Parade of Homes- snipets

I absolutely love going to the Annual Salt Lake Parade of Homes. I look for easy decorating ideas, see what is trending in home decor and color and I almost always come home and clean and declutter my house because the Parade homes are so perfect (no one is living in them, so yeah!). This year the accent colors in the homes were aqua blues, oranges and yellows. Yellow and gray combinations showed up a bunch too. I discovered succulents are the trending plant accents.

I'm always looking for bathroom ideas, some day we will need to update the master bathroom..so why not a fireplace in the shower?

I have been wanting a cabinet like this one between the sinks for years, I would opt for a big place at the bottom with access to the electrical outlet where I could store a hairdryer and curling iron. (Below) This was an interesting decorating idea for a boys room, but the cars are hot glued on and in the real world, that just wouldn't cut it. I am thinking there must be a cool way to do something like this and be able to use the cars.

I spent a lot of time looking at Mud rooms and garage entry halls... I am actually in the process of updating a wall in my laundry room because of it. (I forgot to take a before picture, but will post about that soon)

I found cozy spots, and rooms that were charming:

I failed to take more pictures of an incredible home that was built from donations for a family with 6 children with special needs.. but the little boys and girls room was fashioned after Rapunzel. This is the boys room:

The girls room was cute too. They had light switches at the floor level, an elevator, a sink in the kitchen that was also floor level for a gal that scoots around. It was awesome. this is the website if you want to see: http://www.utahparade.com/bf/ut/slhba/mem/home.jsp?hid=2900&pid=1140 .. I haven't blogged for a while on purpose. I linked my china hutch redo to a popular blog and have had hundreds of hits. It's a little scary especially when they are coming from all over the US and Canada as well as Japan, Russia, Latvia, Isreal, etc. I don't think I'll do that again but it has been fascinating.

Getting my personal HGTV fix

I wasn't planning on a project this summer, it just happened. While we were in Minnesota, a co-worker posted a piece of his mother-in-laws furniture on Facebook. He's been trying to sell it on KSL.com, but no one even called. I began texting him about the dimensions, was it all wood, did it have lights, etc....

It was all oak, had a light bar and was 17" deep. Perfect. Sold. After we got home I had our delivery guys go pick it up and bring it to my garage. I know I have mentioned before how nice it is to have your own personal delivery guys...a seriously nice thing to have. I was a little worried that it might be in good shape and I would feel guilty stripping a nice finish (because I had only seen a facebook picture on my small phone screen), but alas, it was well loved and needed some TLC. So I began the task by removing all the hardware and doors, sanding, taping the mirrors off and priming.

The folks at home depot advised me what paint to buy after I had selected a cream color. I was worried about paint brush strokes so we (Karl) bought a paint sprayer at Harbor Freight and I put plastic sheeting up on the fence and we spent a good portion of a Saturday with the paint sprayer and the hutch. It was a little overcast and threatened to rain, but the rain held off after just a few sprinkles.

All along the way I was learning, I have painted furniture before, but this was the biggest project I have undertaken. After a couple of days the latex paint was still tacky. Not sure why I didn't google this before I began, but learned that you should never use latex paint on furniture because of a problem known as "blocking" in the paint industry. Another paint industry problem, never trust the paint department in your big box hardware stores. Fortunately, the fix was not horrific. I was only concerned about the flat, shelf surfaces because that is what everything will be sitting on. I resanded the top and shelves, reprimed and then repainted with a wonderful alkyd paint from Sherwin Williams. It is an oil based paint so it took 24 hours to dry. Such a nice finish, and the paint is "self-leveling" so there are no paint brush streaks. If I were to do it all over again, I would use this paint all over and hand brush it. I wanted to antique the groves, another new skill. This is a side by side of the before and after of antiquing. It was pretty easy, you use a lot of rags, however.

I was also hunting for hardware everywhere I went, never found anything that had a vintage feel and would go with the leaded glass in the door panels. Then, on one of my daily trips to Home Depot, I saw some hardware displayed in their fake kitchen area- you know with the cabinets all set up in dream kitchen style-and asked if they had these somewhere, it took a while to figure out so I left my phone number and asked them to call when they figured it out. Later in the day, the gal called me and said I could HAVE them!!! Bonus! Apparently they are discontinued.

I love, love, love them. Here is the (mostly) finished product, I lost some screws (ha!) and had to make another trip to the Depot before I could hang the last door, so it is pictured without that door hung.

But this is far from a finished project because now I have to move everything from the old cabinet, move the table in the room, swag the chandelier, find a place for the old cabinet....and on! I am pretty happy with how it turned out. Thanks to my hubby for his help along the way, lifting and hauling and being supportive of my creative itch.