Knob Art

Doc got on to me earlier this week because I haven't posted anything.  It's not that I haven't wanted to, it's just that I haven't had time. Plus, I figured you're probably tired of me whining about how busy I am. So I flipped through the latest pictures on my camera and realized I didn't show you this cute little project. It was seriously so easy, but I love the way it turned out.

My mom found a bunch of really cute knobs at Antropologie and bought a handful of them in the colors of her patio.  I distressed a couple of pieces of scrap wood for us to mount them on. Then we screwed them in place. Easy peasy!

Need a tutorial?

1 - buy knobs 2 - paint wood 3 - screw knobs on

There. Now you can do it too.

Ready for some pics?

And from the side:

We did this smaller one too. The middle knob was purchased with the others, but the ones around it used to be on my parents' kitchen cabinets before they redid them.

And since I was out taking pictures on the patio, I snapped a full view shot of the shelf that I painted. Please ignore the horribly placed decorations; I just threw some stuff on there for effect.

In completely unrelated news, I finally brought my potted daisies home from work. I set them outside on a patio table last night around 11:00. Today, I made it home from work around 5:30 and this is how they looked:

Isn't that the saddest thing? My happy little daisies took a serious nose dive.

Don't worry, I brought it back inside. Hopefully I can get it to perk back up.

Playing Catch-Up

It's 3:45 on Thursday and I've been working and working and working all week. I haven't had a lunch break and I've stayed late every night. But....I think I just hit a wall.  My brain has decided it cannot take anymore thinking about numbers! So, I'm going to take a quick blogging break.

I feel like I'm behind on so many things and need to play catch up.  First, my sweet mom had a birthday this week and I didn't even give her a shout-out post! Luckily, I've been working on some surprises for her that will hopefully make up for it.  (Or maybe I've been working on the surprises since the gift I ordered for her isn't in yet...you decide.) Mom's birthday was on the 12th (Monday of this week) and she got to celebrate in Virginia with my dad and one of their best couple friends.   Their vacation is coming to an end as they're due back home late this evening. I've already picked up Taylor (the german shepherd) from the vet and taken her back to their house and I will have Oh Henry at their house soon after I get off work. Happy late birthday, Mom!

**********

Doc's parents celebrated their anniversary this week and I didn't give them a shout-out either. Please forgive me! I know they spent some time with their friends and hopefully got to hang out around the house and enjoy each other's company.  Doc and I are actually in disagreement over what day the anniversary actually was - I could've sworn it was the 12th because I thought it was the same as my mom's birthday. Doc thinks it was the 14th.  So, Lala and Poppa, we need you guys to settle this once and for all. Which day was it?!  Oh, and happy late anniversary to you both!

**********

Remember the headboard bench that Doc built?  I showed you pictures of me spray-painting it green and briefly mentioned that it had been delivered to its new home. But I didn't show you how it ended up!  So let's back up.  It started as a stained headboard with new wood creating the bench.  My mom painted the new wood chocolate brown to match the stained part and then I sprayed the whole thing green.

I decided before I painted it green that I was going to give this bench to my cousin who is currently building her house by hand (well, she's got help from her parents and husband and the Amish, but they're doing a lot of it themselves). But this house they're building isn't just any old house. It's under their horse arena (where they ride horses and rope cattle and all that fun stuff) (my city-self couldn't come up with any other examples of things to do in a horse arena) and was originally supposed to be a concession stand/tack room/horse-washing-room/storage building. But then their house sold and they were left without anywhere to live. The long-term plan will be for them to eventually buy the plot of land that sits next to theirs and move into the house that already lives on that land. They can't do that until the land goes for sale. So, in the meantime, they're living with both of their parents and building their "house" that will eventually be become a concession stand/tack room/horse-washing-room/storage building by hand. Did I mention that they have 3 kids that are 4 and under?

Since I knew where the bench was going, I decided I needed to personalize it for them.  My aunt sent my mom a picture of their horse brand and my mom got to work making me a stencil.  I colored the back of the stencil with pencil and then taped it to the freshly painted green bench.

Then I traced the outline and pulled the stencil off.  The pencil rubbings on the back gave me a nice line when I traced it.

And then I painted the design brown.

Not too bad, right? Now, I definitely could've stopped there, but you guys know how much I love a distressed piece of furniture! I couldn't wait to get my sandpaper on this. Here's how it turned out (staged with my mom's patio pillows).

A close up of the brand:

I'm pleased with how it turned out.  My mom put a coat of polyurethane on it for me so it'd be ready for our trip to their neck of the woods.  I think my cousin was excited to get it.  I didn't even know she was using bright green in her decor so it was a perfect match! She mentioned maybe using it as a bench at her kitchen table. I think it'll look great wherever she puts it - inside or outside.

Oh, and while I was at the arena I managed to get a shot of the real brand on a horse's rump. What do you think - does my painting match it?

The brand is cattle horns (I think??) centered between two C's (for their last name).  I think it's all pretty cool.  They have lots of horses and cattle and I was lucky enough to see their border collie, Nelly, round-up the cattle while I was there. So fun to watch! My cousin and her husband  have competed in a lot of rodeos and won lots of saddles and other prizes.  These days they ride (break?) horses for other people and they also have some male horses whose, ahem, services are available. (Just in case anyone out there is looking for a horse-baby-daddy.)

**********

On Monday, June 28, I sent my dad these plans and told him I thought this shelf would look great on their empty patio wall next to the patio set we made.  I told him if he got the supplies I'd help him build it that weekend.  My dad told me he'd hit up our local orange or blue store on Tuesday, June 29 to get the wood.  On Wednesday, June 30, I went to my parents' house for dinner and whaddaya know, he'd already built the darn thing!

My mom said he was determined to finish it that night.  He stayed up til 11:30 working on it. Of course, once it was done it just sat there because he was relying on me to finish it.  And, since I'm pretty sure my mom isn't checking my blog from the flight that she's on right now, I'll go ahead and tell you that getting it painted is one of the surprises I have waiting for them to see.  Here's a sneak peek:

Hopefully I'll have some finished patio pictures to share with you soon!

***********

After some frustration with my camera at the wedding shower I attended last weekend, I decided to go ahead a splurge on a new lens for myself.  I deserve a present, don't I? It has shipped and should arrive any day now. I am supah excited to play with it and hope I get it all figured out before the triple baby shower I'm hosting on the 25th!

Ok, we should be caught up now. It's time to close all my work spreadsheets and hit the road!

Paint Sprayer

Remember the patio set that Doc and I made yesterday? Well, it's a done deal! Today I got out my old paint sprayer - I haven't used it in over a year - and decided to put it to use on a few big pieces. It was a great day for it and I made lots of progress!

I drug everything out into my parents' yard and flipped it over. I always like to start painting at the bottom.

Remember the headboard bench that Doc made a few weeks ago? It made the lineup to be painted today too.  I finally have some good plans for the bench.

After everything was set up, I got busy spraying!

While the paint sprayer is a bit of a hassle to drag out and definitely a pain to clean, once it's loaded and ready to go, it is so fun to use! You can paint big pieces of furniture in minutes instead of hours. But - if you're like me, you get excited and start to get spray-happy and before you know it, you've got too much paint on your piece and it starts to drip.

Sigh.

That's when you have to break out the paint brush to do a little clean up.

But soon, after letting everything air-dry for a little while, it was all done! I have more to do on the bench, but the patio set is officially finished.

Of course, it quickly made its way to my mom's patio.

Here's the deal for those of you who have expressed interest: I think my starting price will be $200. I have at least $100 worth of materials in it, although that's hard to figure accurately since some things I already had on hand. (Recognize that green paint? It's leftover from our house.) If anyone is serious about buying a set, let me know and we'll crank another one out for you.  I think the second go-round will be much easier and faster than the first.

Phew! What a weekend. I think that's the first time I've built furniture and completely finished it in such a short span of time.

Minnie is so proud of her momma, can't you tell?

It's getting dark so I have to go now...I'm turning into an ogre.

4-Hour Patio Furniture

The beach house that we rented in Florida was three stories tall, and each level had its own balcony.  We spent lots of time out on the main level balcony, reading or eating or just hanging out. I think that balcony was my favorite because of the furniture. It had two big adirondack chairs with a small table and a taller bistro-height table and adirondack-like chairs. They were painted red and were very worn and rustic looking. Of course I loved everything about them. I spent the whole week looking them over to see if it was something we could do ourselves. I decided it was most definitely something we could build.

I knew it would be super easy to build if we had a pattern, but obviously that was not the case. I did measure a few key pieces - I should have measured more - and then I took lots of pictures from every angle.

Here are a few pics of the set from the FL beach house.

I did have a model for a few pictures.  You know, just so I could see everything to scale.

Cute patio set, right?

So I made a few sketches and scribbled down some measurements and then spent the 8 hour car ride home figuring out how to build it in my head.

I was able to talk Doc into going to the local Orange and Blue stores with me late yesterday evening. We purchased all the wood I thought I would need and drove it over to my dad's shop.

Today, we hit the shop to work it out. Ok, actually, to keep things real around here, Doc got up and played golf and I worked in the yard. Then, after lunch, we headed out to the shop to try our hand at the table and chairs.

Four hours later, we had a very own patio set! Is it perfect? No. Does it have a few wonky curves? Yes. But at least it's done! It hasn't been painted yet - hopefully that will happen tomorrow - and we didn't even bother trying to hide any screws or anything like that.  We were working fast and going for the "outdoors rustic" look.

We are so proud of our four-hour project! (And no, we don't need it. I just wanted to prove that we could make it.)

Headboard Bench

See the stained piece of wood in the picture above? That would be an old headboard. But not just any headboard. No, that headboard pictured above is a ten-dollar headboard. I saw it as I drove past a yard sale last fall and did a quick u-turn to go see how much they wanted for it. I can't remember what they wanted but I talked them down to ten. I probably would've paid more, but the lady took ten! Only problem? It didn't fit in my car.

My mom is the biggest supporter of all my crazy projects and ideas. Probably because she knows that I'm going to drag her through them with me regardless of how she feels about them so she might as well be supportive. Keeping that in mind, as soon as I realized the headboard wouldn't fit in my car, I did what I do when any of my hair-brained ideas get me in a situation like this: I called my mom. Being the awesome mom that she is, she jumped in the car, met me at my house, and we drove to pick up the headboard together. A life-saver, I tell ya!

Then we had a headboard. I had an idea for it, I just didn't have any time. So we put it in the attic of the shop and decided I could drag it down whenever I had time to play with it.

This weekend Doc found some time for the headboard! I have to brag on  him because I gave him my vision and he brought it to life all on his own. And he did a great job!

The plan was to turn the old headboard into a bench. A sturdy bench. Not a bench that would fall apart as soon as someone sat on it.

So he started off building the apron and supports to go between the legs.

And then, because the back was already finished, the only thing left to do was put on a seat! He used three 2x4s to make a slatted seat.

Ta-daaaa! Not too shabby for a quick Sunday afternoon project. And you wanna know the best part? All the wood pieces he used were scraps from other projects which means total cost for a new headboard bench was only ten dollars.

Proud of his hard work.

Now its back in my hands. It needs a cute paint job, but what color? Should it all be one color? Should it be distressed? Should it have a cool pattern on the back? As you could tell from our home makeover, we don't need a new bench on our front porch. Do any of you need a new bench?  If so, speak now or forever hold your peace.