Repurposing: Turning Old into New

Hello All! It's my turn for the blog! As Derek said in the last one, there are a few artsy projects I'm working on for the house. One is currently on hold because of the weather (ahhh rain!). However, I was able to get this one finished and put up in the house.

In the apartment, Derek and I had this mirror hanging up in the hallway. It was more for decoration, as we hardly actually used the mirror, and every year, I always sprayed it with fake snow to make it festive for the holidays. We both liked the mirror, but didn't know where to place it nor did we really need a mirror in the new house. 

The mirror just sitting around, wanting to be
used for something! 

I didn't want to just throw it away, so I needed to figure out what to do with it. I saw on Pinterest that you can turn just about any paintable surface into a chalkboard...old picture frames, mirrors, glass, walls, pretty much anything really. 

I thought that sounded like a cool, quick and easy project that was perfect for this mirror! So I told Derek my idea and then went about purchasing the supplies, which pretty much meant buying chalkboard paint. Once I came home, I started the process and here's how it turned out:

The first step was to protect the frame by taping it off. Once that was done, I was ready for the first coat. It looks a little uneven because it took me a bit to get the hang of how to actually spray it. 

All taped off

The first coat 

The can said to wait at least 20 minutes to an hour before applying the second coat. I waited about half an hour and then decided I would apply the second coat. Well, someone else had a diferent plan in mind. There was a bee who decided he needed to crawl around on the craft paper and check out the mirror. I decided spraying paint around him wasn't a good idea and instead waited it out. 

He stalled the project for another half hour

After the bee went away and I was able to carry on, I sprayed the second coat and then let it sit for an hour before bringing it inside. Once it was done, I removed the tape and admired my work. After that, all that was left was to have Derek hang it up! Now the biggest decisions are agreeing on what we want to do with it. I made it to be functional and keep lists on it, while Derek thinks we need to draw something artistic on it and keep it that way. What do you think? 

After the second coat 

Inside, with the tape removed 

Hanging on the wall in the kitchen 

That's it for now! We have a few other things to share and will get them up soon. I hope you enjoyed reading about my first artsy project. :) 

-Chelsey 

This blog will probably focus a lot on Chelsey and I's weekend adventures. Right now, that basically entails staying at home and trying to put the house and yard together. So for the next few months expect a lot of before and after pics, some yard sale finds, and Chelsey's "artsy" projects.

 Over the past two weeks Chelsey and I have started really working on making the house feel like home and starting to clear out a lot of the dead brush around the yard. We hit a few yard sales and found some goodies she will also be "artsying" up to hang around the house.

Today we emptied our last box too. At least everything is now unpacked, we are still finding places to put things in an organized manner. We left a lot of our furniture in Arizona and are kind of rebuilding with what we can find here. Slowly yet surely.

Time for some pictures of the yard (before/after) and the goodies we got at the yard sales.

 The first set of pictures are our front yard. There's a lot of dead ferns and bushes all around the house. I'm trying to pull it all up and clear some area so we can pull the vehicles up to the side of the house instead of directly in front. Eventually we will buy a sort of "hang over" they have here that will protect the cars from the large amount of rain we get.

Anyways here is the front left of the yard before/after a few hours of cleaning dead plants out. On the far left in the first picture you can see our driveway.

The land is lifted up probably about 3 feet. It's almost like our house was "dug" into an area as  the backyard also has a "drop off" in the back. (But that's for later).

Here is a before after of the front mid. We cleared out some more dead plants and moved some rocks. Slowly but surely.

Finally the 'Front Right Corner" of the house. It's got a lot of dead plants they left laying around after they cleared an area to put a power line and all of our cable/internet lines. The pile you see here is a thorn bush, that'll be fun.

Our "Rock Quarry". Here we are moving all of the volcanic rock from around the rest of the house. It was originally empty. The majority of the rocks are from softball - dodgeball sized. It'll be good for making natural walls around the property in the furture. If we don't get enough for that we will probably use them for decorating garden areas.

Here's chelse working hard with Hades.

 Put up some blinds we got from Home Depot. We have another sliding glass door in the Master Bedroom. It currently has a very fancy blanket hanging over it. We will replace those when money permits.

These were probably our best yard sale find yet. They were both un-opened faux wood blinds. We picked them up for $10 each and they fit nicely together on the side window in the office area.

Finished the day off with washing the truck. Washing the vehicles is a weekly  thing here since the rain passes through all the Vog the volcano produces causing it to be slightly acidic. I also hand waxed them the following weekend.

And that's the last two weekends in a wrap. Hopefully we have some pictures of some actual activities we do in the coming weekend, but for now it's a lot of hunkering down until we get everything settled with the house payments and knowing just how much money we have.

~Derek