A few Projects

Kitchen Island:

Before:

...Due to backup hard drive issues I can't post a picture, sorry.  It looked normal, no fancy business.  ;)

During:

After:

Pros and Cons:

Pros: It makes the kitchen feel bigger.  It is exactly the same size as before.
Cons: It is white and my kids are ALWAYS DIRTY!  So I'm sure I will be wiping fingerprints off every day all day.

Yes, I am treating it as a large built in cutting board.  Yes, I am actually cutting on it.  (Except raw meat, that's gross!) We have plans to add handles on the drawers and doors to spice things up a bit.



Master Bathroom:

Thanks to Pinterest (for my grand parents who don't know about it, it is a website) I saw this great idea to create more storage and make our bathroom look a little more interesting.  

Before:

During:

We screwed the center cabinet into the wall below and above the mirror.  (we ensure that anything we have in our house is well attached...we have 4 monkeys for children...they rarely keep their feet on the floor all the time and climb way to much!)

We glued the trim onto the mirrors with liquid nails.  We used tape to keep the trim in place while the glue dried.  (the left side needed more support while the glue dried so that is why there is wood underneath.)

 

 

After:

Pros and Cons
Pros: More storage which is always good!  
Cons: I didn't realize how much I used the middle of our mirror!  Oh well, I can take a step to the side.  



Last but not least: Finishing the Entertainment Center:

I know, many of you are thinking, really I thought that was finished years ago!?!  Well, it wasn't.  We made doors for the storage at the bottom (minus the glass) but they didn't turn out as well as we liked so we stashed them away in our garage for a couple years.  Finally I said ENOUGH, let's get this done!  So we did. 

Before:
(Just a reminder of what it actually was at the VERY begining of the project!)

 Before we put the trim on.

During:
The glass is regular glass bought from Lowes (FYI: if you live near us, Lowes will cut glass for you Homedepot will not we like to diy but not glass cutting, so we opted for Lowes.)  I used a Martha Stewart brand stencil from Michael's Craft store.  I used spray adhesive on the stencil to temporarily stick the stencil onto the glass so that the lines would come out crisp and clean.  We used spray paint-the one that looks like glass etching to make the design.  (It doesn't actually etch the glass, it just is a paint that looks like etching.  It can be removed at any time with lacquer thinner.)

 After:

  
Pros and Cons:

Pros: It makes it unique and nice to look at.  Plus it hides our crap. 

Cons:  More to dust.  More glass to clean fingerprints off of. 

I am still looking for the perfect handles to finish the look.