Sunday, October 28, 2012

Ikea Hack

Who doesn't love Ikea. It's full of color and shine and excitement, and $2.99 meatballs! I must say that I even enjoy building my own furniture, there is something magical about building an entire dresser with an alan wrench.  There is nothing more exciting than a great Ikea hack.  Now if your not familiar with the term "Ikea Hack" its basically an upgrade on a basic Ikea product.  Here are some of my ideas on  my Pintrest Ikea hack board


Now, for the Ikea hack over load, visit, Ikea Hackers Net.  People have hacked EVERYTHING. From functional furniture to the bizarre. There are great Billy bookcase built ins, to rat cages and cat litter boxes.  Regardless of the function in your own life, its still interesting to take a look around.

 
Here is one of my favorites from Better After, the whole article is at their website.  This is the Hemnes vanity and the Rattviken counter top for a total of $379.00.  This is another one of those website that you can spend all day at- so don't say I didn't warn you :)
 

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Fireplace Transformation

Finally after 20 years, this fireplace transformation is complete.  I could pull of 20 years of pictures in front of the fireplace, but with my recent computer issues, the only one I could find was actually just going to be Abby, but the fireplace was in the background. 
This is the way the fireplace looked since we moved in in 1992. It was always an issue trying to hang the stocking from the fireplace at Christmas for all these years. So I'm pretty excited for the holidays this year.

So off came the builder grade tile We added cement board where the tile was removed for the granite to be installed.
 
The glass doors were also removed.  Now it was not planned at first, but the mirror fell off the wall -that's a whole another story- but as it fell to the ground, it took the doors with it.  Turned out that the fireplace looks much better minus the doors.
 
 
And now... the finished project!
 
The carpenter was great, and we copied a mantel from the Ballard Design catalogue. 
 
A few hours later, we finally had a mantel and a whole new fireplace!



Saturday, October 13, 2012

Second Chance for Faux Flowers

I seem to have a number of faux flowers/plants around and even with weekly dusting they seem to get dusty and dirty.  I wanted to dry the floral cleaning spray so I tried Dri Splendor.  You should be able to get it at Joann's or Michal's.  I worked great, and I'll let the before and after pictures speak for them self.  The bottle says you can also use it with dried flowers too, I didn't have any around to try it on, but my guess is that you would want to spray lightly as to not over wet the flowers.
 
 
 
 
 
The Before:

 
The After: 
They turned out like brand new again!