New Chair SCORE!

Almost all the women in my family are interior design obsessed, artists and have no shame in trash pickin'. So, I was really lucky when my cousin found this awesome Mid Century Modern chair in the trash - and gave it to me!!

She wasn't in love with it enough to spend the money to reupholster it (she's got a chinoiserie meets French thing going on) but heck, I'll take it! 

This will be on the wayyyy back burner of projects but it'll look great once it's reupholstered. I'm thinking a blue or grey linen.

It'll add to my chair obsession nicely I think ;)

I plan on either putting it in our furnished rental or upstairs once our "master suite" is complete. That'll be in about 42 years...

The Never Ending Bricks... Phase 2 of Front Complete!

The never-ending saga of our bricks continues.... over the weekend we tackled another "zone" of bricks that needed to be cleared of weeds, leveled, laid back down in a herringbone pattern and then filled with concrete between the cracks. Whew!

Here's what went down this weekend:

This latest "zone" we tackled was maybe 10' x 10' of the sidewalk. We decided to not overwhelm ourselves and just do this job in sections. Below is a shot of the bricks getting laid back down...

Random shot of sweaty Hubs playing air guitar... yes, we had to have some tunes blaring to get motivated on this one!

Aaaand the after:

 yippeeeee!

Another after: 

Oh and that crazy vine you see to the left is Confederate Jasmine we planted to grow up the hideous utility pole smack in front of our house! blegh. 

In this pic below you can get a better view of Mr. Jasmine and the rest of the bricks we need to tackle!

And another shot. Look at all that grass we need to dig out! Whhaaaaa!! I think we will have either 2 or 3 more "zones" to tackle before we complete this mission. This process takes longer than you would think. (at least what I would think!)

Notice above that we got the matching topiaries for the other side of the house!! yay! They need a little trimming but they lookin' good! I also want to get nicer pots for the little yellow flowers that are in the awful plastic faux terra-cotta pots. Ahhhh... one day. 

This is a fun on-going project because it's something we can do ourselves (meaning it's FREE!) and it's very rewarding  to watch the houses curb appeal get purtier and purtier! 

Any weekend projects you're tackling?? Share! 

DIY Chalkboard Fridge...

I know this DIY has been floating around in the blogging world but I decided to share my little weekend project - I painted our stained, rusting rental fridge in chalkboard paint!!

I was looking into doing something really crazy at first.... maybe something like this:

via

Or like this:

via

I came to the conclusion the chalkboard would be more functional though - leaving notes for guests, guests even using it as a message board, etc. 

So here's the before:

Can you see the little rust spots all over?! Here look at this closeup:

ew.

Here she is after 1 coat of primer:

Aaaaand the AFTER:

This was SO EASY!! I just had a mini sponge roller, rolling pan, and a quart of chalkboard paint. It took 3 coats and about 24 hours of drying time before I wrote on it. 

It's obviously not completely finished, I plan on removing the handles to get full coverage and possibly paint the handles as well?? I was too lazy to get that ambitious this weekend :) 

It has definite cuteness possibilities!! The side is painted as well - I plan on writing famous New Orleans recipes or cocktail recipes like the Sazerac on there. CUTE! 

Is this for real!?....

Because I totally need this machine to finish our backyard! :)