I recently found the perfect bed frame at IKEA—or so I thought. I spotted it across the showroom floor: simple white, feminine shape, and IKEA-inexpensive. Then I came closer. The frame had massive carved tulips and hearts all over it! Shocked, slightly disgusted, and totally disappointed, we moved on to the next aisle. As Mike and I rounded the corner, I took one last look at the over-sized child’s bed and noticed it was smooth on the back. Hmmmm. What if we could built it inside out? No one would have to see the pre-school graffiti and we’d have the simple bed I thought it was. It was a gamble but we bought it and started building.
In a few years, I’m sure well have built up an ornament collection with a few Waterfords, but in the name of good friends and the first Christmas in our new home, I’ll always keep a few computer paper snowflakes.
Of all our weekends doing house projects, nothing has fueled more productivity than our house warming last weekend. We sent out the Evite a month in advance and that party date acted as our deadline to wrap-up our half-finished DIY endeavors. A flurry of building, hanging, and cleaning ensued but the item we are most excited to have ticked off the list is undoubtedly the window frames.
In digging through years of photos, we skipped over the posed shots and compiled our best collection of art, adventure, and laughs. We printed the pictures at home, cut them to size with a paper cutter, and taped them into each pane. We hung each on either side of our living room archway and they have made me smile every day since.
Flash back to three weeks ago and 
This antique beveled mirror was originally a natural wood color, but we painted it poppy red to match the wallpapered accent wall in our guest bedroom.
We loved this 
Though the original paint job had a palette like a Greenbay Packer, the two-tone legs were really inspiring. We painted the piece plum but left the feet primer-white to match the tin top.
I still have dreams of having a tall chinoiserie china cabinet in my kitchen, but for $100 and a fun weekend project, this is a cute placeholder.
The greatest lesson I learned from Painted Furniture Weekend Part 1 was: NEVER strip furniture. It was the most disgusting, toxic, arduous yet deceptively easy project I’ve ever attempted for my home. The majority of the paint may gum up and peel off nicely, but the other 40% is a battle to get off the wood.
After stripping two sides of this piece, I abandoned ship and just went on to sand the front and top.