Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Going Green!


Our 4 year old son Ryan LOVES green. This doesn't just mean that he will choose green if asked his favorite color. This means that he might like green more than trains or diggers (though maybe not more than riding his bike), and that is a lot!

This dresser was part of my baby furniture, and it's been in the basement of a few different houses since then. With the basement project going on, we needed to move it and I came up with the idea of painting it and using it in Ryan's room. His bed is a honey color and he didn't have any other furniture in his room, so the natural choice was GREEN! When we initially painted his room we had added a lower bar/shelf to his closet to make it very functional for clothes storage, so we avoided buying new furniture at the time. This was working well, but lately there have been messy piles of shorts and pants in there, and it's been driving me crazy!

Ryan helped me with every step of this project except for using paint thinner to clean the wood. Our local home warehouse store had suggested sanding, but a paint store we love recommended using paint thinner and primer instead of sanding! YAY for that!!! It cleaned the wood well enough for the paint to bond by ensuring that no polish or oils were left behind.


Ryan took off all of the old hardware himself!! All 20 screws. He was thrilled.



We wanted to center the handles on the knobs, so we filled and sanded the existing holes on 4 of the 5 drawers.


Working with Ryan was so much fun! He has a great attention span and listened well! We did one coat of primer (tinted to match) and 2 coats of the semi-gloss paint (skipped the 3rd coat on the drawers) . Ryan painted all 5 drawer fronts and the bottom and side of the dresser twice. I did the 3rd coat on the dresser myself. Not too bad!! We loved doing this project together and I am looking forward to having him help with more things soon!


Opening the paint can was lots of fun!



We are thrilled with the results! Ryan loves the color and he loved picking out what would go in each drawer. This project inspired me to do a few other things in his room too (with more planned!). I finally hung the alphabet letters he made at preschool this past year, which adds a lot to the room. It was a miracle that I found all 26! When I first put them up, I had all but 1. Want to guess which one as missing for a while? I had always loved the letter cards from Land of Nod but Ryan is really proud of having made these and I think they look pretty cute! They don't show up too well in this picture but each one is decorated based on the letter: feathers on the "F," eyes and eight legs on the "O," etc.



Now I have to move his name letters that were previously centered over his bed. I was thinking about painting a shape on the wall for them, but now I might put them on a decorated board or frame to make hanging them easier. You can see 2 magnetic chalkboard squares propped up against the wall - we have to hang them - we have 9 to make a blue/green checkerboard pattern. We color-matched the paint for his dresser to go with that, and his closet is painted a similar color. Sadly we weren't aware of his green obsession when we painted his walls blue!



Before and After!!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Real construction has begun!



The wood for framing was delivered on Friday, July 29th. Today the plumber is here cutting up the floor for the plumbing. You can see the framing around the sliding door and to the right of that. That will be a foyer/living room area. I have to gather all of the before pics and maybe post a floorplan soon!

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to our new "project" blog. I am hoping to use this to talk about projects, large and small. The biggest thing we'll be doing is finishing our basement!! Marc will be creating an apartment where my mom will live. He is doing most of the work himself, so the progress should be fun to watch! I can't wait to see how it all turns out! Some of the small projects are DIY home improvement projects that involve decorating, organization, and more!

I have to mention the name of this blog. I thought it was funny (and TRUE), but Marc did not! He finds the title overwhelming. I take it in more of a positive way, since infinite projects mean infinite room for improvement! They will be things we want to do, to make our lives a little easier or prettier. It's not about being unsatisfied with how things are, but always being creative and wanting to make small changes. Or not! We'll see how we do!

A little background on our house and family . . . we had our house built and moved in on January 31st, 2006. We love our house but there are so many things we still want to do! Most of our walls are still "builder white" with unpainted spackle from when the builder repaired nail pops. Since 2006 we have had 2 children, so we've certainly been busy. Ryan will be 5 in October and Katie just turned 3 in May. Their rooms and the playroom are the only 3 that have been painted, and I have had fabric to make curtains in 5 rooms for years. Most of our time will be spent on the basement right now, but I'll be doing some smaller projects as I find time. Wish us luck!

Stay tuned for pictures of a dresser that we (Ryan and I) just painted for Ryan's room!