Getting some Quality Time in

Hotel de Wards is in full swing. I had a blast visiting with friends this past weekend and Adam had an equally good time in Michigan on his annual golf trip with his Dad and some friends of each of them. We are expecting the Marquiss Family tonight or tomorrow depending on traffic and how the kids are faring on the trip. Tomorrow is a year since I went gluten free…. I cannot believe it has been that long but more on that and on all of our visitors later.

Happy Fourth of July (a little early) because we hope to be running around showing the family the city the next few days ;)

Our Trunk Project {DIY}

We might have gotten a little over our heads with this project but learned a lot. 

1. We are as they say, real newbs in this whole DIY realm ( I learned something about stain that I should have known before I did any of my other project. sheesh.)

2. I am not allowed to pick a paint color before I've really thought about EVERYTHING

3. It takes forever in a hardware store and you will spend more than you thought

4. We love our bookcase

When we moved, we got rid of our junky bookcases. While that was nice when we were carrying stuff to and fro it wasn't so nice when we went to put our books away and had nothing to store them in. This sent us on a mission to find a bookcase. 

While we were exploring our new neighborhood one weekend, Adam saw this fantastic trunk in an antique store and had the brilliant idea to turn it into a bookcase. (When your husband has an idea to help you with your hobby, you jump at it and jump at it immediately before he can rethink it.)

So there we were paying more than we've paid for other pieces that we've redone but taking advantage of a really unique and fun idea. (I wish I had a picture of it sitting like a trunk but just imagine what it would have looked like if I had taken a picture…. okay good, you're with me.)

I knew I wanted to repaint it. The paint was chipped (not in a good way) and really dirty with scratches and marks. While I do like yellow, it would have been too much yellow with our chairs and table so I was just going to use the dark stain and white paint from some previous projects. (desk and dresser). I had already put one coat of paint on the trunk when I saw a picture of a beautiful piece of mint furniture. I changed my plan mid-game. THIS.IS.A. BAD. IDEA. A very bad idea. This led to me painting the trunk 4 different times to get the "right" color and going to the hardware store 3 times in one weekend not to mention the other times throughout this project. This also led me to stain the front with the stain we had (jacobean) and then strip that off and stain it again with a cherry stain… which is fine but the stain is just a hinge on the red side and still very dark so not much changed there except the loss of time on my part. All in all, I like the finished product but I don't suggest going about it my way.

The process:

I spent a lot time scraping off the paint on the front with chemicals (stripping gel and mineral spirits), a scraper, and sand paper. I really wanted to stain the front and then repaint the rest of it. Then we got to work on getting the rest of the supplies as our vision came together.

Shelves (just made of stained plywood)

new hinges- The old ones were way too rusty (tetanus anyone?) so I spray painted new ones

a cute knob to go on our door

and even cute little legs that I spray painted my new favorite color

brackets so the legs had leverage to stay on the trunk (the screws that come with the legs are really short).

Adam helped me a ton with this project by putting it all together at the end. I did all the painting and staining and then he sawed, sanded, and screwed everything in. Seriously, he was awesome from the get-go with this thing.

Here is another before and after.

Wish I had some better before and after's but it's hard to move that thing with all the books in it haha so I didn't try that hard. (also our floor is slanted, not the actually trunk but because of that we got a magnetic clasp to keep the door closed when we weren't using it)

Happy Thursday!

Friend time

We had our first weekend visitors this weekend. Adam's good friend from college, Matt, and his fiancée, Meghann. Meghann's sister had previously lived in Chicago so she was a real pro but Matt had only been here once. So we did a little sight-seeing and a little chilling which made a really fun weekend.

On Saturday, the guys played a 9 hole round of golf. It only took 3 hours to play (3 hours!!!! That's bad for those of you who don't play golf, all the tee times were booked)

Meghann teaching Adam how to swing dance, we also play makeshift croquet with our golf clubs and the tee box boundaries

Lucky for us, the day was pretty nice and we played games between shots since there were so many people trying to play at this course (Busiest 9 hole course in the U.S.). 

Later we got some deep dish pizza (gf thin crust for me) and then walked around downtown to show off some of the sites. We were in Niketown when we saw this sign about some local high schools and found Adam's high school as number 30.

We had to show Matt that Portillos really does have a cake shake aka a piece of cake blended up with some ice cream. It's so good! (or so I remember…)

 We finished the weekend out with a perfect day for a cubs game. The cubbies even pulled out a win ;)

 Hope you had a good weekend!