4 fav projects...so far!

So since Storm Cloud Nine is about 4 months old now, let's take a look at my favorite four projects I've done so far!

At number 4 is the Stairwell project:

At number 3 is my rustic wood pallet wardrobe mirror:


Number 2 is my board and batten treatment on the upstairs hallway:


And last, but not least, at number 1, my fav project so far is painting my kitchen cabinets white!


Yay! I'm excited to look back on all I've done in just 4 short months. But trust me - there's MUCH more to come! Til next time! :)

~Amy

Master Bedroom To-do List

When a new-to-me blog called Nesting Place posted her finished pics of her master bedroom, I finally realized what was wrong my my master bedroom: everything! I had wanted something cool, yet warm enough to be inviting and instead when I painted I ended up with this:

and this

that I now want to change exactly to this:

I've already moved our bed in between two windows on this wall here, in place of this tall dresser:

(there's a window to the left of the dresser that isn't in the photo)



So here's an official to-do list of the changes I want to make to our room to get it closer to my inspiration:

1- Paint our walls greige (a beige gray)

2- Paint these spindles on our bed ORB, and the wood parts distressed white.

3- Throw in a white 5x7 rug we currently have in an unused bedroom

4- Find a cool chair for the right corner of the bedroom

5- Find a craigslist dresser and tall wardrobe/armoire to make over

6- Make a starburst mirror similar to the Nester's 

7- Mount our TV to our wall over future dresser (which will be opposite the bed) and create frame for it (so it looks more like a pice of art) Something like this:     

8- Bleach the canvas drop cloth curtains a little lighter

9- Hang these JCP lights on either side of the bed (already ordered and got them at a fanTASTIC price!! :)



10- Move these current furniture pieces (my childhood furniture, and thus waaaaaay to small to store both mine and my husband's clothing - which is why I'm on the lookout for a Craigslist dresser and armoire) into a spare bedroom/future kid's bedreoom:

See how short in length our dresser is? I need something twice this size that's long and lucisous, similar to something like this that I'll paint white and distress:

11- Bring up end tables currently not being used downstairs and use them as nightstands 

12- Eventually re-finish the hardwood floors (in the rest of the house too) that are currently speckled orange and stain them a dark, rich, mocha.

Let's see, I think that's about it for the basic to-dos. I'm going to keep some of the pillows I currently have that will go with the future color/decorating scheme, like these cute button throw pillows:

Found these at K-mart last year!



I'll let you know how my progess goes with updates along the way. Til then, I'll be in my bedroom dreaming of this :)

Happy Tuesday!

~Amy

Lamp Revamp

In my post yesterday about the wardrobe mirror I noticed my $20 craigslist chandelier in the mirror's reflection when I realized I hadn't done a before and after post on it yet.

Right now it's spray painted a stainless steel silver, but here's what it looked like when I bought it from Craigslist:

HAHA! hideous! Brass is in the past  - cuz after spray painting it, it looked like this:

(yep, those are starfish. and yup, I did this project waaaaay back in the summertime!)

And again, here she is hanging in her home:

(sorry it's not a direct photo of it instead of this reflection :/ )

I bought light bulbs and those cute shades from Home Depot. And that's how new life was brought to a brassy and outdated light fixture. One more before and after side-by-side, shall we? We shall :)

  

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Mirror

I saw this idea in blogland awhile back, tried it for myself, and thought I'd share :) You know these sliding closet, mirrored doors?

Well I wanted a mirror as large as one of those panels to set on the floor and lean against the master bedroom wall. I wanted it to be a chunky and huge wardrobe mirror and those kinds of mirrors bought retail are upwards of $100 and more! So after seeing an idea on another blog, - I wish I could remember which one but unfortunately I don't :( - I found a pair of these mirrored doors on craigslist and made my own for $25.

That's right, I said only 25 smackers! :)

My husband and I brought those babies home and pried off the metal surround and the track system, leaving us with just the mirror. Then, I scoured craigslist again for some free lots of these:

Wooden pallets!

A local warehouse posted that they had a ton of these for folks who wanted em to just come and grab em - so I did! This is a photo of them (I think I took 3 pallets) loaded up in the back of my car.

So then the hubs and I went to town dismantling the wood pallets and keeping the best planks - the widest ones and the one's with the most rustic and prettiest patina - to use for the frame.

Then we laid the wood planks on top of the mirror around the outside edges to frame it all up, glued it all down with liquid nails and let it dry. Here's the finished product all set up in our bedroom! :)

(*happy sigh*)

B-E-A-utiful, right?! (Can anyone name that movie?! :)  ) I'm super happy with the outcome and it gives me a warm, tingly feeling everytime I see it - luuuuuuuuuuuuuve!!! I had thought about mitering the corners at 45 degrees to make it a true frame, but I like it with the mismatched corners. It gives it a semi-primitive, simplistic, factor and darnet, I like simple :)

AND this was so simple (and cheap!!) to make!! And the fact that this huge mirror adds some more visual square footage to our bedroom is a nice bonus too ;)

So anyone else out there see this somewhere in blogland and make one for themselves? Anyone thinking of trying it now? Or are you a no-wardrobe-mirror-needed kinda peep? Lemme know! :)

Happy Tuesday!

~Amy

p.s. If you're wondering what happened to the second mirror of the pair I bought on craigslist...well, let's just say removing the track system didn't go as easy as the first one went...and let's also say that now I may or may not have seven year's bad luck - if you believe in that superstition (eeeeek! I don't think I believe in that - let's hope it won't happen anyway! ugh, haha!).

I linked up to this party!

 

Also linked up to:

 

Totally random dog pic

Every now and then, our dog Winston poses like the funniest thing you'll ever see. Here he is now sitting like a human being, leaning on our couch, giving me the staredown. It make's me laugh hysterically!! :)

Love this dog!

~Amy

Batten Down the Hatches!

Ahhhh board and batten...you sexy design style, you. I've dreampt of you in my upstairs hallway for quite awhile now. And you've finally become a dream come true! :)

I started with taking this bare, beige wall and I primed and painted the lower 3/4s of the wall. Sorry I didn't take a before pic of the bare expanse of the orginal wall
:( 

After priming and painting I measured, cut and taped up a piece of window casing. I used window casing as part of my moulding rather than a piece of chair rail or something similar since window casing has the kind of ledge I wanted to be able to lean pictures and other doo-dads on it :)

After making sure the moulding was level (see my cute little level on the ledge? :) ) I nailed in several 1-and-quarter inch nails about 12 inches apart.  Then, underneath the window casing piece, I measured, cut, and installed a 1x6 piece of MDF underneath to give it a chunky and more dramatic look:

I love its beautiful chunkiness! :) Next I measured, cut and put up my vertical battens. They're 1/4 x 2 inch slats of wood found at Lowe's in the same moulding aisle as the 1 x 6 piece and the window casing. For the height of these, although my horizontal pieces were level, it's an old house so my baseboard was a bit unlevel from years of the house settling since it was built in the 1940s. So each of my slats are a little different in length, but all within a quarter inch difference - nothing exteme. 

This is the only part of this project where I called on help from the hubs. We don't have a power saw so I was sawing the old-fashioned way! I got through most of the sawing before my honey came home from work; then I asked him to make the cuts on the last two or three vertical slats for me since my arm muscles were shot from all the other sawing I did, haha! He graciously obliged :) 

Here's what it looks like once I had the vertical slats nailed up and cauked:

It's coming together!!!! wooohoooo! :)

  The next thing I did was prime everything. My mdf pieces were pre-primed but I went over them with primer anyway, you know, for good measure :)  then I went over all the moulding pieces with seimi-gloss white and here she is, all done up and purty!  (and with a decorative touch above it too!)

Wanna see more? Ok!...

I can't wait to find and hang a big, beautiful, chunky, wood-framed round mirror in the center betweeen the two sconces - those are battery operated timer candles (perfect at night!) and were a Christmas present. They can be found on QVC's Website.

I'm soooooooooo happy with how this project turned out, and that I did it 99.9% all by myself!!! :) haha. So what do you think? Are you on the board and batten bandwagon? Do you prefer beadboard instead? Or nothing at all on a wall? -hey, that rhymed! :)   Do tell!!!!

~Amy

I linked up to these parties!

Also linked up to:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As long as this well-wish comes within the same week as Jan. 1st, it's not really belated, right?! Ok, good! :)

So I've gone and done it - I've made the oh-so-cliched New Year's resolution of slimming down and shaping up. I also made a second resolution to find some nice cardigans for work:

      Resolution #1 - working on it....
      Resolution #2 - Check!

(p.s. that's not a reindeer in the background, left behind by Santa over Christmas - that's my dog :)

I found a multitude of cardigans courtesy of Old Navy, right after Christmas...and they were all under 10 bucks!!! SAAAAAWEEET!

Well, time to watch what I eat now - let's see if I can shave off those 15-or-so L B's I've acquired over the last year - yeah, that's what I get for NOT making this same resolution last new years ;)

Oh, and of course I've been working on a little project in the upstairs hallway of our house. I'll post about that soon, but for now here's a little sneak peek! :)

Toodles!!

~Amy