Random Fun Stuff

Not a day goes by that I don’t take a picture of something with my phone. Occasionally it’s something funny I want to show my husband, like this guy:

Most of the time it’s an amazing piece of furniture, awesome home décor or a really different estate sale treasure. I thought I would make a habit of sharing my finds with you, starting today.

This one is courtesy of Brian's recent trip into an antique mall in Roswell. In true Roswell fashion, this was a 'high end' antique mall because every cool thing he found was $1000+! Check out this cart (?) turned display table:

This coffee table was amazing:

If we actually had room for a piano, I think we would get one in a hearbeat. This beauty was only $250:

Found these crazy couches at an estate sale in Decatur:

The same house had the coolest vintage stove:

Last weekend I stopped by an estate sale and fell in love:

It was on sale for $100!! I really had to exercise some restraint and not take this home.

The same house had this mid-century modern gem (that also had a matching bed):

Even if they're ugly, I can't resist taking a picture of an old record console. This one had an 8-track player too.....fan-cy.

The antique mall near our house was selling one of these:

Was is that, you ask? I have no clue. The tag said "Morse Electrophonic Stereophonic Music Center. Still pretty bad-ass.

A few weeks ago I swung by an estate sale in an old home in Atlanta and found this awesome phone-nook that I want in my next house:

These last two pictures were taken in homes of people I actually know. First up, it's my co-worker's fall mantel. I loved it. Simple, classy and no fake leaves!

This table is in my parent's house and my brother found a very similar one for sale in NYC for $2000+. Best part is? They got it for free from my dad's work!

That's all I have hiding in my phone so far. Hopefully this weekend will be packed with more fun finds to share.

Craigslist Desk: After

Long ago, I promised to share the before picture of my office desk from Craiglist. Well, it's honestly taken me that long to get it cleaned up! You can thank my mother-in-law for visiting, which forced me to tidy up the house.

First let's check out the before:

And the after:

Please excuse my poor excuse for 'styling' the desk. I just threw some of my favorite objects on there for the photoshoot. Want to see them up close?

My stack of vintage book from Carmen and Ines and the mannequin is one of my all-time best Christmas gifts from my aunt.

I had a huge 'thing' for horses when I was younger and my uncle gave me this super cool leather horse.

The hardware is from Home Depot:

Maybe one day soon our offices will be painted and then I can really work on decorating!

Weekend Recap: Stairs 2.0

We got some major things accomplished around the house this weekend and I made a new friend, the caulk gun:

We spent a lot of time together on Sunday...

To refresh your memory, this is where we left off on the stairs:

New treads and risers, but only about half-way up. On Saturday night Brian finished up the rest of the staircase:

Then it was on to wainscoting/paneling. We had gone as far as to layout and prime the space that would be paneled, but that was it.

First step: penciling out your lines so you know where to glue the molding:

Then a few hours later you have this:

And no, I wasn't just sitting around while my husband did manual labor, I was actually caulking our master bedroom:

Once I was done with the bedroom, I moved on to caulking the new molding on the stairs, buuuuut I ran out of caulk midway through! We decided to call it a night and finish up next weekend. Hopefully next week we can have the panels painted and the handrail installed.

Fingers crossed!

There's a lady who's sure, all that glitters is gold...

Anyone get the title reference? No? Today's post is about our staircase!

Let's introduce our stairs in their before state:

Initially we ripped off the old railing (to get ready for paneling) and removed the carpet from the first step to take a look at what we were dealing with. Unfortunately, there was no beautiful oak hiding underneath, just good old fashioned builder-grade pine (with lots of nails).

That carpet was g-r-o-s-s. The railing (against the wall) was atrocious. The whole thing was pretty much a giant fail. In the middle of our dining room makeover, Brian decides to rip out the carpet and the railing. This was the result:

Looks safe enough, right? Eh, not so much. Not only were there no railings to hold onto, but see that neon green step below? Yeah, that was a broken tread that we were supposed to avoid stepping on. Just imagine how much fun it was to carry a full laundry basket up and down those stairs.

Before we could really begin working on the staircase, we needed to decided exactly we were planning to do with them. The initial idea was to stain the treads and paint the risers. Problem? That was going to cost us over $500 in materials (oak is expensive). There was no way we could justify spending that much on stairs, when we don't plan on living there for the next twenty years. New idea? Replacing the treads and risers with new, fresh pine (only around $150) and then working from there.

First we ripped out the existing steps:

You should have seen us trying to go up and down...

Next, Brian cut the large side piece, which turned out to be the biggest pain-in-the-ass part of the whole thing. See, when he cut the first piece, he immediately glued and nailed it in place, but once the first riser went up, we realized it was off by just a hair. Sadly, a hair is too much and we had to rip off the board, go to Lowe's, buy a new one and re-cut it. Of course the second time around, Brian lightly glued it in place and then nailed it down at the very end.

Here is a progress pic:

And the final:

The extra final step was glueing on the edgy-piece-thingy (very technical) that rounds out the treads:

I bet you're wondering why the new stairs stop halfway up? Well, we weren't exactly sure what our plans were. Want to see our options? (Note: thank you Pinterest for all these amazing ideas)

The first plan was to carpet the stairs, leaving just the edge or the tread where the ballisters will be.

Then we thought about painting all the stairs white and installing a runner:

What about painting the stairs white and leaving the runner off?

Then I discovered the painted runner. Insert angels singing. I loooooove this idea, but we decided it just wasn't write for our home. It's on at our next house!

So what was the final decision? Painting the treads rich brown and the risers white. This picture sold us:

Those stairs are black (we're doing brown), but the re-design was amazing. Here is a color closer to what we wanted:

So, wish us luck with Part II of the staircase makeover. Hopefully we will work on it in the next few weeks.

Hallway Molding

It's funny how the smallest (I didn't say easiest) of projects can really make a bigger difference than expected. This time around, it was finishing off the molding in the upstairs hallway. First let take a look at what we were dealing with:

The ceilings had already been redone when we first moved in, but we had never put up the molding OR painted. Oh, and please excuse my spider-webbed air vent - I cleaned that after we were done.

The attic door also needed to be re-framed with molding:

See that crazy paint line? When we painted the living room/dining room, we extended the paint into the stairwell, but only enough for it to be visible from downstairs. We knew we would be working on the hallway at a later date, so we left it. How's that for trashy?

If you didn't know, I am a master-caulker (yes, I call myself that), so while Brian installed all the molding, I was busy caulking away at the attic door and the molding that I could actually reach on my ladder. Check out our handy-work:

While we were up there with all our power tools, we decided to replace the master bedroom door. Not only was the door a cheapo, plain, plywood kind, but the frame had seen better days:

First step was to remove the entire frame/door:

Then basically just pop in the new one (I make this sound easy because (a) I don't know how to do it and (b) I wasn't even there to watch Brian put it in). Here is the after glamour shot:

Not too bad for a Saturday project. We also rebuilt half our staircase, so stay tuned for that post this week!