DIY Standing Parsons Desk

Super easy.

A parsons style desk is ridiculously simple to build because everything is square and symmetrical.

You need:

4 4x4s for legs - mine are 58 inches high. 

1 inch thick plywood - mine is cut 20'x54'. 

3 inch wide flat trim to go around. 

Brass bracket hardware.

Home Depot will cut all your wood for you for free. 

Screw the top to the legs and trim the sides. Then paint! I used rustoleum oil based protective enamel in gloss white. The best!

Baskets are from Home Goods. Totally a Serena and Lily rip off. Eeey!

The before is just ew. But it's what happens when you want a standing desk NOW because you just read an article that said sitting will slowly kill you. 

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talking about caulk (DIY make your door pretty)

All of the doors in our house are old and that amazingly couldn't-get-any-cheaper 70's plywood. If I really wanted to I could put my fist through every single door in this house. They are basically hollow. If I was an angrier human I just might, because I can't stand looking at them.

To punch or to decorate.......... decorate. Obvi. Inspired by Jenny's yellow door.

Started with this:

 

Get your caulk on with Phenoseal. It's the bomb. Investing in a dip cap keeps your fingers anti-nasty.  

I had some guy at home depot help me cut the moulding.  

and I just measured/drew all over the door until it was relatively even.  

caulk caulk caulk  

caulk everywhere  

if the corners don't match up perfectly, just push some caulk in it.  

this is getting innapropriate. let's prime!  

 ready to be painted obnoxious blue.

  

again... before...

  

after! Door color is Californa Breeze by Benjamin Moore

  

fun! took a couple hours. Don't know that I would do it all over again cause it was sort of messy with all the caulk everywhere. mwahaha

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Kate is centsational

this Kate is awesome. She found this at a thrift store, and re-did tha thang using spray paint and some elbow grease. 

the bamboo! the campaignness! be still my heart.

check out her blog here: Centsational Girl 

before:

  

after:

 

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Dorothy Draper Dresser DIY

way back in August, I started to re-do the green campaign dresser that yall love (see post here: oooooooops)

I finished this back in August

but I couldn't post because 

a. I had to decorate the top so it wasn't blahh, 

b. I had to vacuum, 

c. I had to take pictures with a legitimate camera and that meant finding the charger.... which.. I found back in August.

So really the main roadblock here was my sheer ability to be unbelievably lazy.

Well here we are in February, and I'll give you a little history. The green campaign dressers were inspired by Vanessa De Vargas. She's a friggin genius. I loved that project, and version II is in the works right now.

I needed a lower dresser for the bedroom. Mainly because I have too many clothes, but also because my brain puts rooms together like puzzles that I can't explain in words, but the fact that the dresser I had was high and shouldn't have been high was making me wonk-eyed every time I walked in the bedroom. Not the most zen experience.

Enter fun new game called: let's copy baby furniture. (Uptown by Nurseryworks, inspired by Dorothy Draper)

Fact: Blue Ivy Carter sleeps in this: Vetro Crib by Nurseryworks

 I started with this hot mess:

cut out my template:

(hand-drawn... don't ask how. I will mail you a copy if you want)

measure, tape, measure, tape

trace trace trace

tape tape tape

I actually have a tip I can give you: makeup brushes from CVS are the SH*TS meow for painting small areas like this. And they're cheaper than the ones from Benjamin Moore.

done! So impatient I popped the hardware back on while it was still wet.

mission complete baby

Here's a before and after (How-to-put-moulding-on-a-crappy-door-and-paint-it-bright-blue-post coming soon)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

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apparently I wasn't the only one with this idea..

pinterest is a great place to figure out that like, 500 people had the same idea as you. Some of these ideas rock way harder than what I had originally pictured, so.. It's a great source for inspiration. if you aren't already on pinterest, you should join and pin pin pin. but you probably are. so nevermind. if you're not, ask me for an invite. I might give you one.

I am referring to the expedit bookshelves from ikea

Side by side and stacked

these might be 3 1/2 billies

also billy

tradish. gotta love tangerine

from Elle Decor... maybe not ikea. but copyable

rainbow books! Mom! national geographics would look so cool like this!

how do you have that many books?? Love that curvy top thing! also, I think this is from Little Green Notebook. which is an awesome blog.

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ish is gettin done round here.

this is loooong. sowey.

I'd like to take you back to May 2010 when Trev and I bought this place. The entire house was covered in green carpet. Floor, walls, ceiling, roof... not really but that's what it felt like. 

It wasn't even livable green carpet, it was more like crack den green carpet. Had to go.

This was not one of those "omigosh we just bought our very first home, ripped up all the carpet and there were gorgeous hardwood floors underneath omigoooosh we had no idea how crazy" stories. This was like oh, wow, more crack den decor. Cool.

So we bought some sick floors and played some sick air guitar.

Now for the fun part!!

We finally have furniture. 90% of which came from my great-grandmother, who had fantastic taste.

This is beyond a work in progress. However, these fun items will be added in the next few weeks:

A couple of these behind that pink sofa, which will be recovered in something else....

this bad boy

and one or two of these

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