Vintage Dresser Turned Bar

If you follow me on Instagram (@jessicademaio) or you've liked the Simple Kind of Life Facebook page (see link to the right) you may have seen a sneak peek at this piece of furniture. I've been on the hunt for some time for a vintage dresser that I could repurpose as a bar in our dining room. I wanted a dresser primarily for the storage space of having drawers, but also wanted to find a unique piece that I could either refinish or leave as is. I've been looking on and off at thrift stores but never had any luck finding a dresser for under $150.

Last Thursday I was dropping LJ off to my in-laws in preparation for a night out with my hubby. On my way home I decided to check out my favorite resale shop, Goodeals. I've praised this place before and I've had some really good luck sometimes while others have been hit or miss. 

After a few minutes of walking around I came across this great dresser marked at only $25. The ticket on the dresser said 'As Is/Needs Work' so I was a little hesitant at first, but after checking the piece and seeing there was no structural damage, I was sold. My parents helped me bring it home this past weekend and I wasted no time dressing it up. 

This was just a quick styling of the dresser and I will probably change it a bit to make it more practical. The gold rimmed glasses are actually knock offs to the Anthropologie version that I found for $1.00 each (sorry Anthro..). The mermaid bottle opener was on my holiday gift guide for men. 

The whiskey jar in the above picture was a Christmas gift for Jordan. He's since filled it with a bottle of his whiskey of choice, Jefferson's Reserve. We are also patiently awaiting the arrival of Jordan's whiskey's stones to add to the bar. 

I am seriously loving this dresser. The mix and match of wood tones and the carved details make my heart pitter patter everytime I look at it. There are wheels on the bottom, but they are a bit old so I'm toying with the idea of taking them off or replacing so they don't scratch our wood floor. 

The top of the dresser is in near perfect condition. 

The front of the bottom two drawers is where the dresser is damaged. Large chunks of the front of the drawers have worn or chipped off over the years. I'm still uncertain how I want or could fix this piece up. I'm considering sanding the drawer fronts down and restaining, but for now I'm loving it flaws and all. I'm really loving the wood tones too much to considering painting, it just needs a little TLC.

Our new bar is tucked in the corner of our dining room adjacent to the wall with my lyric painted canvas. I'll be on the hunt for some art and/or a mirror to hang on the wall above the dresser.

In case you're curious we of course still have the vintage bar cart I scored from Goodwill two years ago. I use that to hold the majority of our liquor and a few glasses. I'm still in love with this lucky thrift find.

 

Funny enough if you had seen this shot of our dining room a week ago you would have seen a corner filled with storage boxes, canvases, and all of my craft supplies. Our dining room is finally starting to look like a functioning room.

The Ol' Switcheroo

I've mentioned a dozen times how bad we need a rug for the dining room. Ever since we moved in (back in 2008!) we've had just a solid wood floor with no rug. We've even done a furniture swap, and complete repaint, but still no rug. Luckily we rarely use our dining room so the floor hasn't taken too much of a beating over the years. We pretty much use the room when we have company over and need a large table to host the food. I think we've eaten at the dining room table a total of maybe 4 times ever, so I never really had a big motivator to go out and get something. Plus I couldn't decide what color and style to go with in that room.

We've had this Anthropologie Coqo Floral Rug in our living room since we had our hardwood installed a year ago. While I love the rug, I have to admit it's not easy to maintain. With two shedding animals laying on it all day he rug needs to constantly be vaccuumed because Lucy plays on it. With the raised threading, vaccuuming to the point of actually being clean is a pain and we needed something that was going to be easier to clean. Plus the red threading has been slowly coming apart with each vaccuum and I end up 'trimming' the rug on a weekly basis.

While recently shopping at Ikea, I came across a rug that I've seen there a dozen times that has always caught my eye. The great, simple gray rug with a white floral design.

The Gislev rug is only $19.99. It's a great looking rug and a decent size (4'x6'), but I was always a little nervous because of the price. Would it fall apart easily? Is the material not soft? Why does it only cost $19.99? I figured no better way to find out than to just buy the rug and give it a try.

We gave the Coqo rug one final vaccuum and moved it out to make room for the Gislev rug. I was so excited with the change that I grabbed my camera right away to snap some shots. Here is how the room looks today:

As much as I love the Anthro rug, I have to admit this one looks so much better in the living room. I'm nto sure if it's the fact that it ties it so well with my new pillows, or that I just needed a change, but I love it.

You can see from the other angle how well this rug flows with the other textiles.

From this angle you can also get a sneak peak at the new gallery wall I'm working on for the living room. I've swapped out the dark frames for light, brighter, white ones. I'm also getting rid of all but one wedding picture in exchange for some more 'family' oriented photos and other fun prints. I'm still playing around with the layout, but more on that in another post.

The Anthropologie rug found its new home in the dining room.

I have to admit I'm kind of loving how it looks. The dining room still needs some work, but this pop of color works really well with the walls, furtniture and floor. Another good thing is that being in a room that gets little to no traffic, the rug will be much easier to keep clean and will be less likely to fall apart by the time it reaches its second birthday.

I'm glad to finally have a rug on the dining room. The room actually feels warmer and looks so much more finished now.

Have you done a quick change or swap lately that improved your room(s)?

Seriously, More Spray Paint??

Rounding out the end of another week with yet another post about spray painting. Can you tell that I'm officially hooked? Hooked on gold and hooked on spray painting. I'll admit I've had to curb myself a bit before I spray paint my entire house. There have been a few times that I considered attacking several items with the can of paint, but realized that I'm not Midas and I need to settle down before I turn everything to gold.

This time it all started with a trip to Anthropologie (I feel like I start so many stories with that!). I didn't really have a plan to purchase anything in particular, but I've always been keeping an eye out for some new dishes to replace the white one in the black metal plate rack on the wall in our dining room.

I found these absolutely gorgeous dishes from Anthro. Although I wish I could have a complete set, I only purchased one dinner plate and one salad plate. I really don't need another set of dishes. We don't even use our wedding china.

via

The rest of the dining room is so neutral and simple that these bright flowers are a pretty pop of color. I love how the flowers look (and probably are) handpainted on each individual dish. Each dinner plate and salad plate are slightly different so you can tell they weren't manufactured prints. Plus I love, love the colors.

Here's a super old picture of that corner of the room for reference:

Black, grey, white, boring.

Once I put my new plates into place, I loved how they looked, but thought that the black iron rack was a bit dark and distracted from the pretty colors in the dishes. I've had gold spray paint on the brain since this project, and then these quickie upgrades, so it didn't take long to decide that I wanted to do the same.

While I was spray painting, I figured I'd tackle another piece in the dinig room that was a bit dark for my liking. This iron candle holder was given to me by my mom when we moved in. She had it in our house growing up and let me take it with me when I moved out. I've had it on the dining room wall pretty much since we've been in the house.

Two fresh coats of gold spray paint later:

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What a difference! Here's a shot of my 'new' dish rack with my other fun colored Anthro dishes. Of course I'm itching to buy even more to add to the dining room. Maybe one of these days I'll finally purchase a rug..... how many times have I said that?

And here is the 'new' gold candle holder.

Seriously, why didn't I do this sooner??

I am so excited at how much better these two iron pieces look with just a wave of my wand (and by wand I mean can of spray paint) and a few minutes of drying time. Ok, I admit sometimes I walk into my dining room just to look at how great it looks. The gold on the candle holder ties in with the gold on the beverage cart so both pieces look like they belong together in the room.

Spray paint is the easiest and quickest way to do a great looking upgrade for next to no money and in little to no time. I can't believe I'm just now jumping on the spray paint bandwagon.  Of course you all know this won't be the last spray paint project in my house. I'm hoping to do bigger and more complex projects and really push myself with my creativity.

Must. Resist. Spray. Painting. Everything.

This weekend: More pallet fun. Prying the back pieces off and painting that bad boy. Maybe, just maybe getting it hung up, but I make no promises. Poor Jordan has off from work so I'm recruiting him to help me. Such a good hubby.

Happy Friday!! :)

DIY Valentine Decor - Day 5

Today you get a treat: two posts for Valentine's day.

I was still mentally catching up from our busy weekend and didn't have a chance to prepare for yesterday's final DIY Valentine Decor post. On Saturday Jordan's parents and I threw him a surprise 30th birthday dinner. We invited our family and friends and had them waiting at Capers & Lemons, a local restaurant where Jordan thought he was going to have dinner with just me and his parents. Well... he had an idea something was brewing. When we arrived, Jordan was greeted by 40 of our closest family and friends. It was a success nonetheless and Jordan was thrilled. After dinner our friends took him out to his favorite bar and just had a great time all around. I even survived my first night without Lucy! (More on that when we get to her 7 month milestones.)

Back to the final day of DIY Valentine Decor.

My second to last craft is little framed Valentine message.

I'm sure you have all seen variations of this on other blogs, or Pinterest.

I won't take credit for coming up with this one on my own.

To create this, I took an old frame I had stashed away from the dollar store, some Valentine themed tissue paper, and Scrabble letters. (Ok, I cheated a bit and bought the Scrabble letters from the craft store rather than using real tiles from the game.)

I wrapped the tissue paper around the glass and put it back into the frame so that the tissue paper was exposed and the glasss was covered. After I chose my Valentine message, I used my hot glue gun to attach the letters to the framed tissue paper.

Easy enough, right?

There were a variety of versions I played around with before settling on a simple "I Love You."

My last project was a take on a previous craft I did back in November when I guest blogged over at Neat & Tangled. I made owl shaped silverware holders using felt and embroidery thread. (Check out the link to Danielle's blog to find out how I made them!) I took a spin on that project and made similar, heart-shaped silverware holders. These were incredibly simple to create and took less than 10 minutes each.

Well, there you have it. I finally decorated for a holiday!

I honestly had a lot of fun coming up with and doing these crafts.

I'm looking forward to the next holiday I get to plan more DIY fun.

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Stay tuned for another special post later today. :)

DIY Valentine Decor Week - Day 4: Candle Holders

(Sorry for missing a post yesterday. Things have been a little busy this week.)

Today's Valentine Craft was an easy "use what you have" project.

I saved these frosted glass votive holders that were leftover from my bridal shower, knowing that I would one day put them to use. They originally had a sticker on them that said "Jessica & Jordan" with our wedding date. I peeled the stickers off and they were as good as new.

I grabbed the glue gun and Mod Podge along with a number of leftover things from previous crafts and got to work dressing these votives up for Valentine's Day.

The last votive you may remember from when I wrote this post about the book page votives I made using mod podge. All of these were super easy to create and took less than 10 minutes a piece to create (except for drying time on the gold painted votive).

I love how the look with the candles lit.

Can you see the romantic vintage theme I have linking my decor?

The dark red, the old book pages, jute rope, delicate lace, and paper cut hearts.

I'll be rounding out the Valentine decor on Monday with my last few crafts.

Have a great weekend!!

DIY Valentine Decor Week - Day 3: Heart Garland

Day three of my week of DIY Valentine Decor.

The next project I'm sharing is actually the first decoration I created - a simple, vintage-inspired garland made of paper and jute rope. I've seen tons of different beautiful garland ideas all over PInterest. I've been wanting to try so many of them, but never found the occasion to need one. I wanted to create one myself and used my love for vintage/rustic elements to come up with this garland. 

Supplies:

- heart shaped paper punch

- red scrap book paper

- old book

-jute rope

-glue gun

To make this DIY garland, I gathered up some red craft paper and an old-ish book. I bought this heart shaped punch with a coupon from Michaels a few months ago and have yet to use it. I definitely put it to good use for this project.

I got to work and went a little crazy punching tons of hearts from both the book and the scrapbook paper. I made more than I needed, but saved them to use for another Valentine craft.  

To assemble the garland, I grabbed my glue gun and jute rope and got to work. For each heart along the rope I glued the book page heart to the back of the heart made of red card stock. 

Once finished I just needed to find the perfect place to put the garland. I wanted the red in the hearts to stand out so I didn't want to put the garland somehwere that was already busy. The dining room has a pretty neutral palate so my Valentine decor really stands out and looks great in the room. I chose to drape it over my hand painted canvas. 

Here is a shot of the front and back of each heart.

 

 I love this decoration. It's rustic with the jute rope, but still dainty and romantic with the hearts and book pages. The garland was so easy to make. I'm ready to come up with some other great garland ideas for future holidays.

Coming up tomorrow: Valentine inspired candle holders.

Have you guys been making any Valentine decorations?