Monday, September 6, 2010

$50 whimsical remodel

I do a few of these every year. After all, it is much easier to find $50 than the hundreds (or thousands) for a big project and it can make SUCH a huge difference in how your house looks!

As I recovered from being sick (which I am still doing, but feeling much better. Thank you for the well wishes!), I made all these grand plans to fix things in the house. We have had a few months of crazy things going wrong around here and with being pregnant and all I just haven't had the energy to get to any of it.

This beautiful piece in my living room started out looking pretty much just like this... but the doors only opening to strait out and we needed them to fold back to the sides of the cabinet. I had this grand plan of retrofitting a new set of hinges on this baby and it seemed like SUCH a good idea when we bought it.

However, retrofitting this armoire, omgoodness people... was a HUGE job. The hinges fit completely differently than the old ones, so we had to build new internal supports (that Don stianed the same color) to screw the hinges in to that required me to have more supports for the support bars that I just installed, not to mention counter sunk screws that didn't interfere with the hinges we had picked and that had to be supported without having screw holes through the front of the whole piece.

Then I discovered that the bits that I had put in there were set up to have a recess door that was more 'recessed' than the doors I had on there, so we worked with scrap wood and rulers (like, cut up as shims) to put behind the hinges on the supports to make sure the doors would actually go on.

Then we had to put the doors on, a process requiring way more contortionist tricks than I have tried in months. Many things that required leaning, turning, and sitting all at once while trying to balance a large hand drill with a screw bit that popped off continuously on it and a door with a glass front that was balancing on nothing but two small pieces of wood to keep it in place.

After that though, all that was left to do was sew the curtains and put them up. (Yep! I sewed something!!!) I LOVE this fabric and think it brings such whimsy to the living room, which up until recently has been a warm, but dreary place. Now with the reds and fun fabrics, it's getting all bright and inviting in there. I am really enjoying what all our little projects growing to be.

It was really hard, but the end result is a beautiful armoire that lives in my living room, hiding the fact that I finally gave in and brought the tv back into the house after over a year of not having one. Thank God The Man was in a handy mood... cuz he got his fill of 'handy' and 'handy helper' yesterday! I love my man!

I think it turned out pretty darned cute, too!

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4 comments

Anonymous said...

All that work was worth it, it's beautiful!! Love the color and the fabric. We keep our TV closed up in a cabinet, too.

Sunshine said...

It turned out really cute. I just used some fabrics from that same line to make curtains and accessories for the sewing/homeschool room. Yay for completed projects!

Maiden Jane said...

Super adorable!

Ann Marie said...

Love the tv cabinet! Very much my style and colors!

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