Lighting

Don't you just love a great Craigslist buy!  For weeks I was scouring CL to find a lovely little chandelier for Little Misses room.  I love the shabby chic look for a little girl and wanted the same for Lil.  I came across a really great deal for this chandelier, only $40.  I quickly emailed the seller and they were willing to meet that night.  As usual I get a little apprehensive going to pick up a CL buy without my husband.  After making a quick phone call to the seller I was relieved to hear it was a female, but then on my drive there she called to let me know her husband would be the only one home.  Ugh! I had to have a quick pep talk in the car:  1.  Seller was in a suburb and not to far from my home. - Check  2.  My husband knows where I am and has directions; I will call him before and right after.  If I don't call in 10 minutes.... panic .  - Check 3.  I will do a drive by first.  -Check Ok, so maybe I am a little paranoid, but can you blame me! Any ways on with the story, the seller's husband was very nice and they had just moved into their house and wanted to make lighting changes of their own!  However, when he loaded it into my car I realized how big this was!!  

Ok, so the description did say 12 lights, however, I was so excited about the deal that I didn't take time to think of how big this was going to be.   Change of plans, this would not fit in Lil's room!   As pictured above I started prepping for the first coat of spray paint.  I wiped the entire thing down and taped all the parts I did not want painted.  We decided on white since we were going to be putting in our dining room and we had a combination of white board and batten and dark gray walls.   After several coats of spray paint it was ready to be hung!  Good for us our awesome neighbor is an electrician and was happy to help!  (As much as I want to DIY, I better read up before I dabble in the electricity business!)

Here is a better shot of the dining room.  I am still not loving the window coverings, but I am leaving this up for now until I find something better suited.

Lit up in all her glory!  

Things left to do in the dining room:

1.  New sconces.

2.  Paintings.

3.  Change window coverings.

4.  Decorate and fill the built in buffet.

Hope you like it!

Linking up with Liz Marie Blog :)

Dining Progress

One thing that I have read and now am experiencing first hand is how much changing a light fixture and adding architectural elements can transform a room!!   With our goal of hosting Thanksgiving, finishing the dining room was a top priority. Here is a before picture of our dining room from the MLS listing.  While I think the room looks fine it was just not my style and we needed to make our own. via  I had a few ideas, but this started out as a VERY slow process.  I absolutely love board and batten and knew this would be the best place in our house to add it.  About a month after we moved in I wanted to get started.  I was a little ambitious and began measuring the walls and trying to determine out spacing and dimensions for the boards.  If you are a blog follower like me, many people have posted different tutorials on tackling this project.  I began by wanting 1/4 inch thick boards so I wouldn't have to change my base boards.  I started by going to Lowes, Home Depot, and Mills Fleet Farm to realize this was going to be a tough order to fill.  So I brought home a couple different sizes to determine what we liked best.  We choose to have the boards 1/2 "x 4" x 4' so I began calculating our spacing as suggested over here.   Before we began putting up the boards I started painting the lower half of the walls white since it would be easier to paint without the boards.  After about 3 coats ( dark brown to white, I highly suggest primer) I called it good since I knew I would give it a couple extra coats once the boards were up.  

 Next we put up the top horizontal boards.  Since we don't have an air gun to nail the boards in we pre-driled holes into the boards and then nailed the boards into the studs.  While this was very tedious this went much faster than the vertical boards. 

  The vertical boards presented their own challenge since the spacing did not always account for a stud.  I could tell the husband was getting frustrated because we would nail in the boards and they would pull away from the wall.  Since I convinced him to help he asked, "what the blogs say about this issue?"  HAHA!   Unfortunately every blog has a slightly different  variation to this tutorial/process, so we concluded to use liquid nail to help adhere the boards to the wall!  

 Awe, can't you see the love he had for me while completing this project?

I wish I could say this all happened in a weekend, but unfortunately this project spanned across many weekends and the dining room was a disaster zone.  Finally all the boards were up and it was time to caulk and putty the boards to make a seamless look.  This is a crucial step and since this was my first major project I learned a lot of what not to do:  Take your time! Don't forget to sand and clean all the boards before painting again to get a smooth finish! I wish I could say our results are flawless, but you can seem some of seams, but overall I think it turned out pretty good!  Here are a few poor pictures since I have more projects I don't want to spoil  :)

 A sneak peek at my Pinterest Project below from this great blog .  Also, the light you see below is gone...

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