DIY Coffee Cup Shelf

Hey guys,

So I have another DIY for you guys! So my sister saw this on Pinterest and really wanted to build it. So technically we didn't really follow any instructions or anything like that, my mom and sister just kind of winged it haha. Also, I didn't really have anything to do with this whatsoever but my sister wanted me to include it on the blog as another DIY so here it is!

So all I know is that my mom and sister went to the home improvement store (I'm not sure which one) and purchased some 2x4's, I think? Then they drew up some plans, measured and cut the wood, and then we started to build it. This was the only part that I helped out with. I helped drill pilot holes for the nails and then hammed in the nails to put the whole thing together.

In order to secure the whole thing, we also used wood glue and nails to make sure that it was sturdy and going to last.

Then my mom and sister measure and cut all of the shelves. Next, they hammered all of them in place. I'm not sure if they used wood glue too but they might have just because it's better to be safe than sorry. 

Here is what it looked like when it was completely put together and they even put some coffee cups on it!

Here's a picture of the nails close up.

They added these to the back and that's how they hung it on the wall. They are also going to add L-brackets to the corners on the inside to make sure that it is really secure and won't fall off the wall considering almost all of our coffee cups are souvenirs from places we've been. 

So here is what it looks like hung up on the wall. We forgot to take anymore pictures of it before it was completely finished but my sister painted it white and then we hung it up on the wall. The wall that it is on is painted a light gray color so I think the two colors go together very well. Plus we hung it right above the bright blue coffee cabinet that we did back in September last year. We decided to take some of the mugs off of it though until we add the L-brackets just to be on the safe side.

XO, Steph

DIY Gold Shelving Unit

Hey guys,

So I was originally planning on doing some more Valentine's Day related posts but then I realized that Valentine's Day is like 4 days away so it would be kind of pointless to do a gift guide because no one would really have the time to buy any of the items I would have picked out anyways. So I will save my gift guides for next year (maybe I'll actually be dating someone by then haha)!

So about a month ago my sister and I stopped by IKEA on our way home from a trip to Tallahassee and we purchased this shelving unit. We only purchased one at the time because they're $80 a piece and we weren't entirely sure how it was going to turn out and we didn't want to waste our money haha.

So I started by laying out all of the piece's and spray painting them. I accidentally spray painted one side and forgot to take a picture and so I flipped them all over to the other sides and took a picture of the white side. Then I spray painted that side and forgot to take a picture of all of the piece's after I had finished spray painting! Yeah, I know, I'm super great at this whole blogging thing haha. However, some of the spray paint got on some of the sides of them so you can kind of see what it looks like spray painted before being put together.

This is the spray paint that I used. I originally used this spray paint on a different piece of furniture but I didn't like the way it turned out so I googled and a lot of people suggested this one instead and I have to agree. It looks so much better and I look the way it turned out.

Then I put it together, which I did by myself which is why there is only one picture of the final product all together. There wasn't anyone home to take pictures of me putting it together and it comes with instructions so I didn't really see the point in taking pictures of it after I put together different piece's haha.

Also, I marble contact papered the top and bottom shelves incase you didn't notice and this is the contact paper that I used.

So after I took this picture, I had to take out the top and bottom shelves because I realized that there were some spots that I missed with the spray paint and so I went back over the whole thing with another coat. Then I brought it inside from our extremely messy garage and yes we know, it's a work in progress! After I bought it inside, I put the top and bottom shelves back in, added the glass shelves and being styling it.

So it's located next to our giant picture window in the family room. It's like two inches too big in my opinion but it will definitely work and I'm not turning back now so it's staying and we'll just deal with the currents being kind of in the way haha.

However before I started styling it, I went around our house looking for everything that I wanted to use to style the shelves (which I actually did this wayyy before I even brought it inside, like two hours before because I was still waiting for the paint to dry. I really wanted to make sure the paint was dry before I risked brining it inside haha). I don't really want to buy anymore for the shelf because in my opinion we currently already own way too much for our good haha so I wanted to use stuff that we already had. Some of our stuff is still in boxes or scattered throughout different rooms so I went searching for everything that I thought would look good on the shelves. 

Since I think it turned out really well, I really want to get another one soon and so I will need to find more items around the house to add to the other shelves. Like I said we have a lot of stuff so I don't think it will be too hard to do. Plus I might end up replicating some things on each one to make it look more symmetrical. 

My plan for the bottom shelves since they are empty is to get large (probably white) boxes to store our DVDs in. I don't really like the DVDs to be on display and since this our main room with a tv in it we need to have our DVDs somewhere nearby and we have a large collection of DVDs that seems to just keep growing every Black Friday haha.

Then I styled each shelf, shelf by shelf. 

I am obsessed with vases and bouquets of flowers and I sadly haven't found all of vases yet but I came across this one in our office which is normally in our office and I thought it would go perfectly on with some pink flowers and on this shelf. 

I also have a large collection of coffee table books and also fashion books so I thought they would look much better on these shelves rather than on the shelves of the steampunk themed library so I went searching for my books and I kind of grouped them together based on their color. And for the group on the second to last shelf, you will notice that one of the them is a light blue and that's because it's my Kate Spade coffee table book. I currently have two out of three books that she has. My plan is to buy the third one and I will just add it to this stack and that way this stack will be organized by author haha! By the way, no I did not pay the full amount for my Kate Spade coffee table books. I actually found both of mine at either TJ Maxx or Homegoods on clearance for super cheap. I think one of them may have only been like $8.

One of the other stacks has my two Lauren Conrad books and so whenever I get her newest one Celebrate I will add it to her stack and probably remove some of the other books and move them over to the other shelving unit. There are several other coffee table or celebrity books that I want to buy so eventually I think I will have enough to make the shelves look a more full but at the same time not too cluttered.

My sister and I recently purchased these pineapple bookends at Hobby Lobby but I thought they would go better with the theme in family room since our library room is going to be steampunk themed. Plus we have a pineapple catch-all tray on our front entry way table so it just ties it all together.

I originally had all of the books in between the bookends but I thought it looked better with the two books underneath the bookends since the bookends have acrylic bottoms. 

The two candles are both the same candle just one is light pink and one is hot pink so I thought they would go well together plus I love having the different shades of pink. Once we finally pick out a navy blue couch and get some pink chairs in here I think everything will go together very nicely. I currently have an Eiffel Tower figurine/statue thing that is like a teal color and so I think I'm going to either spray paint it black or navy blue and replace the box at the top with the Eiffel Tower so that way the Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower are right next to each other. Or I might put the Eiffel Tower on the other shelving unit whenever we get that and then try and find maybe another similar box that coordinates with the one we already have.

My plan for the one shelf with the picture frame is find either more picture frames or different picture frames. I do think that it is kind of wasted space at the moment to just have one picture frame. And yes the picture frame is currently empty. I just found the picture frame around the house and added it to the shelf. I thought that the pink tied in very well with the rest of the pinks.

Here is the finished product minus the bottom shelf which will hopefully be finished soon. To be honest, this project took way longer than expected (about 2 weekends worth of work because I kept running out of spray paint and time to go back to the store to buy more) but I am so glad that it is finally finished. I absolutely love the way it turned out and I can't wait to make another one. In total I think I used about 6 or 8 cans of spray paint and then to cover the two shelves with marble contact paper, it didn't even require a full roll. I finished off one roll that I already had from another project and then just cut off another piece from a different roll that I had already opened for that same project but there is still left on that roll.

P.S. All of these images were taken with my iPhone so sorry for the poor quality.

XO, Steph

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

DIY Cedar Chest Makeover

Hey guys,

So here is the next DIY for our new house. This particular item will actually be going in my room and I recently discussed in my room inspiration post that it was going to be houndstooth. Well, unfortunately we were unable to find the exact houndstooth fabric online that we used for the chair that my mom and I recovered and I didn't have enough left over to make it look good. We also couldn't find any houndstooth fabric in any of our local craft/fabric stores so we decided to go with a fabric that coordinated with the cream color in the houndstooth fabric. I am very happy with the way that it turned out and I have fortunately have enough houndstooth fabric left over to make a pillow or two to place on the bench!

Here is what the chest looked like before. I had already taken off the original handles that came with it because my mom and I have been talking about redoing it for years but never got around to it. The color is original but the blue and red plaid fabric on the bench is not. You will see later on how many times the bench has been covered.

So I kind of forgot to take pictures in between but a lot of has happened in this pictures. We sanded the stain off of the front of the chest and I believe by this point both sides has been done as well. We also went ahead and took off the bottom wood piece a.k.a the legs. I wanted to try and make this chest look as modern as possible which is why we decided to go ahead and remove the bottom legs.

I also forgot to take pictures between all of the steps. But at this point we had finished sanding all of the cracks and hard to reach places. We then added one coat of this stain, let it dry for a few hours, and then we went back with a second coat, and let it dry for a few hours. I then decided to add the handles and screw the lock back on which I had removed during the sanding process because it kept getting scratched by the sander. 

This is what the chest looked like completely stained with the lid down and the handles. The picture above as the lid open which allows you to see what the cedar looks like.

We then brought the chest inside to finish working on it.

We purchased the legs from Lowe's (I am not that happy with them so I may change them out if I ever find legs that I really like.) This is a picture the legs and the pieces you have to screw into the bottom of the piece of furniture in order for the legs to attach to the furniture. This is what the legs looked like after being stained with one coat.

This is a picture of the chest with all four legs screwed in and attached to the bottom.

Here is what the chest looked like standing on the legs without the bench attached to the top. One thing you can notice is that the handles are very crooked. I do plan on switching them out with crystal knobs that I plan to purchase from Hobby Lobby. I'm hoping the knobs will not look as crooked as the handles do. However, I purchased the handles from Lowe's.

Now on to the bench portion…
Here is what the bench looked like underneath the first layer of fabric.

And here is the original piece of fabric that came with the chest. This chest is very old and is actually probably as old as I am so the fabric is very dated.

After I removed all of the fabric, I also removed the piece of foam that was original to the chest as well. We purchased new foam from Joann's and batting as well. The piece of foam we purchased was 2 inches thick and the batting we purchased was large enough to cover a queen size bed. We weren't really sure what type of batting to get or how large to get. So we just grabbed one that we thought would be large enough and one that sounded good haha.

Here is what the different layers looked like. The bottom layer is the particle board that was original to the chest, the next layer is the 2 inch foam, the third later is the batting which I doubled over, and the last layer is the fabric that we purchased which you will see in the next image.

Here is what the bench looked like after I had finished tufting it. This is the YouTube tutorial I watched to learn how to tuft and I highly recommend following all of her steps because it was definitely helpful. My only complaint about tufting is that it is very time consuming. In theory, it wasn't a hard process but it was extremely hard to find the hole that we drilled to bring the needle back through.

After I finished tufting, I stapled all of the batting to the particle board. Then I went around and cut off all of the excess. Next, I moved onto the fabric and stapled all of it down and then removed the excess.

This is what the bench looked like once everything had been stapled down and all of the extra fabric had been removed.

The next three pictures are the final product from different angles. After we finished stapling and cutting the excess fabric, all we had left to do was the screw the bench back onto the rest of the chest. 

And my dog totally approves, so that great news!

Thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!

XO, Steph

DIY Wooden Chest Makeover

Hey guys,

Today's post is going to be a little different than normal because it's actually a DIY/ furniture makeover. My sister had this chest that she has had for years (and by years I mean like 10 plus years). It's made of real would which can be hard to find nowadays and when you do, it's totally over priced.

Before she started college, my sister and her best friend (also college dorm roommate) decided to paint the whole thing black and splatter different colors of pink all over it to go with the theme of their dorm room. At the time, we all thought it looked really good and turned out great. However, after redoing it, we have no idea what she was thinking or why our mom let her do it. It took us forever to completely redo it and the main reason why was because we had to remove all of the paint with a paint striper and then sand off the remaining paint.

I thought it was going to be finished in one weekend but unfortunately that was not the case. I started the project back in July and we didn't finish it until Wednesday September 14th. It didn't really take us all those months to work on it but it did take a while. I started working on it back in July when we were in our rental still and I was able to remove most of the paint from the drawers. But life happened and I had to put the project on hold and we picked it back up after moved back in with our parent's. We started the project on a Friday worked on it on Saturday and Sunday, skipped Monday, and then I finished it up on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This picture below is what it looked like before, when it was inside our rental. We use it as a coffee bar. We will still continue to use it as a coffee bar in our new house but we have some other plans for it as well which I will show you guys when we get it all set up.

This is what the drawers looked like with the paint striper on them. The paint striper is supposed to sit for about 15-20 minutes to do is it's thing and then you can use a plastic scraper to remove the paint.

This is what the drawers looked like after applying one coat of the paint striper. It definitely removed a lot of the paint but as you can tell there is still quite a lot of paint leftover. 

This is what the drawers looked like after a second coat of the paint striper and this was the last coat that I did until after we moved out of our rental and we picked up working on it again at our parent's house.

This is a picture of the door and the shelf that goes inside the chest before we did any paint striping or sanding.

This is a picture that my sister took of the top of the chest with the paint striper on it. As you can see, the paint striper kind of makes the old paint change colors, (small purple section) it also bubbles up, and then eventually you can kind of see the paint lifting up some.

Below is a picture of the shelf, the pre-stain wood conditioner that we used, and the stain. We used the shelf as a tester piece just so we could see what the stain was going to look. None of us had ever used a colored wood stain before so this was a new experience for us. I definitely recommend choosing a colored stain if you are bored with your typical wood stains. It makes life a little more colorful and exciting!

Here is one of the drawers before we stained it. We ended up doing a third coat of paint striper just so we could try and remove as much paint as possible before sanding. Then we sanded it, cleaned it, conditioned it, and then stained it.

This is what the chest looked like after being completely sanded and before the first coat of stain was applied.

The next two photos were taken after the first coat of stain was applied.

This is what the chest looks now, after adding a second coat of the stain, re-attaching the door, and adding all of the knobs. I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to put it inside the new house and set it all up!

Here is a picture of the knobs we chose. We found them at Hobby Lobby! And if you haven't been to a Hobby Lobby, you have to go, like right now! They are amazing and there is something for everyone at them. 

We found all of our supplies at Lowe's but I am pretty sure that Home Depot or other local home improvement stores sell the same products. The stain and conditioner we used were both by Minwax and the paint striper we used was by Formby's (Formby's Paint & Poly Remover). The way the stain works is, you find the can in the wood stain section, take it to the paint counter and tell them which color you would like it to be. We chose True Blue and I absolutely love the color and want to stain everything in sight that color (haha). We stained the whole thing with one full coat and then applied a second coat, waited about 3 minutes and then wiped off the top layer of that coat. We did not follow the directions completely but that's mostly because we've worked with other stains before so I didn't see the point in completely reading the instructions (haha).

The paint striper stings really bad if you get it on your skin so I highly recommend wearing long sleeves, pants, socks and gloves. That's not what we did and we learned from our mistake (haha). I also recommend wearing masks and eye protection when sanding like everyone says to do because the stuff really does go everywhere including your lungs. I also recommend making sure that you have or buy rags that can get ruined because they will, trust me. They also come in handy if you happen to get something on your hands and need to wipe it off such as the annoying paint striper or the stain.

We have a couple more furniture makeovers planned before we move into our new house so I will definitely be sharing those with you guys! I hope you guys enjoyed this type of post and check back in the next month or two for more DIY's.

Thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!

XO, Steph

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave