Friday, July 8, 2011

Fun Fridays!


I am totally slacking on my blog lately!! I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted!!

First I want to share some pictures of a few projects I worked on this week with the help of my wonderful parents!!

They came over on Wednesday so my Dad and Brandon could finish putting insulation underneath our 3-season porch. While they were slaving away in the 80-degree heat, my Mom and I were working on beautifying the porch itself. The porch had kind of turned into a dumping ground for furniture and odds and ends.  We decided to move the futon from the guest room onto the porch and we put my old mattress and frame into the guest room. So now our guests can sleep on a real bed when they come to visit!

Not the best "before" picture, but you get the idea.


And I switched out the dark brown duvet cover for a lighter one - it is summer after all!



We used an old duvet cover for the futon so the mattress underneath stays cat hair free!



Luna approves! (Doesn't it look like her outstretched paw is giving a thumbs up??)


We had 2 sets of tables and chairs out here before and decided to just keep one and my Mom happily took her set back!


My plan is to take the coffee table from the living room and add it to this room. Or maybe just a smaller, low table - who knows! The possibilities are endless! I am already envisioning this as my new reading room!

I also need to finish stringing my sets of small white lights around the curtain rods - hopefully this weekend!

The other project, that has been about a year in the making, was to refinish some patio furniture. Last summer I worked at a pool & patio store and at the end of the season, there was a table and chairs set that needed to go back to the manufacturer, because the paint had started to peel (The people that owned this set before me lived near the ocean. Salt water + certain kinds of paint = peeling!) The manager said it was mine for free as long as I could get someone to transport it to my house!

Here's a before picture of one of the stationary chairs.  (The set came with 4 stationary chairs and 2 swivels).


(They had to spray paint them with white "X's" so they couldn't be sold again)

We scraped the chairs that were peeling pretty bad - mostly on the arms/seat. I used an attachment on Brandon's drill


Here's a decent "before" picture of the table:


A before pic of one of the swivels:


You might be able to see a slight difference in color between this chair and the one above. That's because I had started to spray paint it with a brown textured paint. The more I looked at it, the more I hated the color. So I switched to shiny black instead and here's the result after 1 coat:





 I bought 12 cans of glossy black spray paint at $4 each and we've only used 6 cans so far. I think this whole project will come in under $40 if I do a 2nd coat on the table/chairs. Not bad for a free patio set!


This picture was actually taken from inside the porch looking out, because it's raining today, but I realized I never took an "after" picture of the table, so I had to improvise :) If you look closely, you can see there's an inner circle in table - it's a Lazy Susan!! Such a great feature! I can't wait to add the umbrella/base I bought a few months ago, that is, once it stops raining!

Ok, so now back to our regularly schedule blog hop! I'll keep it short:
  • Tonight I have ANOTHER gig with the band - that's 5 in 8 days!! It'll be nice to have 2 weeks off before our next show :)
  • Tomorrow morning I am running my first 4.8-mile race! Monday I ran my first 4-miler and was pretty pleased with how I did, even tho I was a complete sweat-ball when all was said and done:
  • Tomorrow afternoon we have our nephew's 6th birthday - I can't believe he's already 6! When he was born, I was in Ireland with my parents on vacation and I remember calling Brandon long-distance to find out if his sister-in-law had the baby yet. Time flies!
  • Sunday we're having a little cookout with friends - so far the weather seems pretty good! Can't wait to have them try out our "new" patio furniture too!
Happy Friday everyone!!! Don't forget to link up at Jen's blog!


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