Finished T.V. Stand and Easter Mantle Addition

I am so happy to report that our T.V. stand has been fully painted and even though the paint was still drying when I snapped my pictures for the blog, I just couldn't wait to post them! So the pictures you will see of our finished T.V. stand will have fresh paint and magazine pages underneath.  :) Oops...sorry!

Let's take a quick walk down memory lane.

If you remember folks, this is what we started with.

(This was what our thrift store dresser looked like before it got a good paint treatment).

Of course, it wasn't terrible to begin with, but the wood tone was too dark for our family room and I wanted something lighter.

As you can see in these two photos (above and below), the legs of the T.V. stand still needed to be painted.

So I grabbed my paint brush and brushed away.

I had to use two coats of paint for the legs and the base so the stand had a more even look.

This picture was taken while the paint was drying, can't you tell?  :)

Here is our finished stand! I absolutely love how it turned out!!

I am glad I didn't paint the top of the stand where our T.V. sits. It really gives a more comfortable, casual look having everything painted except for the top of the stand.

To read more about how I began painting our T.V. stand, click here.

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And because I couldn't resist...I wanted to take a few shots of the new addition to our mantle for April.
(I know, there is only another week left in April, but I just wanted to post about this anyways).

I added my daughter's Peter Rabbit book to our decor. She was trying to  eat   read the book one day (Hey, she is only 9 1/2 months so what do you expect) and I thought, "This would look great on our mantle for the month of April!"   :)

So we put it up there and it looks really cute!

I really enjoy decorating our fireplace mantle and adding things here and there. 

To see how I made our April egg decor, click here.

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Painted T.V. Stand

Before I begin about my DIY project, I just want to mention that I played around with Picasa to edit my photos and am trying to figure out what looks best. Since I am still very new to picture editing and blogging for that matter, the pictures may or may not look good in this post. I like how they turned out, so I will probably keep editing the rest of the pictures this way.  :)

On to today's post! Recently, well maybe more like a few months ago, my family and I shopped around our local thrift store and found a nice surprise! We bought this 70's-ish dresser for $50.00 and wanted to use it as our T.V. stand, so we did! And a little f.y.i. about our thrift store...it seems as though the prices have been raised on furniture in the past week. I don't know if that happens all the time or if it is because summer is approaching so all thrift stores raise their prices a little bit, but it was a little sad to see furniture prices more than double what they were before. Because of this, we really haven't purchased any furniture from there since. Hopefully, the prices will drop dramatically so we can furnish the rest of our house!  :)

Okay, no more rambling on about the thrift store prices now that I got that out of my system!

:)

Here is a quick little picture we took after we bought our dresser/T.V. stand.

In this picture, the stand doesn't look too bad and the brown-toned wood doesn't bother me at all. The reason I wanted to paint this stand was because it felt too heavy in our family room. We have darker furniture, for now, and our fireplace can be a bit heavy too in the room next to the black leather couch.

See, you can really tell from this picture that the stand looks very heavy in our room right now. Also, our dark couch is being replaced someday, but we need to save a little more before we buy something new. It will be fun picking out couches when we are ready to do that!

Upon closer look, the stand has a grainy look which wasn't what I was going for in a T.V. stand so I decided to paint it with Sherwin Williams Extra White.

This was after the first coat of paint was put on. I know it doesn't look that pretty here but with another coat of paint and possibly some spray paint for a more finished look, it will look fantastic!

I also love that the drawers hold all of our DVD's, remotes, and other T.V. electronics!! Got to love the storage this thing provides!

I needed to take the drawers off, actually my hubby did that for me, before painting more. It was hard to get in to the sides and middle of the stand when the drawers were still in tact.

Here are a few of the drawers after the second coat of paint was applied.

Oh..I musn't forget to add that I also had to take off the handles. I am not sure what I am going to do with the handles just yet. I may give them a silver finish because I am not really feeling the brassy color. Maybe brass is coming back, but I am not sure I like the look, so they will be changed up.

BEFORE

AFTER

Painting the T.V. stand definitely lightens up the space from what it was before.

I still need to paint the legs (more on that tomorrow) but I am keeping the top of the T.V. stand original to give it a Pottery Barn look. (at least that is what I will keep telling myself it resembles!)  :)


Have you painted any big furniture items lately?


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Fields of Gold

Does anyone recognize the song "Fields of Gold" by Sting??

This song was the one that my hubby and I danced our first dance to at our wedding 3 years ago.  :)

I can't believe we have been married 3 years already. I know that doesn't sound like many years, but it does go by fast and we have been so blessed thru it all!

The reason why I want to do a post about this song is because I printed the lyrics when we first moved into our house and framed it for one of our walls near our bedroom. The original paper I printed the lyrics on was a bright yellow color that doesn't really go well with our decor now. In fact, I took a picture to show you what it looked like.  :)

Nice, huh?!

Well, it really was a bright yellow and so I needed to change it up a bit. So what did I decide to do?

I recopied the lyrics to a Word document and printed it out on plain printer paper. I didn't want a crazy paper color because that would take away from the lyrics and I didn't want that.

I also wanted to keep the rose that was in the original picture. The background of the wooden planks reminds me of the place we had our ceremony. There was a beautiful wooden walkway that led up to the church where we got married so it has sentimental value to us.  :)

This is the spot where I want to hang our wedding lyrics...right above "Family".

I already had the black frame which ties in to our stairwell gallery wall, so it fit perfectly right there.

This is another shot of our gallery wall. I love how it looks already but adding our new piece to it will still make our stairwell look great....maybe even better!

This is a shot coming down the stairs after I hung our lyrics up.

Love!

I really love the maternity pictures we had done by a wonderful photographer named Kerry B. Smith. She was really sweet and did such a fabulous job!!

 

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