"Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. I promise you that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to you, each other, your children, your grand-children and others throughout the generations. Remember, the Savior chastised those who failed to record important events." --President Spencer W. Kimball

April 15, 2011

A little ambitous...

I'm the type of person who loves to re-organize, re-arrange and renew.  I get bored with seeing the same thing every single day for a long period of time.....Even back in the day before I got married, when I lived with my parents, I would always move my bedroom furniture around, or re-arrange the living room. You could find me making some kind of changes to my room at least every other month.  It just makes me happy to see something new.....and makes me feel accomplished.....(silly I know...haha)

When I got married, it was no different.  You could constantly find me re-arranging or decorating or trying to fix something.......at the beginning of our marriage I used to solicit for Ova's help, BUT I've learned over the years to just do it by myself.  I always have a vision in mind of what I want to do before I do it, but everytime I try to explain it to him he can't see what I see and gives me that face that looks like he's saying "um, that's gonna be ugly"  I decided to stop asking him for his help, or even telling him my ideas because that face makes me mad......and he ALWAYS loves the ending result!  Since I love surprises, especially giving them, I figured that would be another way I could surprise him.  That way I'd be happy re-decorating and he'd be happy with the "new" whatever I did. 

We moved into our house a year ago and I've made a lot of changes already....painted the living room, hung the pictures, put up vinyl....etc.  But I never really did anything with our room.  Everytime I walked in there it was just white walls with mis-matching furniture and it was so blah..........SO, I made up my mind one day to re-do my bedroom.....here's what I did:

1st, I waited until Ova was at work and I went to Lowe's and bought some paint (dark chocolate brown) I moved the bed and dressers into the middle of the room, taped the windows and doors and painted the entire room.  It was so dark, but it actually made the room look a lot bigger.  I LOVED it!!  Ova came home from work that night and was so surprised because he had no idea I was doing that.  Since I painted the whole entire room, there were a lot of fumes in the air so I told him he had to sleep with the boys in their room that night.  While he was sleeping I moved the furniture around the room....put the bed on the opposite side of the room moved the dressers around....it was all coming together so nicely, I was so happy!  BUT the dressers were so off, they didn't match each other and they didn't match my newly painted room.....so I had another idea brewing in my head to re-do my dressers!  This project was so much fun!

This is the dresser that Tea has had for years and years....she got a new bedroom set and we inherited her old stuff.  I'm not a fan of the carved leaves in the dresser, but we've been using them for several years.  Don't know why I didn't think of this project before!  haha  This was the stand-up part of the dresser (with missing bottom drawer and all), and there's another dresser that matches it that is long.  Both peices have the same carved design.
This is the same dresser.... opened, it had a shelf in the middle that divided the top part of the dresser

My idea was to make this part of the dresser into an armoir to sit on top of the long dresser, and put our TV in it..... Since the bottom drawer of this dresser was missing, I thought I could use it as the place to put our cable box and dvd player.....I broke out the shelf that divided the top part of the dresser and pulled off the black rails that the missing drawer was supposed to slide on (that part was so hard....I must admit I broke a sweat struggling to get them off....haha)


I hated the design that was carved in so I wanted to change it.  I went to Lowe's again and bought some wood putty and I filled in the carved part of the dresser.  A little tub of wood putty went a LONG way!  I didn't know how many to buy so I bought 4 and ended up only using one so I returned 3. 

After the wood putty was dried, I sanded the dresser down........you obviously could still see the design, but when you ran your hand down it it was smooth and you couldn't feel the design.  The next step was to paint it.  I wanted to paint it black to match our bed frame, but before I painted it black, I had to prime it.....

The dresser primed.....ready to be painted black...

The primer dried pretty fast, which I was so happy for.....because I was able to putty, sand, prime and paint all in one day.....I bought new handles from Lowe's when I was there, the cheapest silver ones...here's my finished project.....I am SO happy with how it turned out! 
(You can still see the design on some parts of the dresser....I guess the paint absorbed differently to the putty than to the dresser.....but my idea is to buy like a flower vinyl to put on the dresser to take away from the old design you can still see.....that project will have to wait a little bit)

After the room was painted and the dresser complete, I put my vinyl up

Made a little picture collage on my wall

I wanted to dedicate a wall to Ova's music so I asked my sister to make a sign using photoshop (since my computer was still broken) we just used a quote by Bob Marley, I printed and framed it.....then, I went to a guitar store and bought the guitar hangars and here's how his music wall turned out

Here's my new room!  Such a huge change from white walls and mis-matching dressers.....I LOVE IT!

I still have to paint my other dresser black, and change the handles.....and then I'll be done!  I'm a little ambitious, I know!  :)

7 comments:

Brian N Sela Misinale said...

OMG Monica your lil miss Handy Manny arent you :) I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it all!!! I am also like you, I love working on home projects, moving things, painting and all that good stuff :) I love your idea to redo your bed room.... I been thinking about doing mine, and now seeing yours... Im gonna do it! :) Luckly My Hubby also loves doing projects and using my ideas so thats a huge plus!!! Great job on everything you did! Please continue to post your projects cause I love looking at others DIY projects! Luv yah!

IONGI FAMILY said...

Love it!! such crafty and creative you are!!!

Melissa Snyder said...

Wow, can you come and decorate my bedroom? Great job! I love the color of paint. I need to be courageous and just do something random like that too.
Sure miss ya!

Monika said...

love it...great job Monika! You are very ambitious...rock on love the colors and the guitar wall...super cute!!! Now your making me want to do a make over too....handy gal u!

Tina Tuakoi said...

Great job! I need to more ambitious like you, lol.

nivadivadiaries said...

I love it all Monica! Amazing! XO

LEINATA LEAKEHE said...

WOW!! AWESOME JOB! THX FOR GIVING ME THE IDEA TO CHG UP MY HUBBY N I'S 1ST SET WHEN WE GOT MARRIED N PASSED ON TO HIS NIECE!! LOL LOVE IT!!!