Ballard Designs. Heard of them? Well, they are kind of a big deal…..and so are their prices. They had some amazing bracket shelves that were perfect for the dining room in our townhouse. Only, problem is, they were like super expensive. So I started to look at Etsy, Target, and a few other places that might have some similar. I found some but they were all floating shelves. I really liked the brackets or corbels on the bottom. I know it is dumb that I wanted to buy them when I could have just made them right? Well, sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the projects on the to-do list. That’s when I just want to go out and buy it so I can check something off and be done. But checking off this project meant big bucks so I was forced to make them…..sort of. 😉

Well, I didn’t have a miter saw to build the shelves from scratch. So I had to get creative. I was at Home Depot and found some floating shelves that I really liked (image below is from the Home Depot website of the shelf I picked). I still thought they needed the corbels to finish them off. That’s when it hit me! I would just buy the floating shelves and add some corbels to them. DUH! I still had to do a little work but it would be quick and easy.

I chose a 24-inch shelf and a 36-inch shelf in white. I then headed over to the wooden corbels. There is a section of a bunch of unfinished corbels in Home Depot. I couldn’t fin one that I like so I went to Lowes. I found the one I liked at Lowes in the picture below (picture of corbel is from Lowes website). I needed four of them (two for each shelf). They also have them online and that’s where I borrowed this picture from. I also picked up some wood fill and wood glue (pictures from the Home Depot website).

As you can see in the corbel picture they had holes where you would normally attach something. I wasn’t going to use these holes to attach the corbels so I used the wood fill to fill them. After the filler had dried I sanded the areas smooth. Now comes the fun part. I flipped my floating shelves main surface down and got my wood glue. I placed the wood glue on the top of the corbel and laid it on the bottom side of the shelf. I just kind of eyeballed how far apart I wanted them. I did this on each floating shelf. I left them with the corbels in place, where I wanted them to dry overnight. The next morning I came downstairs to my “want to be” Ballard Designs shelves. Only, problem was, my shelves were white and my corbels were unfinished wood.

I thought about taping off just the corbels and painting them since my shelves were already white. Then I would have to worry about the whites matching. So that’s right, I painted the already perfectly painted white shelves. It was the only way to make sure it all was the same color. I used my trusty Kilz primer first. Then I took my Krylon glossy white and spray painted the shelves. They turned out just like I wanted. It was less than $100 for the whole project. That is way cheaper than what I would have spent at Ballard Designs. The best part is that it was a super lazy, do it yourself project. It was practically already done for me. I just put it all together and slapped some spray paint on them. I know they could have been made for a lot cheaper from scratch too. I work with what I got, though. Some day I will have a miter saw and then nothing will be holding me back. Watch out! But seriously I got to get one of those by the time we move into the new house. And that’s a wrap….now you can go make your own “Ballard Designs” shelves.

P.S. here is a pic of my shelves when that one time I tried using colors other than white to decorate for fall….

Is Christmas over already? It doesn’t even feel real. I can’t believe how time has flown by this year. So many milestones have happened in our family and we have been truly blessed. I’m so thankful for the opportunity we have to build a house, sell our townhouse, and have so much love and support. Mr. Whitelane wanted to get me an entry bench four years ago when we bought our very first townhouse. We didn’t have very much money and what we did have was going to buy that little townhouse. He came home for our anniversary with this brown bench from Wal-Mart that was only $49. We didn’t even end up using it in our entry because it just didn’t work there. We ended up putting it in our master bedroom. Even when we built our new townhouse we still kept it in our bedroom. I wanted to paint it in our new townhouse and reupholster the seat. I was very worried about attempting to reupholster a tufted piece (I don’t know why because it wasn’t bad at all). It sat it in our bedroom for a year after we moved to the new townhouse. I was going to sell the bench and buy a new one. I looked a lot of places and all the benches were at least $100 or more. I found some I really liked but I just didn’t want to spend the money on that. So I decide I was going to paint it and reupholster.

I took the top seat apart from the legs by unbolting the screws. I then took the base legs outside and used my trusty Kilz primer to get rid of the brown. After that had dried two hours I put on a nice even coat of Krylon semi-gloss white spray paint. I left that to dry and cure while I figured out how to tackle the reupholstering.

I had reupholstered tons of chairs and cushions before but nothing that was tufted. I went to Hobby Lobby and found this great neutral fabric. I also picked up some upholstery buttons and a long tufting needle. When I got back home I removed all the brown pleather from the cushion. now there was just foam. I could see the holes where to thread the buttons and then it all made sense. I used the fabric to cover the small upholstery buttons and snap them back together. Next, I placed my fabric on top of the cushion and used my long needle to thread the buttons through the fabric and the cushion seat holes. I did this in each place where the previous holes had been used for the tufting. I used twine to thread the buttons to the bench seat because it is stronger. I then stapled them to the bottom of the wood cushion base and tied them off. Now that all my buttons were tufted, it was time to staple my fabric to the cushion. Remember to do your corners last. I like to staple all my sides first. Then I take my four corners one at time, to fold them nicely and staple them down.

My legs had dried and I decided to take sand paper to lightly distress some areas. I then took the top cushion and screwed back together the legs and seat. It obviously was not perfect but it looked so much better. I decided it still needed something else so I went back to Hobby Lobby and got some oil rubbed bronze upholstery tacks. Let me tell you that was a whole lot of work. I got individual tacks and it was such a pain hammering in each one and trying to keep it on a straight line. I got off in multiple places but you can’t tell unless you examine closely. I don’t think I want to do upholstery tacks again unless I absolutely have to! I love the look of them and I think it finished off the bench nicely despite the trouble.

After all that work I decided to sell this little bench. Since we decided to build a house and sell our newer townhouse; I knew this bench needed a new home. When we get settled in the new house I will probably finally splurge to buy a nice bigger bench for our master bedroom. I don’t know? I might even buy two sitting chairs instead. As you can imagine, my mind is spinning with design ideas for our new house. I can’t wait to actually move in and get started. Until then Ill be day dreaming….

Today I’m throwing it way back to our first townhouse we bought. I got this red berry wreath from Thai Pain Trading and I just loved it, until I didn’t. All of the sudden the red just was not working for me. I had a lot of red in my house when we first got married. After a few years, I started to add more bright fun colors. This is where the wreath update came into play.

I had spray painted so many other things. So why not try to spray this wreath? I first used Kilz spray primer as usual. Then I chose Krylon Ocean Breeze spray paint. It took two coats and a lot of waiting for one side to dry. I would have to let sections dry and then roll it over to spray another section. There were a lot a berries and places to spray on this wreath.

Its been a few years but I still love this turquoise wreath. It has a fun pop to it. I need to give it a fresh coat of Ocean breeze because some red is showing through on a few chips. Hey, I might even spray it white this time. You never know? Spray paint is a miracle worker and makes it easy to change up the color.

Does anyone else have one of these weird niches? My husband said it looks like where you keep a dead persons’ ashes. Soooooo I knew it had to go. We don’t have anybody’s ashes laying around and if we did I sure wouldn’t want them sitting here. Our townhouse was builder grade cookie cutter all the way. This little niche came standard and was not able to be taken out. So wonderful Mr. Whitelane came up with an awesome idea. He thought it would be neat to paint it with chalkboard paint. Then it could be a little message area. GENIUS!! Sometimes he is way off but then sometimes he has amazing ideas like this! Haha.

You already know I used my frog tape to tape off the area I wanted to be a chalkboard. It took three thick coats of chalkboard paint. I just used Rust- Oleum chalkboard paint. I chose a foam roller to give it a smooth finish on the wall.

Once it was all dry I took the tape off and got my chalk out. Well, the problem is that I have handwriting like a kindergartener. So When I tried to write a pretty message it turned out not so pretty. I mean I totally envisioned all that pretty calligraphy you always see pictures of on a chalkboard. No, not happening from me. Sad and true. I got better as time went on but still nothing fancy. I wish I would have got a picture of some of my “better” art I wrote on here. This was my first message I wrote so just keep that in mind. Haha.

Ok, so now you know what to do with all those weird niches or nook that your houses come with. In fact, Mr. Whitelane started a whole neighborhood trend. All of our neighbors that came over, saw our chalkboard and painted theirs too.

I found this awesome magazine rack/letter holder at T.J. Maxx. I needed a space to drop stuff and hide all my mail and papers. I looked for a long time but couldn’t find anything in the color I needed. After looking at several places I went ahead and got this red metal one. It was very rustic and very red. It would have looked great in my son’s room just the way it was. It just didn’t work in my kitchen.

Big surprise, I used spray paint. I first used my Kilz primer to get rid of all that red. Once that dried I took my Krylon gold spray paint and got busy. Now that it was all gold, I still didn’t like the way it looked. It was all really blah, too much of one color.

I busted out the frog tape and added a white racing stripe. This made me like it a little better. I don’t know why but I can’t just love it. I’m not sure if I will keep or sell this magazine rack. I thought I had found a spot for my junk but I’m not so sure about this. Mr. Whitelane doesn’t like it either. This is one of those projects where you cut your losses. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me what I should do.