D&R Weekend

Happy New Year! I started mine off right with 48 hours of D&R madness.

Saturday morning bright and early, we began replacing every single outlet receptacle and light switch in the house with the modern-style rectangle design. Long story short, something happened in the wiring along the way and it blew the breaker and we ended up staying up nearly all night trying to figure it out.

That never panned out, so we called an electrician who came by at 7am Sunday. He couldn't find the short either so he had to rewire the entire circuit, which took half the day. Our little $100 project ended up costing us $450... but we're relieved it's finally over. Electricity = the suck.

But at least Sunday I was able to accomplish something... with spray paint. My favorite thing in a can.

Here it is, my first D&R project of the year!

Fireplace mantle this morning:

Just in case you were wondering... starfish and seashell orbs are from a beach boutique in New Smyrna Beach; clear vase from a thrift store; sticks from my yard; lantern from World Market; buddha head from Garden Ridge.

A fine setup, but I wasn't digging the extreme black vs white contrast. Plus, it's winter, and I love white, so off to the garage they go, along with some friends from the console table:

Sailboats from Ebay; vase from a thrift store.

Since it's spraypaint-everything-day, I figured I might as well spruce up these frames from our bedroom a bit:

(frames courtesy of the dollar store.... pictures via my printer).

So off to the garage they went, and here they are in all their post-makeover glory:

Yeah, it's a lot of white. I'm second guessing my white sticks... what do you think? I might have to go stick hunting later and paint them a deep brown to break up all the white. But for now, I can roll with it.

Here's how the shelf decor turned out:

I'm pleased with the results. Not sure what I want to do with the vase yet, but it can chill with the boats for the time being.

Oh, and I painted another lantern which sits atop the console table:

It's empty right now because I need to find a white pillar candle. The seashells came from our beach—I plan to build my collection inside the lanterns around the candle.

Here's the frames:

I'm quite excited about these. I'm going for a calming-casual-seabreeze feel for the room and these add a much needed pop of color. With the dark floors and dark dresser, I need to keep everything else light. I plan to refinish the mirror in the background with an antique/rustic white wash treatment.

But I didn't stop the paint madness there.

About a month ago I started painting all of our door handles oil rubbed bronze. I never found the time to finish them all, but today I finally got the job done. Whew! Here's what they all looked like before:

And after:

This is one of those small-scale, high-impact upgrades that I love doing. In our last house, we went and purchased all of the ORB handles, but once I found out they actually make a spraypaint for it, I figured I'd try it out before shelling out a few hundred bucks.

Let me tell you.... this stuff is amazing.

Like, I want to go to bed with it amazing. I don't know how they created such a beautiful metallic wonder that holds up well and looks like the real deal, but they did, and for only $3 at Walmart! You'll notice in the background all of our fireplace tools... we did those as well. And our sliding glass door handles. We have rid our home of brass permanently! And it feels good.

Now I'm going to go rest my achy body and attempt to scrub the paint out of my nails. Until next time...