I'm a total copycat

You’ve probably seen a burlap pillow of some sort in Pottery Barn, Ballard’s Designs, or one of the million other catalogs just like these two.  Some are plain, some have script, some are multi-colored, etc.  I don’t know if a lot of this exists right now anywhere but “home project blog world,” but I am loving all the things that have crude stenciling on them.  Kinda like this sign I made a while back,

  

I have mentioned before that I’m not creative, and it’s true.  Every single crafty thing I’ve done in my home, I have copied from someone else.  Like the sign above, or the kitchen stencil, or the attempted mirror collage (which ended up not working out).  So I blended the burlap pillow and crude stencil together to copy Mrs. DIY and the Tennis Guy’s  idea with my own twist (see the link for her tutorial).  I did it pretty much exactly like she did – cutting the burlap, stenciling (I used the exact same paint combination and stencils I bought for the sign I made),

and gluing (I used Aleene's "OK To Wash It" fabric glue from Michaels)!

And here’s what I ended up with.

Total dollars spent - $15 (~$5 each for glue, fabric, and pillow at JoAnn’s Fabrics). 

Its resting place is another interesting story.  Trey decided to clean out our garage recently and found this little chair inside.  I cleaned it up and it now sits in the guest bedroom with the new pillow. 

I’m thinking about painting it and trying to make it look antique based on some techniques I’ve been reading about lately.  We’ll see how that works out.  For now, I’m just going to enjoy my latest copycat project!

Finishing Touches

This title may be misleading.  While I did add a few finishing touches to the kitchen before Trey's parents visited recently (including working on the stencil I just told you about), I feel like I'll be adding finishing touches in the kitchen for months...maybe even years, to come. 

When we bought the house, in addition to having terrible navy laminate, the peninsula also had this weird three-tiered thing going on.

When we had the counters redone, we liked the idea of a rounded edge jutting out past the end of the cabinets, but we did not like the other shelves.  Unfortunately, we had our floors redone before our kitchen so that bottom shelf HAD to stay or else we would have uncovered unfinished flooring.  So we just knocked the middle one out (sorry for the lack of a good in-progress picture),

then spackled and painted over the evidence, and added a tall vase with white flowers.

Just one more thing about the kitchen that makes us feel like this is transforming from our house, into our home!

IT'S FINISHED!!

Finally!  Our kitchen no longer has the ugly green wall!

On Monday, this was on our counters.

On Tuesday, our kitchen looked like this!

We hired someone to put it in and boy, are we glad!  We went with a bone colored subway tile to match the cabinet color and keep the light feel we started with the counters going.  The kitchen looks infinitely better and we couldn’t be happier with the results!

After finishing the tile, I turned my attention to the one section of the wall that I didn’t paint.  That section in the corner of the kitchen is covered with something (particle board, sheet rock, I don't have a clue). 

Since we have a stainless fridge now, that significantly cuts down on the amount of stuff we can magnetically hang in the kitchen.  So...I thought I might paint that corner with magnetic paint.  I’d read where other people had used it with some success so I went to Home Depot and got some.

It recommended painting on 3 light coats vs 2 heavy coats.  Little did I know, that it was BLACK paint.  I immediately worried because I had planned on covering it with green and a yellow stencil! 

Needless to say, the green covered well in 2 coats, and the stencil did well over the green.

Here’s a closer look at the actual pattern.

I used Behr paint again, so if you ever need to cover a black wall in 2 coats, use Behr!  For the stencil, I traced it on the wall in pencil and then covered it with yellow.  I initially tried to paint it on using a Behr color sampler and paintbrush.  That didn’t work out so well so I just used a yellow acrylic paint pen from Hobby Lobby.  I cut both a full copy of the stencil along with 2 halves to make tracing that thing easier in the corners.

The stencil was a cheap way to add some color and character to the kitchen, but it was incredibly time consuming.  I don’t think I would ever stencil an entire wall like Jones Design Company did (which was where I got the free stencil).  I didn’t total up how long it took me to do the painting, but I had to put three coats of magnetic paint, plus two coats of green paint, plus the time it took to cut it in around the molding and that newly placed grout.  Tracing the stencil in pencil took about 45 minutes and going over with the yellow paint pen took 2.5 HOURS (I had to go over it twice to make it opaque enough over the green).  Again, cheap for a custom wallpaper look that's also magnetic (approximately $25 in paint, free stencil, $0.39 cardboard, and $5 paint pen), but time consuming for such a small piece of the kitchen.  I’ll probably end up using both of the left over paints (lots of it) elsewhere too.

With that and the completion of our tile backsplash our kitchen is now complete!  Thank God!  And it only took us 9 months…

Just a reminder, here’s a final before and after.

Before:

 After: