Kitchen Island Makeover

As mentioned in a previous post, my husband and I are working to get our home ready to sell at the beginning of the year. We live in a town home and it has been a great first home for us. But when I converted our one storage closet into a craft room, we officially reached capacity. Now we feel it is time to move on.

We have a list of projects to be completed and it is great that we're starting to check things off that list. The first big project was to makeover our kitchen island. Our kitchen does not get a lot of natural light as the only windows are the glass doors in the dining area, so we have been doing what we can to brighten the place up a bit. That was the original intention with this project.

Our cabinets were originally knotty alder and a few years ago, we upgraded our flooring from whitish linoleum to a cherry laminate. It was a major improvement, but left the kitchen feeling darker and like there was too much wood.

To transform the island from knotty alder to white, I decided to use beadboard wallpaper. This stuff is great! It is affordable and easy to use. The biggest issue we had with it is that it is not hard like normal beadboard, but has a foamy texture, which means it can be easily dented.

I have never wallpapered before, but it only took me approximately 45 minutes to apply all the wallpaper to the island. I papered both sides and the front (pictured), then papered the small area below the cabinets on the back side.

We prepped our cabinets and drawer fronts by filling the knots in the wood and thoroughly cleaning all the wood. Then, we painted them white. After three coats, they were covered and we added some poly-crylic over the top. This gave the cabinets a nice sheen while also protecting them from chipping. The last step was to add trim along the top and bottom edges, as well as the corners. Here is the result:

I absolutely love how it turned out! I still need to fill in the nail holes and do a final coat of paint on the trim, but that won't take long. This was an inexpensive and fairly easy makeover that makes a big difference on the overall feel of the kitchen. What do you think?

{Linked on Huckleberry Love, Carrie This Home, Sew Can Do, Uncommon Designs, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, All Things Fee, Serendipity and Spice, This Gal Cooks}

Dining Table Makeover - The Reveal

(If you missed the initial dining table post, find it here.)

Since my hubby gave us a deadline on this project by inviting some coworkers over for lunch yesterday, the dining table project has been occupying most of my time. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it! Check out this transformation:

 Before

After

Obviously, I painted it all black. The arm chairs (in the top photo) will have a white accent around the seats, but I haven't finished those yet, so they're not in the second photo. I ordered the fabric from FabricGuru.com. It is Premier Prints Nicole Twill. Not specifically upholstery fabric, but Dave and I both loved it, so we went for it. After upholstering the seats, I applied two coats of ScotchGard so that we can (hopefully) avoid stains. I plan to ScotchGard the cushions regularly since we have small children (who love Nutella, so it ends up on everything in our house). The cushions themselves are recycled from our old chair-top cushions. They were still in decent shape, so I removed the fabric cover from them and reused the foam. I got an insider tip from a lady at the craft store who told me that if I need to buy more foam, to buy it from a home improvement store where it doesn't cost $33/yard. Good advice! I only had to buy foam for two of the six chairs, so I didn't spend too much on them.

If you're thinking of doing your own furniture makeover, I have a few tips:

1. Sand thoroughly! By this, I mean to sand and sand and sand, no matter how many sheets of sandpaper you go through. The better your sanding, the better your painting.
2. Buy a lot of cheesecloth or tack cloth to get the saw dust off the furniture before painting.
3. Turn everything upside down before your first coat of paint. This way, you paint all the bottom surfaces first. Do two coats of paint on the bottom, let it dry, then flip everything right-side-up and paint.
4. Plan to do at least two full coats of paint. After it dries, find some really good light to inspect your paint job. I was amazed how many touch-ups I had to do once I saw my chairs in the sunlight. 
5. Be extremely careful with your polyurethane finish. I used an old brush and ended up with some bubbles in my finish on the table top. Being inexperienced, I thought I could scrape them off and touch up that one spot. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. So use a NEW foam brush for each coat and sand between coats. I now have more work to do to get my table top smooth since I didn't know this in advance!

{Linked on Life With the Crust Off, Somewhat Simple, Seven Alive, The 36th Avenue, Easy Living Mom, The Crafty Blog Stalker, Life We Live 4, Artsy Fartsy Mama, Create.Craft.Love, See Vanessa Craft, One Artsy Mama, The Pink Momma, The Thriftiness Miss}

Dining Table to Makeover

Dave and I have been using a cheap pressboard table from Wal-Mart for the last 9 years. It can fit four placemats and nothing else because it's too narrow. It served us well until we added Violet to the family and suddenly it was just too small. We have been contemplating an upgrade for some time and both love the Terra dining table from West Elm:

The problem is that we hate spending money on sensible things and really don't have $500 to spend on a dining room table right now. So I decided to start checking the classifieds to find something that would work better for our family than the old Wal-Mart Special, but not break the bank.

Presenting our new table...

Dave and I both loved the unique look of the chairs. When they turned out cool and comfortable, we were sold. The larger table (with leaves!) was just a bonus for us.

Now I know this looks like something that your grandma might have purchased in the early '70's. But never fear! I have big plans for this table. After all, as I said to Dave this evening, "you can't call yourself a crafty blogger if you haven't reupholstered something." So I plan to recover the chair cushions with a more modern fabric and we plan to paint over all the wood.

Of course, I'll be posting updates as the project progresses. But first I need to do some fabric shopping!