Upcycled Chalkboard

Hello, again! I'm back today with a quick and easy little project that I worked on for my daughter, Miss Olivia at her request. You see, my pretty Olivia will be 17 in September and starting her Junior Year this Fall (How on earth did that happen?). The past two years has been pretty rough on her. Young teenage girls can be so hateful to one another, and Liv has unfortunately felt the effects of that ire more than once from young ladies she considered her friends. She ended her Freshman Year as a kind of pariah and spent her Sophmore Year trying to please others in order not to have a repeat. I have sadly watched my sophisticated and kind young lady turn into someone that I didn't recognize and her life started to fall apart. With the support of our family and her teachers, I did an intervention of sorts. I am hoping that she is now on the path to a healthier and happier future. I have tried to impress upon her that in life, we don't often get a second chance or a clean slate to start over with and not to waste the gift of a bright new year in a new school with the opportunity of making better choices. At the suggestion of my step-mother, she is currently working on making some short/long term goals for the next year and wanted some kind of chalkboard or memo board to write them on. I actually had just the thing to upcycle, and I thought that I would share it with you today!

I found this sad looking and very grimy picture frame at my local thrift store for a whopping $2.99 and threw it into my pile of "stuff to work on" out in the garage. When Liv said she was looking for something cute, I knew it would be perfect for her new room. I pulled it out and gave it a thorough cleaning with a damp cloth and attacked the glass with some windex.

I started on the wood frame first by giving it a couple of coats of a new brand of paint I've discovered - Fusion Mineral Paint in the shade Casement. This is supposed to be a one and done paint, meaning no primer or sealant is needed. I used a random wax brush as I knew that the raised decorative areas in the corners would be a challenge for a normal paint brush and it worked like a dream. I was going to distress it a bit to test it out, but Miss Liv decided that she liked it as is.

Another new to me product is the Krylon chalkboard paint that I picked up while out and about. After the glass was cleaned, I took this outside and applied it as a normal spray paint. Two coats was all it took to get the flat matte black of a chalkboard. I had purchased a special fine tip chalkboard pen and Liv was able to make a list of goals that made my mother's heart sing.

And that's all it takes to upcycle a sad and tired looking piece into something refreshed with a new life! Easy peasy and a pretty inexpensive project that is perfect for a dinner menu or grocery list in the kitchen or as a decorative accent in a girl's room.

Until next time,

Frederica

A Mini Bathroom Makeover

Hello, Blogging Friends! As always seems to be the case this year, it's been a little while since my last post. We've moved into our new home and we are busy working hard to make it our own. We had found a buyer for our old place at the beginning of May, was in the process of packing up and moving out when we were notified that our buyer's financing fell through. Le sigh... Since we had an empty house waiting for us, we decided to move into the new home at the beginning of June and relist the old one without us living there. It made life so much easier for showings since we no longer had the stress of physically being there. We have a new buyer, and our house closes in another two weeks. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it goes through this time without a hitch as I am eager to move on with the next chapter in our life.

If you knew me in real life, you would know that I literally have no patience and want everything in my life done as soon as possible. Like yesterday. I work 10-12 hour shifts, but I still got most of our boxes unpacked within the first few days and painted four bedrooms over the first few weekends. It's been hard for me not to want everything to be done immediately in our first month. I keep reminding myself that we are going to be in this home for quite a number of years to come and I can take my time while fixing it up one room at a time.

Now that the bedrooms have been been repainted, I have a few other rooms to paint, and then the "hard" stuff will be done! Today, I wanted to share what I've done with our downstairs bathroom over the long 4th of July holiday weekend. It started out as a kind of blank slate as neither of the homeowners that owned our new home before us chose to do any upgrades to this space, so it's essentially the same as when the home was built in 2012. The main color throughout the home is Powell Buff by Benjamin Moore with the bathroom no exception. Initially, I intended to have the main living spaces painted Repose Gray by Sherwin Williams. But the neutral buff shade has grown on me, and I've decided to keep it after all. However, the bathroom doesn't get a lot of light and it seemed pretty dark with the walls and the ceiling painted the same tan color. We had some paint left over from Miss Olivia's room and I spent a Friday evening/Saturday morning painting the ceiling white and the walls Adley Grey from Sherwin William's HGTV line (available at Lowe's). I love this warm gray shade, it was actually a color that I had used in our old home which Miss Olivia just had to have in her new bedroom.

I chose to go with some actual color to brighten up and contrast the space (neutral loving me with color, imagine that!) and added some touches of yellow. Olivia gave me her little snowglobe as she couldn't find a spot for it in her new room and I just love it against the green of the mini boxwood wreath that I had been saving for something special since last Christmas.

Now, as much as I love the new changes, I turn to the right where the vanity area is located and it looks so sad and out of place. I really dislike the vanity that the builder chose and installed in most of the 1/4 bathrooms in the neighborhood. My goal for 2018 is to replace the vanity with something like the style below (link here). Tasteful and classic, something to fit in the small space yet considered a full-sized vanity. We shall see. But for now, I am happy with how the rest of the room has come together and it's one more thing that I can cross off my seemingly endless list for now.

Ready for more? I will be back soon to share a small project that I worked on for Miss Olivia's room. What's orange and blue and pretty ugly?...
Our front room...

Until next time,

Frederica