I hope that you enjoy getting Lost in Tarnation with me and joining me as I renovate, paint, parent, cook and more. I love to hear all of your comments. Don't forget to Follow me to keep up to date on all of the projects happening here in Tarnation.
Shhhhhh don't tell anyone, but here's a little sneak peak of our still in progress master bedroom. It's getting really close. The to do list is down to Kevan installing my stunning headboard (a little bit of horn tooting right there...), me finding and refinishing a nightstand and me decorating the walls...
But just because it's really nice to actually see a finished product once in a while. Here is one of the two Shabby to Chic redo's that were completed yesterday.
We'll start with this gem found on craigslist for $30
And here it is tonight. I ran into an issue with finding knobs for this beauty. The holes were drilled at such an odd length that I went through three sets of pulls before throwing my arms up and just going with other knobs that I had purchased for the buffet from yesterday and didn't like.
You might recognize the chair from the corner as being the $11 Chair Redo from this post.
That Crystal 5x7 (empty) frame on the dresser was an awesome find. Although I had second thoughts about buying it because it was so expensive... 99 cents... For a HANDCUT crystal frame... That was a tough decision right there.
Tomorrow I'll show you the drastic transformation on this piece!! You're not going to believe how gorgeous it is . (Update: See this finished piece here )
I found this dresser at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday and was delighted to find it was one of the half-off colors. For $40 I thought that it would be a great dresser for our bedroom. I don't usually like to spend more than $25 on something there, but hey, rules are made to be broken.
I decided that I didn't like the center cabinet and wanted that to be open for visible storage.
These knobs won't be staying on the piece, I'll be switching them out with some acrylic ones but they aren't here yet. I'm not done tablescaping yet, but it's a start at least. I'll probably play around for months until I'm happy. I'll be moving some of the pieces around the house once other projects are done so it won't be so cluttered. I have a crystal lamp sitting outside right now drying after I spray painted the base black. That will go on one of the corners. I'm excited for that.
Here are some of my crystal wine glasses courtesy of thrift stores. They are sitting on a silver tray that I also picked up at the thrift store.
This is the bottle of champagne that we popped after Kevan got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I think that it looks beautiful in my new champagne bucket cooler from last week. The coasters and champagne glasses are also from last week's thrifting.
How Pottery Barn does this look!! Wait until you see the before on it. Yet another piece that Kevan questioned my sanity for buying.
I'm super thrilled with how this turned out, it took a lot of priming, painting, sealing and time... but the end result is well worth it. It looks like a high end furniture piece in my formal dining room now. Once the kitchen is done and I can move everything off of my formal dining room table, I can show the before and after on that room.
This week I'll be posting another Before and After on a dresser in my bedroom, be sure to come back and check it out!
Thanks for checking out my latest Before and After! I'd love to hear your comments on it!
I just can't get enough of Silver and Crystal. I'm utterly and completely obsessed. There just might be an intervention at some point in the near future. Damn you Centsational Girl!!!
So today I continued my quest for the perfect dresser and nightstand for our bedroom at the thrift stores. I found the dresser and a temporary nightstand and will be converting them to Tarnation style hopefully over the next couple of days.
But I found more than just that.
I hit the motherload. Well, the motherload for a silver and crystal obsessed person like myself.
Today was the most random day ever. I started off at one thrift store and found three silver/crystal coasters that I couldn't live without. Here they are after a little lovin' from my trusty silver polish. ($2.99 for the set)
Then I found three beautiful crystal wineglasses at $2 a piece.
Then I ran over to another thrift store close by and couldn't believe it when I found 6 more of the matching coasters (which were also $2.99!!) and the fourth matching wine glass!! I was giggling like a maniac and there might have been some awkward glances in my direction.
In my euphoria, I almost missed my next find.
It's just a beautiful little ashtray. The top of the globe flips back to reveal the frosted ashtray inside. I think that it will be perfect on my desk at the office holding paperclips. Oh, and did I mention that it was $4.99??
Here is that ashtray after some much needed beautification. It's got a silver engraving on the bottom saying that it's William Adams, Made in England. It's Copper Plated Silver and I haven't had time to do a lot of research yet.
I just about called it at day at this point. Because after the insane find on the dresser, nightstand, coaster, wine glass and ashtray I figured that there was just no way that I would find anything else and I would be wasting my time even trying.
But I'm addicted. I couldn't just walk out at this point. I was committed. I just knew that there was another treasure waiting for me to unearth it.
I almost missed it.
In case you can't tell, it's a wine / champagne bottle cooler with a liner to keep your special bottle cold. How freaking amazing is that. For $8.99. Seriously. I kid you not. Unbelievable. $9 dollars. I love thrift stores.
Here it is after some polish
This piece is marked as Sheffield Silver Co., which is out of Brooklyn, NY and is just gorgeous. I'll be doing some research on this piece to see whether or not it stays with me as one of my most treasured possessions or whether it will go up for sale. It looks a little small in these pictures, but it is a full sized bottle cooler.
I couldn't boil the silver to remove the tarnish on the coasters or the wine cooler due to the glass on the coasters or the liner on the cooler. So it involved some elbow grease, but was well worth it.
Tomorrow, the kids go to school and I have a lot of painting to do. I've got a buffet table, dresser and side table to beautify... wish me luck.
Here is what it looked like the day that we moved in. You can't tell, but the previous owner had peed all over the walls and floors of pretty much the entire house. This was one of the rooms that they "marked" on their way out the door.
Here it is after we started work
The walls had textured wallpaper over faux wood paneling. They were awful. Kevan did a great job (as usual...)
And here it is tonight.
Notice the beautiful hardwood floors that my amazing husband and our friend Adam put down? Looks fantastic guys!!
I was very eager to rip out that hideous brass fireplace insert and man am I happy that I did!! it took about 5 minutes to remove and opens the room up and just makes it look current. I absolutely love the moss rock fireplace. It was one of my main reasons for wanting to buy the house. Once we got the mirror up and removed that brass, it became one of my favorite parts of the house!
If you notice the blue painters tape in the picture below, that's thanks to Kevan. He still has to finish framing out the window and we had quite the feud over this window and the window treatment. I finally put my foot down about 6 months ago and exclaimed that I didn't give a rats ass that the window wasn't done, but the curtain rod would be hung. One day my darling husband will get to the window, but until then I can smile and pretend that it's finished. We (okay fine, Kevan) painted the wood beams white and they still need another coat, but it's much better now. Kevan also removed the popcorn ceiling in this room and put up 1 million coats of paint to have the ceiling look pretty.
The coffee table is from Target and probably the biggest piece of crap we own. It rocks more than Lillian doing the monkey dance. But I haven't found one that I like enough to replace it with yet. So stay tuned as I create my own by following the plans from Knock Off Wood one of these days....
See that beautiful Tiffany-style lamp in this picture??? Guess where I got it.... Goodwill.... for $12.99. SCORE!!!
You can see the kitchen from this picture and that's another room which is still in progress. I've refinished and glazed the kitchen cabinets and hopefully we'll have the new countertop and backsplash we picked up today soon!!! Hopefully one day I can post the finished kitchen with it's gorgeous crown molding and up and down lighting and stunning backsplash with small copper tile pieces. One day... but back to the family room...
This is the motto of this house and my family. All because two people fell in love. I'll come back to this later on this week.
And I want to back up to one of the pictures from above real quick
See that black beauty media center that looks fantastic there under that beautiful TV (Thanks Dad!!). That was one of my thrift store finds that Kevan yelled at me for. Anyone notice a pattern?? Kevan yells at just about all of my thrift store finds. I swoon and he yells. But the great thing is that once I'm all done with it. His amazement with the finished product makes my heart melt.
So here is that gorgeous piece when I brought it home from the thrift store after paying $4 for it.
So today was kind of a big deal for my football obsessed husband. And I'm not going to lie, for me also.
For a much different reason though. For him, it apparently was some big game. For me, it marks the end of football season!! Which means that I get my husband back!!!!
But before we headed over to a friend's house to watch the game I was going to make up for the fact that I had slacked off on my projects all weekend.
So that meant taping up our bathroom for some stripes.
I'll back up and show you what our dressing room looked like two weeks ago when it was painted a pale yellow.
When I painted our master bedroom two shades of gray, I painted the dressing room entirely in the lighter gray. Then this morning I taped off my stripes with frog tape.
and here it is after the darker gray was added in the vertical stripe:
It looks fantastic and I'm so excited by it!!
But I need to remember to not get ahead of myself. I still have a lot of work before I'm done with the dressing room.
Just to give you an idea of how much work still needs to be done: - Prime and Paint the Cabinets to be... drum roll please... high gloss black - Replace countertops with slate tiles - Get another mirror for the far wall - Replace burnt out lightbulbs :) - Paint the light fixture black. I got those on clearance from Lowes for $5 a piece, so I'm completely alright with painting them. I'm also looking into swapping out the glass pieces. - Add hand towel hanger - Replace Sink - Replace Faucet - Touch up on stripes. I used frog tape which would have been fantastic, but the previous owners had put that home-made sand texture on the walls and to expect frog tape to work perfect on that would be a little much. I have another project coming up where I'll be needing razor sharp lines and I'll be trusting that again to the frog tape. - Boil my silver tray to get rid of tarnish like my candelabra - Replace the switch plates and outlet covers. - I'm toying with an another idea for the wall. - Add window covering
Work still needed for bath (toilet/stall shower area): - Basket for corner behind toilet to fill with toilet paper - Basket for other corner behind toilet for plunger and toilet brush to reside - Hang Picture above toilet - Add small shelf on inside wall of room for candles, fragrant spray, and most likely a glass piece with stones in it for decoration to get that spa feeling. - New tile on the floors and showers - Rip out old glass shower door
But hey, if I start thinking about the million projects we have running around this house, I'll never take any joy in getting any of them complete. So tonight, I'm going back up to my bedroom to stand in my new dressing room and smile. There just might be some back patting.
The master bedroom took a huge leap forward today to being complete.
I bought the most amazing candelabra from a thrift store the other day for $2.99.. I knew that there was silver somewhere under the black tarnish but man was it hard to see.
Of course I was so excited to get started on it that I didn't think to get a picture beforehand. I just went ahead and grabbed that bottle of sterling silver beautifier and started working. But after about 15 minutes, I had a teeny little spot uncovered.
This was not going to work.
So I turned to my trusty google and came up with a promising answer...
It involved tin foil, baking soda, water and a big pot.
I put the tin foil down, on the bottom of the pot, covered the candelabra with water and then slowly added the baking soda.
The secret is 1 cup of baking soda per every gallon of water used.
Here is where the light bulb clicked and I realized that I should be taking pictures...
Here is after about 20 minutes in the pot. I didn't have a full cup of baking soda so I'm sure that it would have been faster and better if I had. I've read that you want to add it really slow so that it doesn't spill over.
As you can see, when I pulled it out, there was a thin film over it so I grabbed that trusty silver beautifier and buffed my little heart out... After a couple of minutes, here was my end result: Silver Candelabra Thrift Store - $2.99
It's now got some beautiful red candle's in it and it's adding some glam to my dining room and I'll be on the look out for some more beautiful silver pieces to boil up. I've been scooping up crystal and silver and I'm excited that now I can stop using elbow grease to banish tarnish.
And I've heard from Missives from Suburbia that 3M makes anti-tarnish strips that sit under the piece to keep it from becoming tarnished which I'll be picking up when I get some more baking soda.
I am a working mom of two trying to stay sane in the midst of our first house renovation. I am obsessed with bargains and making something fabulous out of a boring find.
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