The Clock of Destiny, Part Un

Hubs donated my pretty wall clock to D.I. without consulting me, all because it was broken. I shouldn't be angry. He doesn't know you can buy replacement kits for like $10 at Hobby Lobby. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little peeved. 

In protest, I went out to another thrift shop and bought this glorious beauty for $5.

I love the faux wood backing, classy brass, and oh-so-90's wood inlay. Can't you just see this sexy little number perched atop your mantel? What's that you say? It's hideous? Well feast your eyes on this!:

Is that even the same clock? Heck yes it is! 

What I did: Coated the entire casing and pendulum arm with a layer of glossy charcoal Rustoleum, painted the backing matte black acrylic, removed and replaced ugly mod numerals with rad velum Roman Numerals (Mod Podged on), gold leafed the clock face, pendulum, and pin stripes. Bonus: the actual clock mechanism still worked fine, so the spare clock kit I bought will be judiciously applied to Clock of Destiny, Part Deux. 

The best part? All the stuff I used was just laying around from previous projects. The paint was left over from the Hutch Makeover, and the gold leafing was surplus from the mirror. The Velum was left over from the last time I attempted scrapbooking back in 2004. Yeah. I suck at scrapbooking. But spray paint? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Grand Total? Still just $5.

Winning. 

So much to blog about, so little time...

I'm baaaack!
It's been so crazy these past 3 and a half weeks. The first month of summer break has FLOWN by.
I'll be posting a lot in the next week just to try and get caught up.
Starting from the beginning.
The day after school got out, my mom and step-dad showed up here with a trailer to empty out the storage unit my mom has been maintaining here with the furniture from my Grandma's house. The next two weeks was a blur of building, cleaning, painting, painting, more painting, and organizing.
The final score: 3 new rooms, plus new floors ordered for and installed in most of the house, plus old/ new furniture for her master bedroom and living room.
Here's the photo evidence.

Before: 

This is what my mom's house looked like after she spent several weeks taking everything out of all the shelves, drawers, cupboards, closets, etc. For the record most of the junk being cleaned out was stuff either my sister Emily or I had left behind when we moved out and got married, compounded with all the stuff my mom had been gathering in order to complete this makeover. It was CRAZY. The first 2 photos are mid sorting. I was emptying out that huge hutch and figuring out what stuff to keep, what stuff to send off to other people, what to donate, etc.

During: 

Once we got rid of everything we ripped out the old carpet, cleaned everything thoroughly, and then painted.

We also spent a ton of time refinishing some of her old furniture. My mom has fantastic solid wood furniture, some of which has been in the family since she was a kid. Most of it, though, was either severely water damaged, scratched to pieces by cats, or sloppily painted by her teenagers back in the 90's. Cough. Rather than sand everything down to bare wood and restain it, mom decided to take a gamble and let me do some paint finishes. I think the results speak for themselves.

After:

I don't have any photos of the finished craft room, but here's a partially finished one that at least shows off some of the cool tables I made for mom out of old doors, and the paint colors we were working with. The general color scheme was yellow, navy, and red, and she wanted it to be a fun, energetic, vintage inspired place where she can just create.
The guest room we kept really simple. We just freshened up the existing paint, put in some furniture from grandma's house, and some linens. It's a much more romantic, softer feeling room. This is mostly due to the ivy stenciling and window boxes that a few of us girls did back when we were teenagers in that room.

 (This antique mirror is actually a creepy unicorn clock in a gosh-aweful faux gold frame that I fixed up with some mirror paint and ivory Krylon)

The office was my favorite room. The photos don't do justice to the rich colors and cool Hollywood Regency feel in there. I seriously would find myself just standing in there whenever I wasn't doing something somewhere else.

Anyway, it was the experience of a lifetime. I'm amazed we got through it, and I can't see what mom does with the rest of the place. I'll be back at Christmas and we'll have to do like a "6 months later" feature.
Now excuse me while I go do 7 million loads of laundry and spend the next several hours editing photos of Cancun. It's good to be back!

Help me Pick!

With Brendan moving out this past week, I have decided to suck it up and try to turn my now empty downstairs bedroom into a craft room.
I'm enlisting your help. I have a general sense of what I'd like the room to feel like and how I'd like it to function, but I have no mental image of how I'm going to go about setting it up.
First thing I need to decide is a  color scheme. Which of the following should I go with?
#1 Green and Gold

#2 Gold and Greige (Greyish Beige)

#3 Black and Yellow

#4 Blue and Red

I should probably mention that I'm not going to be repainting the walls, which are a medium taupe color with creamy white trim. I have some furniture for the room already- 2 chairs from my grandmother's estate which I plan on recovering in material to match, but not painting. They are a honey-colored wood. The room has a similar-toned thick wood blind that I'm planning on leaving up, but possibly supplementing with some cafe curtains. I have a small hutch which I purchased for $10 off of craigslist which will be painted to match whatever color scheme I end up with.

I should also mention that this room is by far the darkest, coldest room in the house, so I've gone out of my way to select color schemes that will help warm up the space and make it more inviting. It also has a direct view of some of the prettiest parts of my garden, so I'd like to keep that in mind as well.

So please leave me a comment and tell me what you think!