ONE WHIMSICAL WOMAN: Four Years Later............

It took me almost 4 years to convince Garrie to paint our master bedroom from a blah stark White to a very soothing Gray. So now that it's done I've been busy trying to complete the finishing touches.

Most of my projects include accumulated "treasures" I have gathered over the years. They have been sitting in our closet just waiting for me to get the time, energy, and inspiration to complete them.

My End of Bed Bench is definitely one of those tucked away treasures! I have searched and searched for something to put at the end of our bed. I have even bought items, re-finished them and in one way or another they just weren't right. They were either too big, too ugly or just didn't fit my vision. I think it was my mom (who by the way I get a lot of my ideas from) finally suggested that I use my grandmother's old organ bench. "GREAT IDEA"! So I pulled it out of storage, wiped off the dust and began. Of course I forgot to take before pictures, but here is how I got to the finished product!

First I sanded the entire organ bench.
Next I painted a light coat of grey sporadically around the bench. I learned a trick on Pinterest on distressing, wish I could remember who to give this credit to.....because WOW it worked Beautifully.
After the Gray coat dried, I covered the areas of Gray spots I wanted to look distressed with Vaseline.
Then once the Vaseline dried, I painted the entire bench with flat white.
I let it dry entirely over night and then took a Brillo pad to the Vaseline covered spots. Amazingly the White comes off and all your left with is the Gray peeping through.

As for the seat itself, it couldn't have been any easier. Besides the ~~finding~~ choosing of the fabric to cover it with, i think it only took me 15 minutes to cover.

First I unscrewed the extremely old and rusty hinges.
Then Covered the bench with about 3 inches of foam. It needs to have enough to overlap a bit on every side.
After that I took the material and stapled it to the bottom.
Lastly, but very importantly I screwed it all back together and hoped the rusted hinges didn't break.

The bench obviously lifts up, but i didn't worry about the inside looking pretty. I store a couple of Charleigh's toys in there (this works great for the mornings when she's trying to get into everything she can't have, and I'm trying to make myself ~~pretty~~ presentable.

Another project that I have been trying to figure out was getting a King sized headboard for our master bedroom. We have had our bed since we got married-five years ago. In those five years we've just went without. Now, I will say...... that YES it is so wonderful laying here in my King size bed all warm,comfortable, and lazy but I also have to complain. This has caused me some major grief too! If anyone has ever tried to find headboard options that are affordable, comfortable, and eye pleasing know my frustration. Most King size headboards are well over $400-$500 and I refuse to spend that kind of money. Plus the DIY projects on-line never seemed very easy and I thought they would end up costing the same, if not more.

So once again I took matters into my own hands. I Pleasantly surprised myself too! It actually ended up being fairly simple, and just a shy under $50.00. The longest/hardest part was picking out the "right" fabric. Actually, once I figured out that it was the flowered patterned comforter that wasn't matching anything, I did what any woman ~~would~~ SHOULD do. I went shopping. Luckily, I ended up finding a plain White quilted comforter at Ikea. ikea.com

Which motivated me to complete my

DIY King Size Headboard

Supplies Needed:

Basic art canvas's (desired size and quanity of them)-I did two rows of five in each row.

Fabric choices ( I used 5 different patterns)

Quilting batting (If I were to do it again, I would get thicker batting)

Staple Gun/Staples

Time and Patience (Tedious to stretch and staple all of them)

Over time I would purchase art canvas's. I ~~every now and then~~.......OK frequently visit Hobby Lobby, Michael's and JoAnne Fabrics to browse. I would buy them ONLY when they went on sale.

The best bargains was when they were on sale for "Buy two get two free:"

After that I picked out six different patterns. My bedroom colors are dark purple, mustard yellow, and turquoise (ish). I think 1 yard covered two canvas's, but am not certain on the measurements. They are very helpful at JoAnne Fabrics!

Next I used quilting batting to give it a bit of cushion and stapled each different pattern material piece to the back of the batting and the canvas. Making sure to get it as taunt as possible.

Next was the difficult part. My mom, my sister and I took an entire afternoon to hang these suckers. We tried hanging the canvas by t-pins first. Nope....to heavy. Then we tried nails. Not sure why this didn't work either. I think the nails were too short, the canvas would not catch on the nails.

After an hour had passed, and several nail holes later my sister suggested double sided Velcro. I immediately ran to the $ store and bought the Velcro.

The next hours all three of us began sticking Velcro to the back of each Canvas. One long strip on the top and two smaller pieces on the bottom corners. I am Sure it was pretty humorous listening to us banter back and forth "NO, this side needs one piece.....No....this side already has two strips"

Finally with a little bit of measuring here and little bit of leveling there.......my four year project was complete.

A little side note is that we did end up stapling the Velcro to the canvas. Two of the canvas's kept falling. Extra support can never hurt.

I am super happy with the way it turned out. Better yet, Garrie liked it too. He was even motivated enough to hang my Ikea wall lamps. THAT SAME NIGHT.