white.

Nothing awful but I’m not an orangey-oak, grainy wood kinda gal.  All the kitchen pictures in my inspiration folder are of light, airy kitchens with either white or light gray cabinets.

Since our walls are already a gray color, I thought white cabinets would fit in nicely.  However, I didn’t have $10,000 sitting around (nor did I want to slap that down on a credit card) for new, custom white cabinets.  Needless to say, it was pretty easy to decide on PAINTING our current oak cabinets white.  Yes, that’s right, I said PAINTING over oak cabinets.  (My dad and grandpa are uneasy over this latest turn of events…being quite the handymen and thinking it a crime to paint oak.)

First, we removed all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts (and by ‘we’ I mean my hubby) and emptied the cabinets of their contents.  Our entire kitchen contents lived on/under our dining table for about a week.

The next step was to lightly sand and degloss all cabinetry surfaces.

Then we (this time I really mean ‘we’) primed and painted the cabinet frames that remained on the walls.  For maximum benefit, we let the primer cure well longer than the recommended time.  Same for the two coats of paint.

We chose an oil-based primer and latex enamel paint for durability.  (These cabinets have to put up with our two little boys.)  Both were purchased from Sherwin-Williams at one of their 20% off weekend sales.  The total cost in primer and paint was less than $80!  Once the frames on the wall were painted, our kitchen looked like this for 2 months while we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

We contemplated buying or renting a spray gun for the doors and drawer fronts.  But after reading about how difficult they could be to clean and how thinning the paint correctly took some trial-and-error, we looked into having someone spray them for us professionally.  Unfortunately, all the quotes were well over $2000… more than we were willing to spend.  We had every inclination to just prime and paint them by hand but knew it would be a loooong time before we were able to complete that task… it was January in Ohio… we didn’t want to paint them indoors…plus we have two kiddos that take up most of our time…not to mention jobs.  Then we found DJ.  DJ was hard up for some work, had a decent portfolio and wanted $280 total to caulk, prime and paint all the doors and drawer fronts.  Yippee!  And he did it in 5 days.  (DJ will definitely be considered for more time-consuming painting projects in our home!)

We got our doors and drawers back from DJ, then looked to IKEA for hardware.  We decided on the LANSA handles.  Luckily, I had $75 in gift certificates so we only spent $15 out of pocket on hardware.

Steve also made an extra trip back to IKEA for a handy tool to help him line up drill holes for the hardware.  It put us back another $2.  Here’s the drill template in action.

So, 2 months and $375 later, our kitchen now looks like this.

It’s not 100% finished.  I plan on adding a glass front door to the upper cabinet, left of the sink.  And Steve is trying to find an organizational rack for the pots and pans in the lower cabinet, left of the fridge.  We’ve also been putting away money every month for the last 3 months to upgrade our sink, faucet and countertops.  More to come on those changes soon…

But, for now, we are basking in the white-ish glow of our newly painted kitchen cabinets!  I might even take up cooking.