Two post in one day....

I thought I would fill you in on what I do during my spare time. I usually try to take on a project every season. I'm just the kind of person who hates to be bored. And besides, our home needs improvements! Since we've moved in we redid every room on the 2nd level. I hated the colors up there, the main floor wasn't as bad. We also ripped out the upstairs bathroom and did a complete makeover. I'll post pictures of that one day. I would right now but they are not on this computer. Anyhow, now that we are done with the upstairs my focus is the main floor and boy does it need it. Well, the dinning room was the worst! It needed my immediate attention. First of all the previous owners placed an off white rug underneath the table. I don't know why, the room has hardwood floors, I can't comprehend why they would do such a thing. Unfortunately we do not have the money to redo all the floors so we had to just replace the carpet which was the cheapest way to go. Besides, I'm hoping we move in the near future so why invest tons of money...right.
Since we had three children living here last year, the off white carpet took a beating and was gross. I gave up steam cleaning it, it just wouldn't come clean. So here are pics of the makeover....hope you like it!

This is exactly why no one should ever have off white carpet in the dinning room...what the h.ell where they thinking????



I never liked the chair rail. I thought the room was small enough and that just divided it more...



Gross...



I love the color!



Getting there...




We changed out the carpet ourselves...such weekend warriors!!!



Next, I had to chose a fabric for my chairs. Again, cream doesn't work with kids....oh and the fact that they are seven years old probably doesn't help.



My trusty tools...oh, I also used an electric staple gun, DEFINITELY a MUST HAVE!! Bet you like the kitchen knife...lol.



OMG, much better....I decided to go with the fun circles. This was a hard decision though, it took me a couple weeks. Then I thought, HELLO, as much money as I'm saving, if I don't like the pattern I can always change it. It cost less than $10 per chair.



Please excuse my garage...we blame the mess on each other. Anyhow, this was my next project. I wanted to add a piece of furniture for more storage. I found this at a local thrift store for $7.99, I love thrift shopping for old pieces of furniture. It makes me feel like I'm being "green" by recycling. So here's my buffet during it's transformation...btw, thanks Dad for helping me get it home!



I have to admit, this is the first piece of furniture I actually stained. I've always used paint because you can hide blemishes better. However once I finished sanding, A suggested that I stain it. To my surprise I took his advice, it looks good but in hindsight I should have sanded more carefully.



Here's the buffet in the room, looks a lot better and I LOVE the extra storage!



Another angle of the room. As you might notice, I need to paint the spackle where I lowered the curtain rod. And now that I look at it more, I think I need different curtains. I was going to make custom curtains but I started to tire out. I'm not totally happy and should have made some but I can always do that later....



I think this arrangement turned out great...especially because the selves were $10 and the glass vase was $.99 at Goodwill. ;) The rocks are from my yard and the flowers are from the arrangement on the buffet. And if you don't know I love elephants!!!



All done...whew!