Lara's New Hobby ....Airbrushing!

Lara decided that she wanted to learn to airbrush....originally I was not sure why since my primary memory of airbrushing consists of "Spring Break - PCB" (That's Pensacola Beach for those of you not from the South) from about 10 years ago. With no need for tacky t-shirts or painted tags, the purpose for needing to airbrush missed me, but alas Lara found something to do with the skill! This is a guitar pedal that she painted for a friend of ours..... I must say, I am very impressed!

New Light

This isn't really "sustainable" or an illustration of our "craftiness" - but I'm posting it anyway! The new light fixture in our Dining Room.

Tee Box

Our house overlooks a small man made lake and what used to be a fairway at Chace Lake Golf Club. I don't know why, but from pretty much day one I've been hitting golf balls from my back yard into and over that lake. The best part about this is that everytime it rains old golf balls (from the golf club) rise to the surface...this makes for an unlimited supply of "range balls".

To take this to the next level, we decided to build a small tee box at the back of the property! Once the grass grows in and roots, then we'll have a perfect flat service for launching golf balls into the lake! Now all that is left is to design a custom "marker"! PS: Don't worry, we never hit golf balls when folks are in the park!

From Buffet to Wine Bar

Here is a reclamation project that has been a long time coming. When my mom bought her house in Roebuck about 9 years ago, the previous homeowner left behind an old buffet.

It needed work at the time, but it wasn't until the recent move that we got our hands on it. We had the idea of turning this into a wine buffet/station by taking out some of the drawers and replacing with a wine bottle rack. This thing sat in storage for several months and then in our garage for a few more, we finally got serious about refinishing it about 2 months ago. The VERY slow process began of stripping years of varnish and stain and sanding all of the detail spots. Underneath was some pretty wood, we think possibly cherry. We don't have much cherry stained furniture so we went with a dark stain. For the wine rack we found some unique curved wood pieces from World Market and the size of 3 of them next together is a perfect fit for the place where the old drawers were. We also decided to add some tile and underlights to modernize the cabinet. The only thing left to do is find some 3.5 inch cabinet pulls (MUCH harder than you would think) to finish the whole thing off.

We are so glad to have the piece out of the garage and into the house. What do you think?

Nightstand

I bought new bedroom furniture back in the Winter. Though I liked the nightstand that was a part of the set, I chose not to buy it because it was expensive and a little too large for my taste. In addition, I wanted something with a little more personality so that all the furniture in the bedroom wasn't matchy matchy.

I found a nightstand at I.O.METRO that I really liked so we took a stab at re-creating it in our own unique way for this weekend's project.

Here is the inspiration:

http://www.io-metro.com/ic280frm.asp?prodno=671SA1092

Now....here is ours!

We made it out of re-claimed wood from a trash pile. We've actually had this wood for about 3 months. It was very warped, but overall has come out pretty balanced. We painted the first coat brown and the top coat a guacamole green. Lara sanded it on the edges to give it a distressed look. Total cost was $10 for the paint.

In these pictures the original wood and the final product.

An outdoor "entertainment center"

Since moving in I've wanted to build this outdoor entertainment center. At the Calera house, we had the fridge in our media room and the radio in the kitchen and they've been in the garage since moving to Chace Lake. The idea was to create a cabinet where both could live permanently, but that could be used outside. We also wanted to be sure it fit in with the architecture of the house so that it doesn't look like we stuck 2x4 furniture on our porch.

The frame is made of re purposed 2x4s that we got from Daniel and Chris' house. They originally used the wood for another project and we were able to scavenge the left overs. The wainscoting is trash pieces from another project. We used slate tile for the top and added casters (wheels) so it could be moved around easily since a full fridge gets heavy.

Now if I could just find the key to lock this thing...!

An old table... a new desk

The house has a room that we call "the study". It is beautiful, but we were missing one important item....a desk! We did, however, have a huge granite kitchen table that we were no longer using. We decided to take apart the table and re-use the skirt and legs for our desk. We purchased a bamboo counter top for the desk surface. My favorite thing about this item is that it has plenty of room for both of us AND I think the color turned out just beautiful!

Pictures include the "blue print", the materials just prior to starting, and the finished product.