Mid Century Dresser Makeover - Navy & Jacobean

Hello!

How's summer treating you?

I was just talking with a lady at the gym and she mentioned that she's excited for school to start so they can have a routine again. It got me thinking about the fact that since we are still a year out from my Elle starting Kinder, once summer ends, our routine won't really change.

For god or bad, I'm not really sure?

Believe it or not I have never had a child go to school. Even though my oldest daughter was school aged, she was too sick to attend. Kind of a little weird thinking about sending one away for part of the day. Will I hate it? Love it?

Gah! I'm just praying I can keep up with it all!

In all reality I guess I can send Elle to preschool this fall, but unless I can get her into the one I want (aka, the CHEAP one...) I will probably do preschool at home. Registration is in August and its a first come first serve set up, so I guess we will see!

Anyways...all that talk because I wanted to tell you what my schedule has been like. Tangent much!?

I've been doing a ton of furniture makeovers in prep for upcoming shows (in between sign paining, my shift at the gym's childcare and the 3 kiddos) that I really wanted to share here with you all!

I do have some awesome house updates in the works as well, but for now I just want to share a fun makeover with you!

I snagged this mid century dresser for $25 at a yard sale...

It was large and had cool drawer fronts, but I was totally stumped about the top of it. It is a weird laminate that I didn't want to keep, but also didn't know what to do with. 

So, I sent a photo to my blogger friend (and queen of Mid Century thrifting) Jess at Bright Green Door and she said I was best just painting it- which coming from a purest like her, I knew was the right answer.

Not wanting to loose the awesome drawer fronts, I decided to attempt my first two-tone makeover! Painted body, and wood drawers. WIN!

(* indicates affiliate links - this means I get paid if you buy and item thru my link, but it doesn't cost you anything extra - it just helps keep this blog's ads to a minimum!)

The first thing I did was sand down and stain the drawer fronts. Jacobean stain* ended up being the winning stain after testing several other options.

After I picked the stain I need to pick a color to paint the body of the dresser. I asked for help on Instagram and overwhelmingly most voted for the light blue. 

 First I primed with a chalk paint and then started painting it the light blue and unfortunately I did NOT like it at ALL.

So I slapped on the other two options and it became pretty clear that I needed to go with a dark navy to get the look I wanted. (actually, white would've worked awesome, but I was pushing my self out of my comfort zone...) 

I painted several coats of the color Dot Dot Dot by Valspar, sanding in between each - followed by a wipe on poly (this is my favorite!*). I seriously, LOOOOOVE how it turned out! I'm really glad I went dark navy on it!

I feel like the navy gave it a very mad men-ish feel and looks oh-so-sexy with the wood drawers!

I toyed with the idea of putting this dresser in our master bedroom, but in the end, it doesn't fit our needs. Sad day...like for reals...ask my husband, I'm super struggling to part with this one, but I did take photos of it in there just because. Oh! I forgot to mention there is a mirror too, but it was too heavy to install by myself, so I haven't gotten pictures of it yet.

...you see why I want to keep it? (forgive the poor photos, I was having a heck of a time photographing this dresser for some reason.) Too bad it can't fit all my boot storage needs!

Instead this beauty needs to find a new home. If you are local (Boise area) its still available! Just email me to discuss the price!

One other thing! If you have a dresser like this you might want to check out what Dana from House Tweaking did with a similar dresser (same laminate top) its amazing! If I hadn't been done with this one when I saw what she did, I would've totally stole her idea!

That's it for today, hopefully I will have a kitchen update soon!

Twin Boy Nursery featuring Averie Lane Boutique Arrow Signs

I love when I get the chance to merge two of my favorite things - my blog & my Etsy shop.

So is the case with this ADORABLE twin nursery from Kelly, who asked me to create two arrow signs to hang above the cribs in the nursery she was designing for her twin boys.

It was so great working with Kelly and I love the signs she picked - not to mention I'm completely obsessed with the names of her boys! So cute! When she sent a photo of the signs hanging in the nursery I just knew I needed to feature the whole room here on the blog and luckily for all of us, she agreed!

Kelly says,

    "First of all, once I found out I was having twin BOYS I knew I wanted something rustic , simple yet classic.   We painted the walls greige and went with some accents of grey , navy and white. I like little pops of accents and something that could grow with the boys as they grew older. My hubby is a avid hunter and he was excited that I wanted to include some elements in their nursery

I went with simple white furniture, but brought in navy with the rug and curtains. My hubby has some deer antlers from a previous hunt and we painted them white and used them as decor.

I also knew I liked arrows and still needed crib name signs and discovered Averie Lane Boutique while on Etsy.  I found the perfect crib sign that was rustic simple but yet just enough for the nursery.  I chose distressed wood and the arrows with their names. It was the perfect piece to tie in the look of Colton James and Bo Hudson's nursery!"

Its such an honor to have my artwork in such a cute nursery!! Thanks so much to Kelly for letting us take a tour of your nursery! 

If you are interested in getting your own custom painted signs visit my shop:

Averie Lane Boutique

Upstairs Office/ Bonus Room Updates

Its been awhile since I have updated on the progress of our upstairs bonus room / office.

When I last left off it looked like this...

We had just painted the whole upstairs in Martha Stewart Sandpiper and I had grand plans of bringing in a seating area and small TV for the kids to use. I really didn't expect to use the space unless I was working in the office.

Then something happened. We decided to give the TV downstairs the boot! That's right, we decided to try living without a TV in the main living space. Our goal was to create a TV free zone so we could actually have conversations now and then! ha! (btw, I am super struggling with the layout of the living room..)

(old before, but you get the idea!)

Our big sectional needed a new home and obviously the TV did too. So it all got moved upstairs. The easiest thing to do with the TV was plop it on the little mid century credenza that I made over  (top picture), but it wasn't exactly the safest thing in the world...

Any guess why I didn't blog about that hot mess!? #fail

We had a very clear problem and I was trying to come up with all sorts of ideas to make sense of it all - think built ins or a giant floating shelf - but we had much bigger projects we need to tackle, so it kept getting the shaft. Until we ran across this baby at an estate sale in Boise...

Its a gorgeous pecan mid century dresser (with a mirror, too!) that we snagged with a few other things for just over $100! Score!!. We both agreed it would be perfect for our huge TV and could also provide awesome storage for movies and art supplies!

And it does!!

The scale of the dresser is much better suited to the TV and I love how it fills the wall space between the hallway and the weird little wall shelf. Much better!

The sectional fit perfect too!

I still have a long ways to go in here. I want to bring in a few other colors (coral!) so that it has some of the same vibe as the kid's bathroom. I want it to be happy, bright and fun up here since its our family zone. Nothing too serious.

The other side of the office pretty much looks the same, other than I added shelves to the opposite wall, but its kind of a hot mess so we will ignore it for now. Hopefully soon I can do a whole office / bonus room reveal!

Gotta just keep chugging along!