Home Tour: Christmas Tree, Table, Mantle...sneak peek of new floor and kitchen

It's Christmas time in these parts and I hope to clean show you the rest of the Christmas decorations over the next week or so.  Plus, Mr. TSL and I (mainly me while he was at work) laid the floor in the kitchen and dining room over 3 days!  Pics of that in a sec.  We are hosting Christmas this year and I am super excited.  I almost alwasy do Thanksgiving and my sister in law does Christmas.  This year we switched!

I don't do "theme" stuff for Christmas.  Mainly because it would take entirely way too much planning on my part.  I often only buy Christmas stuff after Christmas, so I would essentially have to plan a year in advance. Not happening.  Plus, all the ornaments on our tree were mine and the mr's from childhood, or our kids picked them out.  We rock white and colored lights...I want white, mr and kids want colored lights. We hang both.  I am proud to say that other than picking up the brass candlesticks for the table ($10 for all of them on CL) I didn't buy anything for decorations!  I am planning to buy some napkins for dinner and maybe 3 disco balls to replace the silver ornaments on the table, but haven't done any of that yet.

As for now, here is our Christmas Dining Room tour.

Because we have so many stockings, we use a gold painted dowel rod hung with some Merry Christmas stocking holders.  This WILL NOT hold full stockings.  So, when Christmas comes Santa leaves the stockings filled on the floor!

I had been looking for a wool plaid blanket for a while to use as a tablecloth and had all but given up on finding one for cheap.  Then, I was helping my mom clean out some boxes and this was in one of them.  She told me to throw it away...I kept it.  

and that completes our Chistmas dining room tour....now on to some kitchen progress, new chairs, and new rugs.....

The pics are taken in really low light and the cabinets are more of an inky dark gray.  The pics are spot on for the fingerprints on the dishwasher though!

Pic of the newi-sh (I've had it for a while and not blogged about it) runner on the stairs.

 My new 8x10 Kilim Rug my friend was not diggin anymore, so we traded for a mirror I had from Hobby Lobby and a cake stand I hadn't used in forever!  I freakin' love it!  Thanks Erin! Plus, aren't those stools amazing....trash that Mr. TSL brought home for me.  He brought home 7 of them!  The Island is getting a makeover this weekend!

My new chairs I scored on Craigslist for $35 each.  The black one was originally bright yellow.  Couple coats of paint and the black is much better!  I originally thought they were Eames Chairs, but they are in fact vintage Krueger chairs and were advertised as "Fucky Little Chairs"  She meant funky, but now they are called fucky chairs.

xoxo

Linking to:

inspired by charm

SUNDAY: The DIY Showoff 

 MONDAY: Thrifty Decor Chick, Dittle Dattle,Between Naps On the Porch, Homemaker on a Dime
TUESDAY: Tip Junkie, Today's Creative Blog, Strictly Homemade
WEDNESDAY: Not Just A Housewife Sugar and Dots The Mommy Club  
THURSDAY:My Repurposed Life. House of Hepworths, Beyond The Picket Fence, The Shabby Chic Cottage, Somewhat Simple 
FRIDAY: Fingerprints on the Fridge, Miss Mustard Seed, Remodelaholic, Chic on a Shoestring,  Shabby Nest
SATURDAY: Funky Junk Interiors, Tatertots and Jello 

White Top Cabinets and Color Choice for our bar stools

I finished painting the top cabinets and shelves!  It looks amazing and was a total bitch to do because of the paint I chose.  We'll get to that, but let's see some pics.

This is a much better pic of how fabulous the sharpie marker subway tile turned out! :)

not sure why the doors look different in this one other than I suck at photography, they match in real life.

Now, my paint choice.  I primed with BIN Zinzer Primer...it's the shit.  Then I decided to roll the cabinet tops with Krylon roll on paint.   This wasn't a giant mistake, like I have to redo them, but a giant time suck and pain in the ass.  It drips, bad.  Luckily I caught most of the drips, but it took 6 thin coats of paint.  The paint itself is very thin and in using it you have to use tons of coats to reach your desired results.  It leaves marks when you roll it then look a little texture-y to me.  Don't worry it self levels and these don't stay.  

The reason I picked this paint was so I could spray paint the doors and they would have the same finish and color.  I should have just brushed the doors and rolled them, but hindsight is 20/20.

The doors painted super fast though.  It took me about a half hour total after the primer dried to spray the doors to completely cover them.  However it took forever to paint the frames, so next time I will be rolling all of it with better paint, much faster.

Now I have 7 of these stools that Mr. TSL brought home and had in the iron trailer (scrap to take to the recycler)  I found one while I was looking for something and he said he had 6 more the school was throwing away.   No freaking way.  I might add the tops were broken and my mr fixed them for me.  

They look like this:

my stools have a dark gray metal frame and need to be painted. These sell for $550 for the pair, so 7 for free is one helluva deal.

I could leave them with the natural finish and they would look similar to this because the island will be black.

These are the choices:

While I love the orange stools, I am thinking yellow or army green would look better with the red lantern over the island.   Which soon will be getting a makeover!  I am thrilled to start the kitchen and can't wait to finish it!

So what are you thoughts on the stools?

images via

xoxo

kitchen cabinets: one coat of primer!

I painted one coat of primer on the cabinets! :)

before with 80's cabinets

It's all a huge freaking mess.  But, progress none the less.  It is so much brighter!  I can't believe it took me 3 years to get to this!  I love it :)  I plan to put on the first coat of paint in a minute and the second coat in the morning.  The paint I am using says second coat after 6 hours, but before 24.  Here's to hoping 2 coats get it done!

xoxo