Cerusing for love.

When Kelly got to work restoring this Craigslist desk, she ran into a bit of a snag.  Old paint from its many previous makeovers had become embedded down into the surface, and the surface was only a thin veneer. Thus, sanding the snot out of it was out of the question.

So she decided to try cerusing, which is a technique that sometimes involves opening up the existing grain with a wire brush, painting it, then quickly wiping off the excess, for a 'paint in the grain on purpose' look, and not a engaging in drunken revelry, like I had first thought. Oh wait, that's carousing.

Anyway, she got beautiful results!  Get a close-up look on her blog The Ridiculous Redhead.

VERY LAST CHANCE to enter the Ryobi tools giveaway!  

Winner announced tomorrow!  

Enter HERE.

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What rot hath wraught.

When it comes to popular trends in furniture, there's lightly distressed, heavily distressed, and possibly rotting. I wouldn't aim for number three.  High probability of splinters.  But that didn't stop Charlie from nabbing and rehabbing this sweet little rocking chair that her daughter discovered on the side of the road.  PS: her daughter is three!  Way to start 'em young Charlie!

Check it out on her blog Attempting Aloha.

And here's another in the dangerously distressed category.  Could this little thing be saved?  Nope.  Sorry.  It was thrown in a fire.  The end.  

Just kidding!  I wouldn't do that to you.  That wasn't the end at all.  Angela at Humble Beginnings came along and snatched it out of the firewood pile just in time. She turned what she could save into this adorable pink bench.  Redemption.
 

See, don't ever give up!  Maybe sometimes you feel like a rotting old pile of firewood too, but you are actually full of incredible potential underneath.  All you need is a heavy-duty sanding and some paint, and possibly some new handles on your drawers!  Er ... that's not what I meant ... my motivational analogy kind of went off the rails there. You know what I mean.

PS: LAST day to enter my Ryobi giveaway!  Win $99 worth of Ryobi Lithanium +One tools!  

Enter here.

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Settee Awhile

I like how Karryann at Gracefully Vintage unstuffed her settee with a lovely, casual linen.  Not literally unstuffed, because ouch, but I mean that she made it less stuffy and stodgy with that peachy velvet, and more cool and casual instead.  It's like when your grandma tries to be all hip, but she's surprisingly good at it, and suddenly she's cooler than you, and now your friends want to borrow her clothes.  Like that.

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Itty Bitty Baby Budgets

I apologize in advance if you absolutely adore the HGTV show Donna Decorates Dallas, but I just watched it for the first time and can't say I'm a huge fan.  Judging by the one episode I saw, it's basically wealthy people buying expensive things. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not particularly inspiring, relateable, or exciting.

You know what excites me?  How about a  $33 bathroom makeover?  Better After reader Carly spent $15 on a quart of paint for her stripes, $18 for some peel and stick tiles, and added accessories and white paint she already had on hand.  What would Donna have done to this bathroom with a $33 budget?  Bought a new bar of soap? 

And Kate may not have had the resources to go out and buy a brand new desk, but she was resourceful enough to craft one herself out of things laying around the house.  Yep, this "desk" is actually storage cubes and cardboard stacked on top of wire shelving and wrapped in some wood-patterned contact paper. Check out more on her blog Magic City Thistle.

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I can Phil it coming in the air tonight.

So how do you feel about the chevron 'trend?' Coming?  Going?  I don't actually want to know.  Because I am still quite enamored with it, and to hear otherwise might break my little chevron-lovin' heart. (But I will happily host a discussion on my true feelings about the mustache trend, if you ever want to know). 

Tiffany recently shared our mutual love of the ziggity zag on the blog The Craftiest of Women, with her painstaking table makeover.  Creating and staining the individual wooden pieces of the chevron design was the painstaking part.  Painting over the Phil Collins lyrics, probably not so much.

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The Swanky Swinky

When Georgia spotted this chair sitting on the curb, she nabbed it, knowing it would be perfect for her sewing room, pee stains and all.  Why do we always default to pee?  Why can't we first assume it's like ... a Pine Sol stain or something?  Because it's not, of course.  It's probably totally pee.  But she gave it a deep clean and a new upholstery job, and now it's ready to go to work in her sewing room ...

Too bad she didn't actually have a sewing room. No biggie.  All it took to transform this cluttered basement corner was a few shelves and some color-coordinated organization, and now it's the real deal.  A vinyl decal of her etsy shop logo makes it all the more official.  Check out more on her blog The Yost Family.

Just a few days left to enter the Ryobi Tools giveaway!  Don't miss out!

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Branch Dressing

Do you still feel like Downton Abbey punched you in your grief spleen last night?  I do. It was so tragic! Why do I get so attached to fictional people?! Sob!  Anyway.  Here's a little something that should cheer us up. It's a fabulous dresser makeover from Debbie at Painted Therapy. Talk about bringing new life into the world, but without a horrible eclampsia storyline to go with it!

 

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Rub it out.

When Jane moved into her home, she inherited a real doozy of a guest room. The wallpaper made of heart-shaped smears wasn't enough to throw her, but the massage-bed the previous owners had left behind was.  Ewww!  Ew.  But she pulled through and turned this left-over love hovel into the sweetest little nursery you've ever seen.  Head on over to Urbane Jane to take a peek at all the details; even the books are color coordinated!

And check out Jane's kitchen makeover that I featured back in 2011 while you're at it!

Only a few more days to enter the RYOBI tool kit giveaway! 

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Fearlessly Fulgent

A wise man once said, "Go big or go home."  Actually, that was probably just a No Fear t-shirt. Remember when No Fear was the coolest brand, like, ever?  Maybe that was only at my high school ...  Anyway, back then I had a No Fear sweatshirt, but I thought I was so clever by unstitching the embroidery on the F, so my shirt just said 'No ear.'  Sigh. That girl needed a hobby.

Anyway, what on earth were we talking about.  Yes, going big or going home.  Or, in today's case, going bright and staying home!  Check out these eye-popping makeovers that add a hearty gut-punch of color to their respective owner's homes.

This first chartreuse lovely comes from Statia at Failure to Nap. Check out the whole story on her blog as to how she came to obtain what she calls "The Murder Dresser" and how it was formerly painted the color Ugly. It's hilarious.

And if your eyeballs would love to fondle some fuchsia, then observe this flagrantly fabulous dresser from Sarah at Funcycled. That girl never quits! She's certifiably amazing.

 

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A hostess' gift.

That's the trouble with building a comfortable little guest cottage in the country, you know.   Pretty soon your "overnight" guests turn into "weekend" guests, who turn into "practically permanent residents who demand a better cooking set-up so you are forced to remodel your guest cottage kitchen to accommodate them."

Luckily, Laura at Top This Top That was happy to oblige.  What a gracious hostess!   The amenities at my guest cottage (aka: my living room) currently equal air mattresses and water from the tap.

Have you entered to win the RYOBI tools giveaway yet?  You still can right here!

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Bedknobs & Benchsticks

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that this before headboard is ever so slightly different then the one Ashley at Distressed Boutique used for her headboard-to-bench makeover.  She forgot to take a before pic, it happens.  So, I'm not sure if her actual headboard came with those extra bedknobs on top and she chopped them off herself, or if it was already like that, but I dig it.  Makes it look much more benchier, yeah?

Hey, remember that movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks?  I verrrry faintly do.  Wasn't it something like a cross between Mary Poppins and Murder, She Wrote?  I could be wrong ...

Have you entered to win the RYOBI tools giveaway yet?  You still can right here!

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Your plays are numbered.

Oh, man.  I could already imagine what it would be like to have this before kiddie table in my home.  Endless fighting about who gets to sit in which chair, daily facial tics as I tried to ignore the scribbled on surface that never quite comes clean, the pastel color scheme passive-agressively urging me to throw it in a bonfire ...

But Kristi at Lolly Jane solved all three problems by making this little play table cute, cleanable, and numbered.  No more fighting over chairs, the chalkboard top is a snap to wipe, and it's so dang adorable that I would probably discourage my kids from actually playing with it!

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Perc me up!

Don't be deceived by Better After reader Leatha's old kitchen. It wasn't outdated at all. No, it was actually postdated. It was so far ahead of the trends that it knew that Emerald Green would be the 2013 Color of the Year, like twenty years ago.  This was finally it's moment to shine! 

But by then Leatha had had enough. Enough! Out went the green formica and the wallpaper made from retired clown pants, and in came a whole new look.

She's added so much detail and character in here.  The pantry door is a showstopper, and don't you love the thick new moulding on top of the cabinets?  Also, how appropriate that the new colors are espresso and cream, because she's got a little 'coffee' theme happening in here too.  The cabinets were solid maple, so they simply painted them, which is a fine example of brown-painted cabinets done right!  That's hard to pull off ... believe me. 

One last thing.  For her island, she decided on a black walnut top.  It arrived looking like something that had just been pulled off of a barn.  That's normal, don't worry. (I would have been worried, and likely in tears.) But in the end it polished up to a shine!  All in all, the grand total came to around $3,000.  Thanks for sharing Leatha!

 

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