Bookcase Facelife

One of the family room projects is finished!  The past weekend we put the last coat of paint on the bookcase, and unpacked the final three boxes of books that had been living in one of the guest rooms/Coach’s office.  So glad that this is finished…only one more project left!

This is the first furniture re-do I have done completely independently from my mom.  We started off by using stripper to take off the other layers of paint.  This bookcase was a birthday present back in college.  My daddy actually built this bookcase to hold my plethora of books.  Originally the bookcase was a soft ocean color blue but had since been painted white & brown.  Never had we ever stripped the paint, so we had multiple layers to eat through.  After about thirty minutes of futility attempting to strip through the layers CH left for Home Depot supposedly to purchase some additional stripper.  Instead he came home with a handheld sander, talk about a happy girl!  Using the hand stripper we quickly stripped through the remaining layers quickly! 

Two coats of Behr paint later we finally had a finished product to move into the family room.  I used paint & primer in one and skipped a separate primer. 

Keeping this bookcase was incredibly important to me.  Having pieces that my mom dreamed up and my daddy constructed and has followed me through several phases of life is meaningful.  It might be heavy, cumbersome and a pain to move but it’s something I refuse to get rid of!

before

love that CH’s college helmet & my favorite sign live in harmony 

Thankfulness: November 1st

November starts the month of gratefulness!  While we are called to live a life of gratitude in all twelve months of the year, November  centers on it & I am always grateful.  Day One of Thankfulness starts now!

November 1^st: I am grateful for our beautiful new home & God’s provision of it!  Today we hosted our first “party”.  A tea party for two sweet littles and being able to welcome our friends into our home was one of the biggest blessings.

Paint Saga

#project007 was in full force the past two weekends & I am not ashamed to say that I am exhausted.  Mentally, emotionally, physically.  Mom & I have painted {almost} all 2300 sq. feet in the house with mom focusing primarily on trim this weekend.  Y’all, that woman is a rock star.  Someone described her as a hummingbird going a million miles an hour and I feel like that is so descriptive!  She is an expert painter and has made it possible to have an interior that is not this weird blue-grey color with really terrible baseboards.  Our house was vacant for the past nine months & the fresh coat of paint really helped the house feel clean.  Well, that and the six bottles of ammonia we have used since move-in day.  My daddy painted the ceilings and currently we have one room left to “cut it” & paint trim and then the bathrooms!  It looks like the major bathroom overhauls will be happening over Labor Day Weekend, which is super exciting news.  Currently mom & I have big plans to rip out a bathtub...

Coach Husband was wonderful concerning the paint color!  He gave me free rein to choose any color that suited my fancy and then stepped back from the process.  I thought I knew the exact paint color I wanted so while we were still under contract Home Depot had a huge sale on 5-gallon buckets of paint!  I went in and purchased 10 gallons of base, to be tinted at a later date and mailed in my rebate this weekend.  It was another small but mighty acknowledgement of God’s goodness!  When we closed I tested the paint on several different walls in the house, and as much as I wanted to love it, I did not.  It took FOURTEEN paint samples and one random putty-colored bracket we found in the house to finally arrive at a color that spoke to my heart. 

this is not all of the samples #refusetosettle

Behr’s Bungalow Beige.  I had a vision to paint our entire house one color for continuity.  As the painting portion of #project007 is nearing completion I am still so happy about that choice.  The rooms flow from one to another very seamlessly and have the same color throughout gives it a sense of cohesiveness. 

Behr’s Bungalow Beige Color Swatch c/o: Home Depot

My mom {currently being referred to as Queen Painter} taught me so much the past two weekends about painting!  While I am nowhere near her skill level, and am totally fine with that, I can now paint a pretty fabulous closet or bedroom door, am an expert at painting closets and can identify missed spots like it’s my superpower. 

Enjoy a handful of photos depicting the new paint job!  If you know my mom or see her anytime soon, let her know what a fabulous job she has done.  Not just anyone can cut in ceiling paint and along trim WITHOUT using painter’s tape. 

before paint.  I just love the brick wall in our master

we don’t have carpet but we do have a canvas

after wall paint but no trim paint quite yet in this picture

Does anybody else go through a multitude of paint samples before finally settling on the one?!