Church Pew:

I don't think I ever really intentionally stop at Garage Sales.  I usually have kiddo's with me, and so getting out to look through a garage sale isn't ideal.  I was driving home Saturday morning though, and saw a garage sale from the same house I bought my bar chairs from.  

I decided to stop, and to my surprise, I saw 2 Church pew benches!!!

Ever since a friend of mine told me about how she has a Church pew in her house, I instantly fell in love with the idea!

I've been searching Craigslist, and antique stores, etc.   

They were always so expensive in my opinion.  On average, $300 a piece!

So when I saw these, I quickly said I wanted them!!!...especially when I saw someone else looking at them. ;)

They were being sold as a set for $50.00, but I only really needed one.  I went ahead and bought both of them, and figured I could sell the one after re-doing them.

Once I started taking apart the upholstery, I saw that there were 4 different layers of fabric, plus the foam!  It was all filled with dirt and dust, so I'm glad I decided to take it all off rather than recover over it!

The very bottom layer of fabric (number 1) looks exactly like something you would see on a Church pew bench, which makes me think these were definitely at one time pews!

So after ripping off the 4 layers of fabric, and taking out the gazillion staples, it looked like this...

I sprayed it down with Rust-oleum Universal Satin Black Paint and Primer...

Once that was dried, I brushed on some metallic paint...

...then "distressed" it with my sander...

...to give it this look!

I haven't quite decided where I'm going to put it, or even if I'm going to sell the one.  Since we're knocking out our stairs, I'll definitely have room now to use it as an Entryway bench!  We'll see!

~ Jenny xoxo

Demolition of the old stairs...

Today we started the demolition of the old stairs!!!  If you are just now following, we built a spiral staircase towards the back of the house to replace these stairs.  You can read all about that here and here.

We first needed to install railing and spindles at the top of the stairs.  By doing this first, we won't have to worry about anyone falling from the top once the steps are taken out.  We used our current handrail from the stairs to replace up top, which is why you only see 1/2 the railing. 

Next was taking apart the stairs...

While I worked on the demolition, my Dad worked on installing the new railing and spindles.  We tried to re-use pieces of the stairs when we could...

Recently I bought a box of spindles from a garage sale that I was going to re purpose for crafts.  Instead, we decided to use them for the stairs.  They were not the same design, and I didn't have enough to replace each spindle, so we alternated them.  It looks great!

And at the end of Day 1 it looked like this...

Thanks for looking!  I'll keep y'all updated! =)

~ Jenny xoxo

Guest Bathroom:

So this bathroom is no where near to being done, but I only had a day to get it better than what it was!!!  We need to re-tile the shower, replace the counter top, install tile flooring, and a new mirror!!!  

Look what a difference it made with just some paint and decor. though!!!

And now...

Shower curtain, towels, accessories came from Target!

I picked up this Nautical accessory off a beg, barter, and sell site for $5.00!  I was wanting to distress it with some brown and gray, but I ran out of time.

Thank you for looking! =)

~ Jenny xoxo

Guest Bedroom:

Finally finished the guest bedroom last night, but had to wait for daylight to take pictures.

This bedroom is not 100% complete...still need to add picture frames to the walls, fitted sheet to the box-spring, knobs to the doors, edging on the floor, etc.

...but I ran out of time, so those things will have to wait.

I'm going to do something a little different this time...I have tons of cleaning to get done before guests arrive tonight, sooo...

This post will be ALL about PICTURES!!!...and I will update y'all later with all the details on where everything came from, and how I painted the furniture.

You can read ALL about how this room got started here.

...and stay tuned, guest bathroom pictures will be posted soon!

Thanks for looking!!!

~ Jenny xoxo

Weekend projects...

What a week!!!

I seriously have been NON stop!!!!

On Saturday, my Sister's neighborhood had a community garage sale.  So 1/2 the day I was shopping, and the other 1/2 I was cleaning!

I can't wait to show you all of my garage sale finds!!!...another day...another post. ;-)

We have some guests that will be staying at our house this week, and my brother (home from college) will be staying with us over the summer.  Our original plan was to clear out our current computer room that is downstairs, and have them stay in there.

Then we decided it might be best to clear out the junk room storage room upstairs, and make it a more permanent guest room.

That decision was made this morning (Sunday)...our guest arrive Tuesday!!!  Eeek!!!

I'm almost embarrassed to show you, but this is what our "storage room" looked like.  When we moved here 3 years ago, these were what the walls looked like...a mod podge of red, white, and blue!

We really have no place to store anything since we have no garage, no basement, and attic space is very limited.  The containers contain all of my husband's memorabilia...he "says" that once he has his "man cave", he'll be able to properly display everything!  Hmmm...

The kid's would also sometimes play in here, and I would let them draw on the walls.

It was just a MESS!!!...as you can see!

...and at the end of the day it now looks like THIS!...

It's kind of nice to have another functional room!

Downside is, all of my husband's "memorabilia" is now in our Master Bedroom!  Ugh.

Hopefully we can come up with a better solution...maybe a storage unit?  Tee Hee

On tomorrow's agenda...

Texturing & Painting the bathroom!!!

UGH!...look what I have to look forward to!  Blah!

...and my favorite part...

DECORATING the bedroom and bathroom!!!

So there's more to come!

Thanks for looking!

~ Jenny xoxo

diy Spiral Staircase - Part 2

Hey Y'all,

I know it's been a while since my last diy Spiral Staircase update!!!

Truth is, Part 2 has been done for a while now.  With 4 kiddo's running around, sometimes it's hard to keep that section of my house clean enough to quick snap some pictures.  ha ha  

So what you see is a clean, clean room!...ha ha ha Not quite.  "Behind" the snap shot is actually baskets full of toys that the kids need to put away when they get home from school...and a dining room chair that needs to go back into the dining room...and well, a bunch of other odds and ends just layin' around!  

Just keepin' it real! =)

You can read ALL about Part 1 here.

So let's get started!!!

Some lovely lilies from the garden...my favorite flower, that I picked especially for this photo shoot. =)

We finished the railing, spindles, and finally bolted the pole down!

I think the pole was supposed to be bolted down first...ha ha...awe well.

...new Mantel display...

For the railing:

A little trick for ya...just in case you decide to build one of these in your own home!  ;-)

The instructions say that for installing the railing, it's a 3 person job.  One person at the top, middle, and bottom...JUST to hold the railing in place.

There were only 2 of us, so we improvised...

We taped the railing onto the spindles first, then proceeded...

We used a smaller drill bit first to screw through the small hole on the silver piece of hardware, just to make a mark...

Then removed the tape, and used a bigger drill bit to make a bigger hole where our smaller hole was...

The drill bit has to be big enough to where this butterfly screw will fit through.

Once you push it through the hole, you'll hear a snap!  That means the butterfly opened inside!

Then you just tighten the screw!

Once you do about one or two spindles, the rest are pretty easy!

Okay so, I'm not sure WHY I didn't take any pictures of us installing the swirl spindles...

But basically we just laid them out how we wanted them.

We had to make our own holes through the metal spindle, so that kind of took a while, but was pretty easy.

Still lots more to do!!!

We still need to patch up the hole with some drywall.  I want the wood framing to be visible, and I'm going to be staining that.

THEN, it's demolition to the other stairs!!!  Eeek!

Thanks for looking!!!

God Bless!

~ Jenny xoxo