Furniture Fun

September has been the month for furniture projects! Back in August we got bunk beds for the boys in their room. Connor was still in a toddler bed and had seriously outgrown it, so we knew we needed to do something. Their room isn't really big enough for two single beds plus their dresser, and they've been wanting bunk beds forever, so we decided to do it! It is so fun. I also found some cute bedding on sale and got that for them as well. Bedrooms seem to always be the lowest decorating priority for me but I'd really been wanting to make their room nicer. I decorated Eli's room when he was a baby, but seriously that's about the only time anyone's bedroom has been done. (Ours included sadly, but it's going to happen next year!!) All boy decor/bedding I had was very baby, so it was time to move on to something a little older. I'm hoping all of this will last them a long time!

Our bedroom furniture in our house is a combination of hand-me-downs and Craigslist purchases, so therefore nothing matches. I got the boys a dresser off of Craigslist for $30 right before Anna was born and then when we were in Oregon, someone gave us a nightstand for their room. I decided I wanted to try painting them so they would match the new beds. The internet is full of furniture redo photos, it's just the thing to do these days I guess, so it was easy to research how to do it. The boys' walls are a really nice grayish blue. Connor's favorite color is blue and Eli's is red, so that's why I got the blue and red bedding. They both said they wanted a red nightstand, so I decided to paint the nightstand red and the dresser black. They turned out great!! I was so excited. It was actually a lot easier than I anticipated and they look completely transformed now!

Dresser before:

After:

 Nightstand sort of before/during (only pic I had).

And after. The red matches the cute baseball knob it came with.

 It's so fun to have things actually coordinated. I also put up that valance that was in the office when we moved into the house, and just happened to match perfectly in their room. I just need to get some things on the walls someday and it will actually be a finished bedroom!

My last project this month was this coffee table. We'd been searching for a long time for either a coffee table or an ottoman. I couldn't decide which I wanted, and I didn't want to spend very much money. I was having difficulties also because our couch is brown. Dark brown. Very brown. This was a conscious choice to get a brown couch, but the truth is I don't really like brown. In a perfect world, I would have a light gray or cream couch or something, but after having a tan couch with children, I knew I could never do that again...so we went with brown. And it's great! It hides dirt like a boss, because it's...the color of dirt. Anyway, so I didn't want a brown coffee table because the couch is already very brown...as we've discussed. So after way too much searching I decided to get this coffee table.

I ordered it online for a very reasonable price and it came in a natural light unfinished hardwood as pictured, so you could stain it however you want (we had to assemble it too). I already had some stain from making our frame for our map (above the couch), so it worked great! I used a combination of two stains, like we did for the map, and then put several coats of a sealant on top. I really like how it turned out! It lightens up the room and makes it look more finished. I'm glad it has a shelf too for magazines, books, games, etc. It's so nice being able to put our feet up now and play games! Win!

 I also got some new (inexpensive, literally shipped from China, thank you Amazon) pillow covers for the pillows that came with our couch. The original pillows were also...wait for it...brown, so I wanted something lighter. I'm really liking the way it all turned out! Please ignore the slightly crooked pictures of the kids on the walls. I can't get them to stay straight and it drives me nuts. End of story.

And now that I think about it, I don't think I actually ever blogged about our beautiful map. Those that have been to our houses in the past know that we used to have a big classroom-looking laminated map up where we had lines drawn everywhere we'd been/driven to and stickers marking places we've lived. We loved that map, but I decided when we moved here I wanted something a little nicer looking than the school room look. So I ordered a more antique-y looking map online for $15 and Jeremy said he would make me a frame! There's a friend in our ward who loves wood-working and has a big shop in his basement and offered it to Jeremy anytime he wanted. So he went over there one Saturday with some wood he got from a discarded pallet at work and they set to work making the frame. When it was done, we stained it and mounted it to a piece of that insulation board I had leftover form the homemade bulletin board thing I did, and now we have a beautiful framed map on our wall! We don't have lines for road trips this time, just pins marking places we've lived. It's a conversation starter every time we have anyone over and is meaningful to our family since we've moved so much!

It's nice to have our main room more finished. This is where we spend a lot of our time! And yes, that's the beanbag chair I mentioned being Eli's happy place - right next to the basket of library books. :) I think I'll be in trouble if I ever try to replace that with something more grown-up looking. Home sweet home!