Do You Houzz??

Lately I've been hooked on the Pinterest craze along with everyone else. I love browsing around looking for ideas and cool projects. Another site I'm easily becoming obsessed with as well is Houzz. Have you heard of it?

If you're looking for ideas for you home or just like looking at beautiful homes this is the website for you. I can look at these photos all day long and dream (and drool). I want them all!

You can search by room or style. They have almost every style you can think if; modern, traditional, Spanish, ect. After browsing you can create "Ideabooks" and save the images you like in each one. You're able to put notes about what you like about the room.

What even better is that each photo contains information about the room provided by the person who uploaded it; usually the architect or designer of the home. Some of the photos have information and pricing on the furniture and lighting in the room; even what paint color is used on the walls. Pretty awesome!

And it's free!! So, do you think you'll Houzz??

Carved Wood Panels

Happy Friday Everyone! And Happy Veterans Day to all those who are serving or who have served our country! (Special shout out to the Hubs!)


Do you ever have this urge to finish something? Like it bothers you and you can't stop thinking about it? Lately I've been itching to get something hung on our walls in our living room. It's pretty bare, the curtains helped but I still had nothing on our walls. We've lived here almost 5 months- it's really becoming a problem. I mean a serious problem...

Hmmm, but what to do? Nothing was really catching my eye and I'm so indecisive! Ugh.. Then I remembered some wood panels I rescued from my old job before they tossed out.

They're walnut veneer panels cut ~12" x 12". They were submittals from a design job- we were to approve which wood grain we wanted for the job, but after that they were no longer needed. They were to pretty to throw away so I took them home instead of throwing them out. (This is one of the things I miss the most about working at an Architecture firm- all the cool samples!)

Solution!! I decided it would be neat to cut a pattern out of them and hang them on the wall. I started with an image I liked (a rubber stamp I had lying around) then scanned it on the printer. Then I resized it in Photoshop and printed it out.

After printing the pattern I cut it out and traced the image onto my panels. I used just enough pressure to make an indentation that I could use to follow and cut out later.

My original plan was to use my Dremel Trio to route out the pattern. Fail! All was going well until my bit burned up and became un-useable. I think the Dremel Trio is great, I think that it wasn't meant for this purpose. :/ This was a little too heavy duty for it I think. 

Anyway- I wasn't going to give up after this set back. So I made an appointment at the Base Wood Shop. If you are not in the military here's the DL- all bases have a craft and hobby shop. There's a ton of wood working machinery. Anything you can think of! And you can use any of it. I just took a short class on each of the machines and was good to go. 

Thank you US Military! The guy who works at ours is really helpful to. He gave me suggestions on the best way to cut my panels and which order in which to make my cuts.

So I set to work on the Band Saw. I felt all Bad @ss with the big saw cutting out my panels. 

The task was actually a lot easier with the Band Saw than with the Dremel. It was like slicing through butter even though my panels were almost 1" thick.

After a little sanding around the edges I screwed some picture hangers in the back and was good to go!

Viola! Free one of a kind wall art!

Some overall shots; I'm not sure if the panels are to narrow for the space I hung them in or not. What do you think?

If you wanted to try this on your own you could use plywood or MDF cut down to size. You could stain it or paint it any color you wanted. If you don't have access to a Band Saw depending on the depth of your wood and how intricate your pattern is you could use a scroll saw or jig saw instead. 

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Oklahoma Crazy & Table Progress

I don't know if everyone has heard or not but we've had some crazy weather in Oklahoma lately. Earthquakes, tornados, crazy wind. Luckily I was out of town for most of the earthquake action; but driving home on Monday this was going on not far from our home:

The sirens went off in Altus but it never touched down. Later we found out the tornado touched down about 20 miles down the road. Scary stuff! We've only lived here for 5 months and I'll never say that there's nothing exciting happening in Oklahoma again.

In spite of all that action I was able to do a little bit of work on my reclaimed wood coffee table. I began taking the nails out of the wood. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I used a hammer to pry most of them out.

There were a lot

Some of the other nails needed a little more work. These were hammered down at an angle, so I used my Dremel Tool to saw the ends off.

I'm heading to the wood shop on Base tomorrow to work on this and another project. Hoping to get this done before any holiday parties come up!

Score!!

Can I get a "Geaux Tigers"?!!? We were really excited for our Tigers win this weekend over Alabama. The Hubs was lucky enough to go to the game. So instead of hanging around the house alone all weekend the Con-Man and I headed down to Houston to visit my parents. They were having a party and cooking lots of good food for the game- how could I resist? 


While in Houston I thought I would check out some of the salvage shops in town. I've been looking for some rustic reclaimed wood for another coffee table project I have in mind. I've decided to use the hairpin legs from the table I found at the Goodwill and turn it into a table like this:

I've come to find out that reclaimed wood is hard to come by in Oklahoma; something about how trees don't really grow there or something like that. So I headed to Downtown Houston and the first place I stopped; Adkins Architectural Antiques and Treasure turned out to be a gold mine! Once I got there and looked around I didn't see any old wood; mainly old windows, doors, and iron. Way cool but not what I was looking for. A little discouraged I asked one of the guys and he showed me this:

A lone chunky beautiful piece of yellow pine stuck in a corner. SCORE! It was exactly what I was looking for. He went on to tell me that they had more beams like this in their warehouse. YES!! I was sold. He directed me to their warehouse; in a somewhat shady part of town. I was a little nervous but once the guy (who barely spoke English) let me inside I was pumped. This place was filled with old rustic stuff. Lots of old doors, huge iron pieces and statues, ect. But I honed in on the pile of wood beams in the corner. 

After some language barrier issues I picked out the one I wanted and the dude cut it down for me so it would fit in my car. He was super nice and helpful. I was so giddy about my new wood I couldn't wait to get it home and show it off to the 'rents.

I'm really excited to work on this project. The first thing I have to do is get all the nails out of my wood... It's full of them! I guess that comes with the territory of reclaimed wood. Then lots of sanding and sanding and sanding.

I feel like I got a pretty good deal on the wood. Not incredibly cheap; it was $5 a linear foot. So I paid $60 for all the wood I got. Not bad considering I paid almost $4 a linear foot for the stain grade pine at Home Depot on my last coffee table project. And this wood is almost 2" thick and way awesome. I won't have to fake antique it or anything! The legs were practically free. I'm so ready to say goodbye to my old college Ikea coffee table. This project is mainly going to be sweat equity but I'm hoping the final result will be well worth it.

Anyone else have some good furniture scores this weekend?

Scary Owl Turned Cute Chalk Board

Just a quick project this week. I wanted to do some work in the wood shop on base but due to budget cuts the hours have been cut without my knowing it. So hopefully next week I'll get in there. I have a project I've been dying to work in!


Anyway: I know owls are making a come back in decor these days, but when I saw this guy in the thrift store the other day:

I doubted anyone would be hanging him in their home any time soon. Ugh. Owls have come a long way as far as looks for the home, and this Scary Screech Owl from the 80's is proof. Yikes!

I bought it because the frame is solid wood with the plan of turning it into a chalk board. I've seen Gail at My Repurposed Life use this trick- just paint over the existing picture and make into something awesome! But my owl pic was just a poster that was glued on, and I made the mistake of trying to take it off the Masonite Board backing and it started peeling completely off.

Mr. Hoots was not a happy camper- he gave me a lot of trouble. After peeling and scraping away I finally had a clean board to work with.

After that was over with I painted the masonite board with chalk board paint, spray painted the frame and sanded it down and Voila!

Awesome vintage wood frame chalk board!

If your wondering why I've had so many chalk board and wall hanging projects lately, the reason because I've been putting a lot of them for sale in a boutique here in Altus along with some of my furniture. So if your ever in Altus, OK stop by and say "Hi!".

And on a side note "Geaux Tigers!" Huge game for us this weekend- I can't wait! The Hubs lucked out and was offered a ticket. So he's headed to Birmingham for the game while I'll head to Houston to visit my family. While I'm there I want to scout out some Architectural Salvage shops for wood for yet another project I have in mind.

The Hubs and I at the last LSU home game.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Dremel Giveaway Winner & Fabulous Reader Question

Thank you everyone who entered the Dremel Win It Before You Can Buy It Multi max Giveaway! I really appreciate everyone taking the time to enter. And a big "Thank You!" to Dremel for giving everyone the opportunity to win once again.

Without further adeou the winner of the giveaway is:

Drawing #8,035 PRIVATE

Dremel Multi Max Giveaway 5th drawing held by Rachelle Falcon Completed on Wednesday, 2 November 2011 at 12:25:18 UTC 48 entrants, 1 winner

Winners (1)

1st: 13

Amanda B said... 13
I follow Dremel on Twitter (@serenityspeaks) and Tweeted!

Congratulations Amanda! Send me your information so I can forward it to Dremel. 


Thank you again to everyone who entered.


I received a question last week about my Anthro Inspired Coffee Tables from Courtney:

"I’m actually right in the middle of my table refinishing project and would really love to hear more specific details about a couple of parts of your project; specifically:

1.        What did you actually do to add your "vintage wood style details"...I cannot tell from you closeups.

2.       I've never used the Wipe-on Poly (I hate regular poly)...does it still give you that hard clear finish kind of like a clear coat for your fingernails OR does it look in the end more like a rubbed on penetrating oil finish? I want the look of using a tung oil (or similar) but it is a kitchen table so it will likely get a lot of abuse too.

Thanks Courtney for the great questions! 

There are a lot of techniques to make new wood look old. I did a few things to get my wood to look vintage- I used the edge of my sander to get some scrapes in the wood. Usually you only want to hold the sander flat to get a smooth finish but since I wanted my wood to look a little beat up I went for it and let the corner edge scape up some areas of the wood.

Some other things I did were sort of happy accidents. I used Liquid Nails to help hold the top together and some of it seeped out of the cracks. I scraped it off with a knife which in turn left some scratches on the wood. 

Some of those small holes in the pictures are from 2 yr old Con-Man was banging on the table with his metal race car and it ended up being exactly the look I wanted. 

It's nice having an old looking table because any other scratches he makes in it just make the top look better! It was the first time I had tried to make wood look old and beat up so I just tried a few things. 

As for the stain, I used wipe on poly which leaves a very natural finish. You can't really tell it's there. I didn't want a glossy look, and since this table doesn't get a lot of use (besides my son's cars) the wipe on ploy has been working fine for me.

If your making a kitchen table I'd try something that hold up better to liquid and food. When I redid my credenza I used Minwax Clear Brushing Lacquer. It's not to shiny but seems to protect the wood really well. Of course I only used it on the drawer fronts. Yanete at 3 Sun Kissed Boys also did a table top on an old school house table which she stained and sealed. And she used a poly- water based stain. 

You asked about Tung Oil, I've never used it but from reading up on it, it seems durable and it's natural so thats an extra plus! If you did need to go the poly route a water based poly might be best. I'd reread the fine print to make sure its food safe. 

I hope this is helpful- good luck and I'd love to see pictures when your finished!

I love getting questions from readers so feel free to ask away!