kids study nook

This is a project I've been slowly working on for a while and I have finally just about finished it. It took a little longer because of planking the wall and building the floating shelves and desk. I collected items for months that I wanted to style the shelves with. I wanted to make it all cohesive with the theme of studying and learning and this is what I ended up with...

I have numbered pots, an old tin lunch box, a flash card I made to look vintage, metal tool box, books, vintage scale and some wooden squares from Michael's that I painted with chalkboard paint then wrote the word "study." The desk is just a large piece of wood I stained and is held up by old corbels that came from an early 1900s house. On the side wall I made eye charts with my children's names. I made them on the computer one late night then framed them not sure how they would turn out, but I really like them. 

The red chair was an afterthought. I had their chair downstairs and it was solid wood from pier 1. I stained it originally and it turned out good but it was a little too much wood going on for me in this area. The back door is right across from this nook and it is painted red. So I took the leftover paint I had from the door and did almost a whitewash (I guess it would be a redwash then?) to the chair so you can still see the wood grain and some variation in the darker wood spots. It added just enough of a pop of color.

I was happy that with all the remodeling we were able to use every inch of space and try to make it useable. I had always wanted a study nook type of space for the kids to color and draw and one day be able to do homework at:)

I will do more detailed tutorials on the planking and floating shelves another time.

Hope everyone is having a good week so far! Thanks for stopping by!

DIY faux wood laundry/pantry doors

Hi everybody! I've got a million projects going on right now but I thought I would share my latest one I have finished. If you have been following my blog then you know that I had to move my laundry room to a laundry closet off the kitchen so we could add back a 3rd bedroom. We framed up the closet and added all the plumbing and proper vents. Then it came to picking out the doors. I wanted a small French door look. It needed to be pretty since it is in the kitchen and well be seen all the time. I also wanted it to look like pantry doors so you would never know it is a laundry closet. We are on a budget so I search the materials section on craigslist often. One day I came across the perfect set of doors and it was exactly the right measurements...that never happens! The man said he got them at Lowes I believe and just never used them. They were new but were stored in his garage so they had got a little banged up and definitely needed a little work. We got them hung and at first I was just going to paint them white like my cabinets but then I thought these would be the perfect piece to do something a little different and something that pops in the kitchen. I have a few wood pieces here and there and the doors have a wood grain look to them (I guess it's in the door mold because these are not wood doors.) So I then decided I wanted to try a faux wood look and give them an aged look like they were 100 year old doors that I spent a lot of money on :)
   Here is the finished product...

Now I'll give a step by step tutorial for anyone that wants to transform any plain door you have 

around the house. First I stained it with a dark walnut stain. As you can see in the picture below the 

white door is the original and the other is the stained door. After I stained and wiped, it didn't turn out extremely dark because it didn't soak up the stain like a real wood door but it did enough to give it a wood base color for when I do my faux finish. This is important because if it didn't have a base color then when I do the darker color later and streak it, the white would show through and not the lighter stained wood color that gives it the real wood look.

Also if you notice the darker spots in the stained door..those were on purpose lol  I wanted a real authentic looking aged door and there are always blemishes and imperfections in very old doors so I found a way to replicate it. Before I stained I took DAP spackling and smoothed it in a couple areas 

like around edges and let it dry. Then when you stain, it stains the spackling darker then the rest of 

the door thus giving it age spots.

This is some of the spackling before stain...

This is it after stain...

After the stain has dried then it's time for the faux wood coloring. I mixed my own because I couldn't find the perfect color. I bought Valspars "journey" and then mixed a little black to it to get the deep rich brown.

Then I put a little paint on my brush and lightly brushed it on. You don't want too much paint on the 

brush or it will go on too thick. If it does go on thicker in spots just take a rag and wipe it. It needs to be very thin so you can still see the wood grain if your door has that.

The darker paint gives it the walnut wood look but you can also still see the variations of the lighter stain peaking through. Here are some more up close pictures so you can see the wood grain and color.

This is the finished door next to the white door.

Then you repeat those steps on the other door and the inside of both doors so it truly looks like wood doors when you open them. I did the trim also using the same technique so it all looks like one big old set.

Here are some finished pictures. I still need to spray paint the hinges to match the doors better. I ended up using some old white porcelain door knobs I already had instead of the oil rubbed bronze ones I had purchased from Lowes. The white just stood out more against the dark wood and went with the vintage theme I was trying to go for. 

I also added a little nook above the doors for extra storage and I thought it looked better than just framing it up and putting drywall all the way to the ceiling.

Hope you like them...it definitely gave the look I wanted. That is the first thing everyone notices when they go into the kitchen. If you want to try this, it really only took me a couple hours per door to do so it is a manageable project.