Every year we use a portion of our tax return to tackle a project around our house.  Last year’s project was our massive remodel (you can read about that here) and this year we took on a playhouse, sunken trampoline, sod removal/ landscaping and a shed.  Next year’s project?? Disneyland!!!!

This past June marks 2 years since we moved into our house.  When we first moved in I wasn’t actively blogging, so I don’t have a ton of “before” pictures of just the yard or the exterior of the house.  It’s been fun to go through the pictures and see how far it has come.  I warn you, there are going to be a ton of pictures in this post!  Later I’ll break down some of the projects that we did, but for now, just a ton of before and after pictures!

When we moved in, our yard was completely bare.  Except for one hideous, poorly placed juniper tree, the entire half-acre was grass.  Here are a few pics of the yard and the hideous tree (that we quickly removed).

 Here’s that hideous juniper being yanked out:

And here are a few of the backyard now:

The playhouse/swing set we actually tackled last summer.  It was a total family effort and I’ll blog about the details of that in the near future.

Here are a few of the front yard.  When we first moved in, the only thing in the front yard were some overgrown shrubs and a couple of small evergreens that badly needed to be reshaped.  We knew we wanted to put in a water feature, so I found a pond form on Craigslist and we put in a pond.

Last year it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

I spiraled up the small evergreens on each side of the patio, and they turned out great!

I did some planting on the side yard last year, but of course it still looked pretty bare:

 This year it looks like this:

So that’s what we’ve been up to this spring.  I will do some posts on the individual projects in the near future.  The playhouse/swing set, the sunken trampoline, the sod removal/ back landscaping and the shed, are all things I will blog about individually.  Here’s a little peak at the process:

Now things just need to start growing and filling in! It has been a ton of work, but slowly we are making our yard the backyard getaway we’ve been dreaming of!

Thanks for coming by!

I want to share a super easy project I did the other day.  Years ago my husband and I lived in Hawaii, and after we moved back to the states I went through a “shell and ocean” theme that lasted about two years.  I had a million shells and they were all over my house.  I have since outgrown it, but I still really like the shells.

I gathered a few of my favorites from a box in the garage.  They were very pretty before, but I wanted an update.

I took them outside and arranged them in my make-shift spray paint area.  I used a Rustoleum spray paint in Silver Metallic.

My assistant, Dexter, made sure no one got in our way.

I was really amazed at how easy it was to paint them!  The paint went on really well and I only did one coat.  Here they are with their new modern update:

So what do you think?  I still have plenty of shells left that I didn’t paint, but I was glad to get some of them back out in my house again.  The silver gives them a new high-end look for just the cost of the spray paint.  The possibilities are endless!

Thanks for coming by!

Some time around Christmas I picked this up at a thrift store for $1.00

I bought it with the intent to transform it somehow, I just didn’t know how.  Then my sweet friends, Joe and Denise, gave me this:

It’s a homemade coat rack that they were given several years ago.   They didn’t have a place for it and weren’t quite sure what to do with it, so they gave it to me.  I had visions of making a welcome sign holder using something similar, so I got to work. (I had already removed the hardware when I took the picture)

First I painted over the “wicked” sign.

I had a very curious little helper

Next  I painted the coat rack black.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture, but I’m sure you can imagine how that happened.  I put the hardware back on one side and connected some leftover chain I had from a hanging basket to the back of the sign.

Next I took some vinyl lettering I had gotten at a local craft store and applied it to the front.

I tied a burlap bow around the top and put it all together:

I  wish I had some beautiful flowers blooming in pots, but it’s still a little early for that.  I can tell Spring is getting close though, and I can’t wait!

Thanks for coming by!

Lets go waaaaayy back.  This is what it looked like when we moved in:

It wasn’t bad, just nothing special. Then, I decided it needed a little pizzaz, so that is when I did my trellis stencilling on the wall. You can read about that here.

(Sorry about the bad picture)

Next, I decided that the tile inlay needed an update because the tile appeared pink in certain lighting.  Here’s a close up:

So I painted it black.  You can read about that here. So here it is with the trellis stencil, and the black brick inlay:

Well…………I’m not one to keep things the same for very long, so I came up with a new idea.  I decided to build it all the way up to the ceiling, with the hopes that it would look like a floor to ceiling, built-in fireplace.

And here it is:

Here’s the awesome part-it took me about 3 hours to do and only cost around $20!

So you’re probably wondering how I pulled that off, so here’s how it happened.  Before we did our remodel we had french doors leading to an office/dining room.  Here is a before picture:

You can read about our entire remodel here.  That room looks like this now:

So do you see the molding that was above the french doors that we removed? It was on both sides:

It just so happens that the molding from above the door was the exact length I needed for the fireplace.  We tacked it up where the wall meets the ceiling and had four pieces of MDF cut to make the side pieces.  We just measured what we needed at Home Depot and had them cut it there.  We never even had to get our saws out! Then I finished it up by caulking the gaps and giving it a fresh coat of paint.

I think I love how it turned out!

Thanks for coming by!

]]> http://www.thesavvystagerinc.com/2013/03/06/building-up-the-fireplace/feed/ 1 http://www.thesavvystagerinc.com/2013/02/27/angies-fabulous-fur-office-chair-makeover/ http://www.thesavvystagerinc.com/2013/02/27/angies-fabulous-fur-office-chair-makeover/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:47:39 +0000 The Savvy Stager http://www.thesavvystagerinc.com/?p=934 Continue reading →]]> Hello everyone!  I haven’t posted in a while, but I have a fun project to share today!  My fabulous friend Angie had a couple of office chairs that had seen better days….

And the other one…

She does a lot of work from home, and knew they needed an update.  She had been drooling over images like this:

And this:

And she was inspired by the chairs that I did about a year ago:

You can see the full tutorial on my chairs here.

So we talked and decided that we needed to glam out her chairs.

She wanted fur, but not all fur is created equal…..The fur you find at Joannes, or Hobby Lobby, well, it sheds, and that doesn’t make for a very functional chair.  I told her she needed Mongolian fur, a fur you can pretty much only special order.  My hubs has big time lint anxiety when it comes to his scrubs, so I can assure you, this fur doesn’t shed.

So Angie ordered her fur.  She ordered a dark brown, and a camel color.  Because she likes a little bling like me, we decided that the chairs needed to be sprayed in some metallic colors.

Here is our first chair done in dark brown fur with a gold metallic, hammered finish base:

Quite a change, right?

And here is the second chair, done in the camel color with a bronze metallic base:

And here are the two together:

I think they turned out great!

Thanks for coming by!

I started with these materials:

Two candle holders from the dollar store, two washed pickle jars with lids, a package of drawer knobs, about a yard and a half of ribbon, and some candy hearts.

I spray painted the candle holders, knobs, and pickle jar lids a satin black, then using a bonding glue by Loctite, I glued it together and ended up with this:

 It was super easy and soooo cheap!  The knobs cost a $1.97 for a package of two, candle holders were $1.00 each, pickle jars were free (we eat a lot of pickles) the ribbon was $2.00, and I already had the glue and spray paint.  That is less than $3.00 each.  Kinda fun, right?

Thanks for coming by!

A wall with photos, pictures, sayings, various wall hangings, etc, arranged in a pattern.

When I first started my wall I took some different photo frames I had gotten at various thrift stores, garage sales, etc and sprayed them white.  I added photos that I thought were of importance and arranged them in a pattern that appealed to me.

Here is my original wall:

 I got the “A” on clearance at Kohls, and just put an empty frame that I spray painted around it.  I added a little burlap and some fall leaves above one of the pictures.  It stayed that way for a while, until I found a couple more frames and decided it needed to be revamped.

Here it is now:

I painted the little sign myself.  I have seen that saying lately and I really liked it, so on one of my thrift store trips I found that little plaque for .75 and decided to paint this saying onto it.

I don’t have a vinyl cutter or anything fancy.  I pulled up an image of another sign on the computer, put a piece of paper right onto the screen, and traced it.  Then I filled it in with a little paint brush.  In the future I will probably use a paint pen.  I was pretty shaky with the paint brush.

Here are a few more pics:

I also recently painted my doors black.  You can read about that here.

Thanks for coming by!

I absolutely love how it looks!  It adds so much character to an otherwise boring “builder grade” door.  An added benefit is that the black door disguises fingerprints and other flaws.  I took a couple of before pictures, and a ton of after pictures.

Before:

After:

 Before:

After:

I painted these “Onyx” by Gliddon, in a semigloss. I use a small foam roller for the majority of the door, then a brush to get into the trickier places.   Each door takes about an hour to paint front and back.  You want to always paint with the grain, and do two coats.  After the paint has completely dried, and you have some natural light, you will need to go back and do a little touch up.  I didn’t take the doors off the hinges to paint them.  I just taped off the hardware and used plenty of drop cloths to protect the floor underneath.  Here are a few more photos:

So far I have only painted the doors downstairs.  That’s 9 doors! I am hoping to tackle the 7 doors upstairs this week.

So what do you think?  White or black?  I’m sold on black.  Thanks for coming by!

into this:

 This project was so simple, seriously, anyone can do it.  I have never upholstered anything in my life, so I kinda just learned as I went.

I salvaged the coffee table about ten years ago from someone who was throwing it out.  I liked it at first, but then I decided it wasn’t really my style.  It has sat in my garage ever since.  This past weekend my family and I spent the weekend with my in-laws and my fabulous mother-in-law gave me the zebra fabric.  She had it left over from another project and thought that I would like it.  Immediately I knew I needed to make the tufted ottoman that I had been dreaming up in my head for years.

I got all of my supplies from Wal-Mart.  After doing a little research, I discovered that foam is extremely expensive.  I started wracking my brain about things I could use instead of upholstery foam.  I decided on this:

A full size foam mattress topper that is 1.5″ thick and high loft batting also in full size.  I figured I could double up both to cover the coffee table.  That would give me 3″ of foam, and two pretty thick layers of batting.  The foam topper was $29.97, which was a steal, considering 1″ thick foam was close to $60.00 a yard at Joann fabric.  The batting was $7.97.  I also picked up three packages of button cover kits, at $1.67 each, upholstery thread, and a large upholstery needle.

Since I was doing tufting, I needed to cover the buttons in matching fabric.  It’s really simple to do.  Here are my covered buttons

The first thing I did was spray paint the bottom and the legs of the ottoman black.  I always do a first coat with $.99 cent spray paint, followed by a top coat of higher quality paint.  I used some that I had left over from another project.

At this point I got so excited that I forgot to take pictures, so the next few steps I’ll just have to explain.  I measured and marked where I wanted my tufts, then drilled holes from the top down with a 3/8 drill bit.  Next I cut my foam to fit the top of the table.

I took a bamboo skewer thing and poked it through each hole from the bottom and marked the foam where the holes were.  Next is a super important step if you want deep tufting.  You have to cut out a circle in the foam where each hole is so that the button will settle down lower.  Does that make sense?

I only did this on the top layer of foam. Next I covered it with two layers of batting, leaving enough to hang on each side.

 The next step was the tufting.  I poked the needle up through the hole from the bottom until it went through all of the layers.  Then, I threaded on the button and went back down the hole and pulled it tight.  The tighter you pull it, the tighter the tuft will be.  While you are holding it tight, staple the thread with a staple gun.  Do a switchback, and staple again.  You should do about five switchbacks, then pound in all of your staples with a hammer.  This is what the under side looked like when I was done

I cut the thread too short on some of my tufts, so I wasn’t able to do five switchbacks.  It still felt pretty secure with the staples, so I didn’t go back and do them again.  At this point my fingers were pretty sore, and I just wanted to be done!  When I was all done tufting I stapled the batting and the fabric tight around the edges, cutting and tucking as I went to have a nice edge.  Here is the finished product

I LOVE IT!!!  It turned out even better than I expected, and it was sooo easy!  Here are a few more photos:

So what do ya think?  Pretty good for a project that cost around $40.00!  Thanks for coming by!

I decided to monogram the big pumpkin using thumbtacks.  I bought them at the dollar store and they came in a package of 100.  I just sketched a simple monogram from an image I got off the computer.  It took me about 20 minutes to do and was super easy.

I usually fill my pots with mums and kale, but my summer flowers still looked so pretty I didn’t want to part with them!

I do have one urn with three different colors of mums that actually came back from last year.  Some have already started blooming and some haven’t yet.

 I love how it looks all lit up at night!

Thanks for coming by!