Thrifted Luggage Stand Redo & Thoughts on Comparison

So a few weekends ago, my friend Erin and I went on a little thrift shop hunt to find some fun things.  It was not the most successful shopping trip but she came away with an old chair she is going to redo and I came away with an old ugly luggage stand.  It was pretty bad and needed some major tlc.  Here's what I did....

First I had to take off all of the old fabric straps.  It was fairly easy - they were just stapled on so it was just a matter of sitting down and slowly popping them off.

Next I decided on a color to paint the stand - I looove this glossy gray spray paint - Rustoleum Winter Gray.  Gray is one of my favorite colors for the house, its just soothing and relaxing to me.   So it received a couple of light coats of spray paint, and it was looking much, much better.

Then I debated on what I wanted to do with the straps.  I thought about new ribbon or going to the fabric store to find something to replace it with...but then I was in Target (always the beginning of a good score story) and I found these.....

I fell in love with the colors and immediately thought of using these for the straps for my luggage stand.  I'm all about using pops of coralish/pinky/orange in our house right now.  Its just too happy, love it.

So I decided to just recover the old straps with my new"fabric".  I simply used the old straps as a guide to cut my new covers and used a hot glue gun to secure the new fabric over the old - just making sure I kept everything tight.

Finally I just needed to break out the staple gun and staple my new straps on.

So much better right?  I like the fact that the luggage rack can be used in different ways, like as a side table or a play table for Silas.  Also, it can just fold up and store away when its not in use - so good for a small house - double bonus!

Something I have been thinking about this week is comparisons.  Comparing an ugly luggage rack to its new redo is one thing...but we take comparisons to a dangerous level lots of times.  We compare all sorts of things all of the time - we compare ourselves to others, and even worse- we compare our kids to other kids too.  Yuck.  I'm guilty of all of those things - as much as I wish I didn't have to admit.  As a blogger its easy to start comparing your blog to other blogs, your projects to others, your stats to others...as a teacher you might compare your successes with other teachers or the behavior of your class to other classes, businesses will compare their clients, numbers, ratings to others...teenagers will compare their cars, their clothes, their hair, the way they look (and adults do this too, lets be honest).  The list can go on.  We have this desire to be better, be on top, be number one - its dangerous.
Comparing also leads to envy and jealousy - which I think are even worse.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. Proverbs 14:30

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 1 Peter 2:1

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. James 3:16

Jesus came and turned the world upside down - turned our thinking upside down.  Instead of spending our time comparing ourselves, our acts and our deeds to others - which leads to envy and jealousy - we should be striving to live a life serving those people. We should be humbly emptying ourselves, shedding our pride and instead taking up our cross and living for the one and only thing that matters - Jesus.  Not our own ambitions, not striving for ultimate worldly sucessess or temporary things - but focussing on things eternal and striving for our purpose - which is to love God and love others.  We should live as a servant, longing to be like our Savior instead of the person next door.  Even rejoicing in being a servant and counting it as a blessing to be last.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Philippians 2:3

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 1 Peter 2:21

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Mark 8:34

When you find Jesus, you find peace in life.  You don't have to compare yourself to others anymore - Jesus is all you need.  He took your place on the cross and covers over all of your sins (even all of the envy and jealousy) - making you white as snow and perfect in His sight.  Our identity is now in Him - so no more comparing.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27

I need these verses and words often.  My prayer for you today is that you can find true peace and life in Jesus and that the comparing would stop.  All you need is Him.

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Painting an Old Shed

Remember when we had the most ugly paint color ever on our house exterior?  Yes, I don't want to remember it either.  Remember when I still haven't posted about our huge task of painting the exterior of the house?  I do have a reason, I promise I'm just not being slack.  We have a few more things we are working on out front (like mulch and planting) and I would love to show a totally finished shot to you and right now we are still in progress - its coming though - as soon as we can get all of the leaves to fall off of this tree...

Its so pretty but I think it has more leaves on it than all the other trees on our street combined.  We can rake them all up and two days later we are right back to having a full yard of leaves.

So, we are kind of on hold on the front yard projects until we get this under control.  

Ok, so wasn't this post about painting our shed?  So let's get to that - since I don't have a big unveiling of our house painting project I decided to share our little shed redo in the back.  So here's a side by side - then and now shot:

I love this new paint color so much and painting the shed gave me a new found love for it so I decided to jazz it up a bit with a new wreath (that I made with dollar store things) and a little sitting area.  We also had an extra stone from our walkway project so we placed in front of the shed.  Eventually when we mulch everything we will add mulch around the shed and probably a few little plants.

I'll share a few details about our new sitting area soon.  I think its adorable and I used things that I found in the shed after we cleaned it out - fitting right?

It only took me about two days during naps to complete the shed painting project.  PS - Silas takes 3 hour naps (I know, I'm spoiled).  I think the purple door and white details make it for me.  It's adding the little touches like this to something that might usually get overlooked that make it lovely.

Our little shed went from one of my least favorite things in our yard to one my favorite.  Although, when we moved in most of everything in our yard was one of my least favorite things.  

Hope you guys are having a great week!  Thanks for stopping by!

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Mini Makeover - Kitchen Backsplash

We have inherited a lot of old-school design ideas here at this house, one of the not so desirable ones is the faux marble plastic backsplash in our kitchen.  It's quite tacky to be honest.  Before moving in I started brainstorming different ideas on what to do with it in the meantime.  Eventually we plan on replacing most of the kitchen so I didn't want to put a lot of money or effort into a temporary fix.  Some different ideas I had was tin, bead board and even vinyl tile flooring.  But, before I went out and bought anything I went ahead and tried painting it, just to see if it would work and how it would look.  To my surprise, paint was just the ticket.  I already had it, so it was a free upgrade and that is always awesome and let's face it I'm cheap.  It really helps the space look clean and fresh and will be a perfect temporary fix until we save enough cash for a classic and fabulous tile backsplash, hopefully similar to something like this subway tile (love it).  Take a look at the before and afters..not too bad.

The paint on the top is from me

It really was super simple, I applied two coats of a good oil based primer and then two coats of paint.  I used a water based no voc paint and it worked out perfectly, the key was a good base of primer.  I didn't even take the time to sand or do any type of prep to the plastic backsplash.  If you have an ugly plastic weird backsplash in your house then painting it is definitely worth a try, in my opinion I thought it wouldn't be any worse than it already was.  It probably isn't the best permanent fix but something to hold you over until you can replace it with something you love.  Happy backsplash painting!

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Some Progress

Before we had to officially move in to the new place we had several days to work on some painting.  The first big job we were aiming to tackle was the kitchen.  This is probably the most time consuming part of the house as far as painting goes.  Everything from trim, cabinets, doors, paneling, walls - all of it needed painting.  Something I am starting to learn is that I do not estimate time for jobs very well.  Pretty much I need to add an extra 3 days to everything I'm doing I guess.  Anyway, we did get the kitchen fully painted before having to move in and we are sooooo glad that part is over (and I know my parents are too).  Painting paneling was actually pretty easy, a good coat of oil based primer and a couple coats of paint did the trick, pretty simple.  Painting knotty pine proved to be a little trickier.  These cabinets are old and I think covered in 40 years of grease so we had some streaking issues to conquer - which we did thankfully.  I'll put up a full post on what we did soon.  We also encountered a few other problems that we will tell you about soon as well.  Let's just say, that's where the extra 3 days came into play.  All in all we are pleased with how everything turned out and the kitchen doesn't even look like the same room anymore.  It's bright and fresh, perfect!

This is my Dad's Masterpiece wall, the grooves in the knotty pine proved to be extra fun

Our knotty pine cabinets are no more, they are white and pretty!!

Just a litte reminder of what our kitchen looked like before....

And now after

More kitchen pics coming soon...stayed tuned.