Did you think I forgot? No, I’m just profoundly lazy. But here it is! Our first ever edition of Better Before! Get excited!
Allison fell in love with this cool little acorn wreath. “How hard could THAT be?” she thought. And, bonus, living in Texas, she had acorns coming out of the wazoo. (Ew, not literally).
Cute!
So she paid the kids to gather acorns and then she says, “I glued, and glued, and glued. And then I glued some more. Next time, {there won’t be a next time!} I’ll use a wreath that isn’t the size of an 18-wheeler tire. And, though I didn’t know it at the time, I was making Mistake #1. The hugest mistake of the project. Hot glue likes to just pop right off of plastic wrap.”
And it weighed about 30 lbs. Seriously, this thing was like a freaking cinder block on a ribbon. The ribbon looks horrible with the wreath. I should be shot for that one.”
uh … cute?
So she removed the offensive ribbon and spray painted the whole thing yellow and things were looking good. But then … she reports, “I got lazy.”
“I could have taken the 20 steps to the garage to get the staple gun, but nope. The paper stapler was right there. “I’ll just put 4-5 staples into the ribbon and wall. That should secure it just.fine.”
RIP!
Even though this one couldn’t be saved, it still taught us some valuable lessons. What we have learned:
#1 Hot glue and plastic wrap will fight to the death.
#2. When we compare things to cinder blocks, we should not then decide to secure them to the wall with an office stapler in the next breath.
You can read more about this fantastic failure on Allison’s blog
House of Hepworth’s. Luckily Allison has about a bazillion successful projects under her belt to keep her from getting too depressed about the wreath that wasn’t.
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Next is a simple little project from Amanda. She’s been slowly updating her kitchen in bits and pieces, since a full blown remodel wasn’t in the budget. When she replaced her dated handles, she figured she might as well reverse the direction of the cabinet by the oven while she was at it, and make it more functional. Or totally nonfunctional…
That’s the one.
Before…
Lesson learned: Measure twice. Drill once. And get some wood putty just in case.
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And finally, this one didn’t come with a before picture, as it was spotted on an online classified listing by Marci. But use your imagination.
From the ad: This is a really cool colorful antique armoire/drawers/mirror combo that would look great in any room! I bought it on the east coast years ago and it has been in bedrooms and living rooms and it always gets a lot of attention!
Hmmm, did that “attention” go something like this?
“Your armoire is really … uh … neat.” “Yeah, it’s … um … so unique.”
Or, “How sweet! Your kids did a great job on this! Did they let the dog help too?”
Or, “I never would have thought to combine electric blue, neon green, purple, teal, red and orange in one piece, but you pulled it off!
*cough*kinda*cough*sorta*cough*a little bit*cough*not really.
I can see this with my eyes closed.
Lesson learned: your friends are just being nice, repaint that shiz.
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Well, that’s it for now! Thank you so much for sharing ladies! It’s nice to remember that not every project is perfect, and nope, neither are we.
If you have ever brought about a furniture fiasco, a crafting catastrophe, or any sort of spectacular design disaster, send your pics and your story my way! BetterAfter@live.com, subject line: Better Before!
