Exciting News!

Those of you who know me personally might have heard/read the news yesterday, but for those of you who haven't heard....

WE ARE MOVING!!!!!!!!


IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS!!!!!!


****Insert moving to Texas happy dance here****

Brian and I are both from Texas so going "home" is really exciting for us.  His job is taking us to the Houston/Galveston area so we will be close to our families and many of our friends.  New Orleans will always have a special place in our hearts, but we are ready to get back.  

Its crazy the things you miss from your home state.  Last month we flew to Corpus and were sitting in a restaurant taking in our surrounding.  It felt so good to see Texas A&M hats/shirts everywhere, hear Cross Canadian Ragweed and Cooter Graw on a regular country radio station and to see Blue Bonnets growing on the side of the road and in front yards.  We caught ourselves smiling, thinking the same thing....it feels good to be home.

In my last post I mentioned a few projects that were not ready to be posted.  Well, that was packing my POD....

and the entertainment center.....here is a before reminder

The previous owner had already cut a drawer front from the drawer body and most of the drawers didn't close all the way and there were some problems with the doors.  I fixed the alignment problems, built in shelves for the DVD/Cable box/etc, moved and updated the hardware, and painted it Bird's Egg.  It now looks like an entertainment center.  Here is the after.

I am planning on keeping the entertainment center for us.  Our home now has a niche for the TV so as soon as I found out we were probably moving, I decided to keep it and refinish it for us. I love the finished product and hopefully it will work great in our new house.  Click here to see it in our new home.

 Speaking of....we did secretly go house shopping last weekend and have been in negotiations on a particular home.  We are supposed to find out today if our last offer is excepted.  Please pray that it is and that nothing goes wrong with inspections and appraisals and closing goes smoothly.  If things work out, we will only be displaced for a few weeks and we can get started on updating our new house ASAP.  There will definitely be some DIY home posts in the future.

I promise to keep everyone posted and if you live in the Houston area and need furniture worked on, keep me in mind.  Hopefully I will be taking on furniture work in a few months.

SIDE NOTE:  Today is our 7 year anniversary!  Time flies when you are having fun.  Love you, babe!   Here are a few pictures from our special day.

 

When the doors opened and I started down the aisle.
This is one of my favorites.

On the boat 

My fisherman's groom's cake

A Few Updates

So, some how its been over 3 weeks since my last post.  Time flies when you are super busy!  Things have been crazy around here lately.  So crazy I really haven't bothered to take many before pictures or good quality afters.  Here is a quick overview of what I have been up to over the past few weeks.

 One client brought by this family piece and a bench that was made from an old bed.

Before

Before

After

After

I bought this dresser a while back and finally had time to work on it.

Before

After

After

After

Remember this dresser?

It was purchased for a baby girl nursery.  The client already had a creamy, distressed, glazed mirror and wanted her other nursery furniture refinished to match.  She had purchased a bookcase on Craigslist and ordered a Jenny Lind baby bed in white.  Now they both match the mirror and coordinate with the dresser.  It is going to be a super cute nursery!

Here is a desk that I refinished for a friend.  It is a family piece they wanted painted to match the beds in their girls' room.

Before

Before

Before

After

After

After

After

And another little project.  I have been working on changing this beautiful dresser into an entertainment center.  It already had a drawer front cut off by the previous owner.  She had started the project and couldn't finish so she contacted me to see if I could do something with it.  Since one drawer front was cut off, I couldn't use it as a dresser so I figured I'd stick with the entertainment center idea.  The dresser is solid wood (SUPER HEAVY) and has gorgeous lines.  I love it.  They do not make pieces like this anymore. I will post after pictures in the next few days.

I have been busy with several other things but they are not ready for posting.  Did I mention how busy the past few weeks have been?  On top of all of this, we went home to Texas this past weekend to watch my brother's girlfriend graduate with her Master's degree.  What an accomplishment!  So proud and excited for her. 

I will have the entertainment center finished in the next few days and will post a picture of it as soon as possible.   I hope everyone has a wonderful week and safe Memorial day weekend!

A Weekend on the Coast

Brian and I flew to south Texas last Friday to spend an extended weekend on the coast.  We got to see family, friends and some pretty water.  Rockport, Texas is a quiet coastal town that is mostly made up of retirees and winter Texans.  Coastal Living Magazine had a great article about Rockport a few years ago.  Check it out here.

Brian and I are going to retire here  :)  It's never too early to start planning right?!  For us, it is in Texas, close to family and on the water....Perfection.  Rockport has a super cute road named Austin Street that has all kinds of shops on it.  Of course we checked out the furniture scene as well as ate some great food.  And I might have drove past/stalked George Strait's house hoping that maybe he would be outside and I would catch a glimpse of him.  He wasn't home.  Just devastated me more since I didn't get to see him in concert either.  Sigh.  Overall it was a great little coastal getaway.

Here are some photos from the trip.

This was our morning view.  Isn't it great?!  We stayed in a downstairs studio apt to a larger canal home. It was so quiet and peaceful in the mornings.  Rockport is known for its bird watching and they were all over the place.  Other than them and a few boats going through the canal to go fish, it was very quiet in the mornings.

Blue Heron in the neighbors yard.

White Heron

This pelican let me get so close to him.  I love watching them fly just a few inches over the water.

Something about them fascinate me.

Rockport is one of the windiest places in Texas.  There are several wind farms in the area...where they have fields of huge windmills.  Due to all the wind, the Oak trees along the water grow to the side.  It looks like someone used a trimmer to shape them with curved tops but its just how they grow in the wind.

The birds were all in the tops of the trees.

On Sunday, we decided to drive down to Port Aransas to check out the beach and how much the town 

has grown.  We haven't been down there in 4 or 5 years so there were a lot of changes.  Even on the

bridge you can tell the water is probably going to be clear at the beach.

I know its not Florida or the Caribbean, but for Texas, this is fairly clear and pretty water.  We were afraid the cold front was going to have the water murky and brown but it was very pretty that day.

Hopefully I will have some furniture pictures in the next few days.  I am finishing up a few pieces today and have some more custom pieces to follow but the weather forecast is rain all week!  YUCK!  

Custom Dresser B&A

Hi all.  Even with the humidity this week, I finished up a custom dresser.  This is a client piece that was purchased at a resale shop several years ago.  Dressers like this are hard to find and finding them in a resale shop really never happens.  Here are a few before pictures:

Isn't it gorgeous?!?!  Solid wood top.  Solid wood curved drawers.  Pretty handles.  Just lovely.

Lets talk about handles for a minutes.  Looking at these handles one would think they will have to be painted to be salvaged but if you ever come across a solid wood, quality old dresser like this, there is a good chance the handles are solid brass.  To check use a magnet from your refridgerator.  Brass is non magnetic so if your magnet does not stick to the handle, it might be solid brass.  I use Brasso to polish brass.  If just wiping the handles with Brasso doesn't help try paint stripper on them or some other paint remover.  A lot of times the handles have been clear coated or painted in the past so that has to be stripped off before polishing will work.  These handles looked kind of gross up close. 

Years of tarnish had covered up everything shiny and pretty about them.  After I confirmed they were not magnetic I was positive they were solid brass.  I stripped the clear coat off then polished them and this is the end result.

Can you believe?!  They are so beautiful!  So glad I know how to identify brass and I didn't paint them!

Now on to the rest of the makeover.  The dresser went from having beautiful shape and curves with blah paint and yucky handles to looking glamorous and rich.  I LOVE IT!  More importantly though, my client loves it which makes me extremely happy.  Here are the after photos:

So pretty!  I love makeovers like this.  I love bringing pieces like this back to life.  Hopefully it will be a treasured piece for a long time.

Coastal Love

I will start off by saying there is not a furniture transformation in this post.  This yucky weather has slowed my productivity and is depressing which makes me want to run away to the beach.  I LOVE the beach and the coast.  Love doesn't even really describe what it is...maybe an obsession?   I will live on the water one day, hopefully soon.  My husband isn't as obsessed with the beach as much as I am but he is obsessed with fly fishing and being on the water. Lucky for me, where there is pretty beach, there is fly fishing for bonefish so getting him to take me to the Caribbean isn't that hard. :)  Here are a few pictures from some of our trips.

Tropic of Cancer Beach,  Little Exuma, The Bahamas

Us on some beach in Little Exuma, The Bahamas

Long Island, The Bahamas 

Shallow flats for as far as the eye can see.  Amazing.
Somewhere off of Long Island, The Bahamas

5-prong and 6-prong starfish

Great Guana Cay, The Bahamas

Great Guana Cay, The Bahamas

Treasure Cay, The Bahamas

Grace Bay Beach, Turks & Caicos

The Caribbean really is one of the most beautiful places ever. From all of our trips, I have had tons of inspiration for decor in our home.  In the past few months I have had several clients and customers comment and ask about some of our decorations so I thought I would let y'all know more about them.   I have collected and inherited several items over the years.  For us, we want our home to reflect things that we love, be filled with memories of our trips, and reminders of our family.

Lets start with the entry.

I have my grandparent's dresser that I refinished as the main focal point.  

The "Wind", "Water", "Waves" signs I found a long time ago.  I have only seen them at that one store, which is now closed, and I instantly fell in love.  My mother bought them for me as a wedding shower present and I was so excited.  

The latern and vase are Pottery Barn.

The metal bonefish was made by a local New Orleans artist.  I can not find his info right now but when I do, I will add it.  He has a booth at the Art Market and does some amazing work.

The canvas on the left has cocktail napkins purchased in Great Exuma that I glued to a white canvas I bought at Michael's.  I stained the bright white canvas with coffee to give it a little bit of an aged look.  The map is a map of the Caribbean I bought on one of our trips and I modge podged it to a blank canvas.  The picture in the middle is a picture I took and had it put on canvas through Canvas on Demand.  I have another picture in my bathroom over my tub that was put on canvas by them.  It is a lot bigger as you can see!

We have a strange niche in our entry so I decided to make a subway art with our trip destinations on it.  Now I need to update it since our last trip but this is an easy and inexpensive project.  I got the idea and followed the instructions from this blog post.  

Our living room has a lot of art and pictures.

  All the beach photos were taken by the same photographer, Gwynemark Photography, during our Destin vacation a few years ago.

We bought this redfish painting at Winnie Trade Days (a once a month market in Winnie, TX) from an artist named Brooksie.  He is not there all the time but we lucked out one weekend and saw him there and loved his work.  This painting is on an old piece of paneling.

This sailboat was a model my paternal grandfather had.  He loved model boats and trains.  It is discolored but I don't care.  I love it and it fits perfectly in our home.

Mr. Pelican was bought at Molly's across from Central Mall in Nederland, Texas.

The huge tarpon over our double set of french doors was custom made for us by an artist that works here in New Orleans.  We originally saw his work at Avenue Art and Framing in Lakeview.  The owner of the shop called the artist to give our preferred measurements and a week later, we had our fish.

These shutters were in my parents home but they had to tear down the house after Hurricane Rita. I took the shutters to use as decoration. They are a great backdrop for another vacation photo.  

I am hoping to post a furniture before and after tomorrow but it really depends on the yucky humid weather.  It is making dry times super slow.  On a positive note, Brian and I are headed to south Texas this weekend for a little getaway for his birthday.  I am super excited!