The Soulful House

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Dresser Makeover – Second Time’s a Charm

by The Soulful House on August 3, 2012

Sometimes I get it wrong. R E A L L Y wrong.

A few months ago I was in love with Kelly Green (still am actually) and I painted a pretty French provincial-type dresser a bold green. You can read about it here.

It looked like this originally:

And then came Kelly:

But NOW (and forevermore to remain) here is the newly transformed aqua dresser:

Smitten I am.

SO smitten, in fact, that she has taken up residence in our entryway. The aqua plays beautifully with the new softer shade of gray on the walls. The dresser is painted Sherwin-Williams Raindrop (satin finish) and the walls are Sherwin-Williams Gray Clouds (flat finish). I highly highly recommend this color combination.

Here she is standing serenely in the entryway.

She’s a Guinevere.

The name just came to me when I saw her. And then Dictionary tells me that Guinevere means “fair” and “smooth.”

I melt. We were meant to be.

It’s a sickness people.

I couldn’t resist adding in some bird nests…and the pashmina/scarf that circulates through my decor.

Okay…one last before and after:

Done. and Done.

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Dresser Transformation – Go Bold!

by The Soulful House on April 17, 2012

I picked up this lovely French provincial dresser from Craigslist. (Does anyone else meet the nicest people through Craigslist?)

I was so excited to get started that I forgot to take a picture until three of the handles were off. Dad was helping me and I was not about to ask him to put them back ON just to take them back OFF. So here’s the photo sans a few handles, but you get the idea.

I wanted this to be a bold accent piece the color of new spring grass so I chose Sherwin Williams’ “Festival Green”in Satin finish.

After two coats I realized it was a little bit too lime-y, so I added in some leftover “Cardinal Red” from my front door project. I figured the red would tone down the yellow in the paint and soften the hotness of the yellow. (Hotness? Whatever.)

Amazingly my custom mix worked, and here is the finished piece:

The color looks different from every angle and at different times of the day.

The pictures in the frames are earthy elements in varying shades of greens.

So here’s our “Beauty” to “Bold” transformation:

Before:

After:

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Updating a Bookcase

by The Soulful House on February 5, 2012

This is a 10-year-old World Market bookcase that my hubs has had since his bachelor days.

The bookcase has held up well all these years, but since we are downsizing our book collection (thanks and no thanks to Kindle…I’m so conflicted!) it freed up some space for styling and accessorizing.

We also decided to consolidate the DVD collection by getting rid of the sleeves and putting all the disks into a notebook with 3-ring disk holder inserts. It condensed an entire shelf (below) into one 2-inch binder.

(You can see that I’d wallpapered the back as a design attempt that actually flopped. Onto Plan B.)

To keep this project on the cheap (free actually), I used the leftover paint from our Family Room Makeover.

I decided not to paint the outer wood or the interior shelves since the larger design challenge was to keep some dark wood in this portion of the upstairs area to balance other dark wood design elements upstairs. As much as I wanted to paint the wood white, it just wouldn’t have fit with the rest of our decor.

Three coats later, here she is!

Here are some close-ups of the details. This is a framed piece of scrapbooking paper next to my ages-old Mozart bust.

The peach flower was cut out of a gardening magazine and placed in an old frame I wasn’t using.

And here’s another page cut out of a gardening magazine. I just love these peachy coral blooms. And if you know me at all, you know I love birds. (Thanks Becki for this darling little ceramic one in her nest!)

There’s even enough leftover room to add more baskets or storage boxes if we need to.

I’d love to see your creative bookcase makeovers, especially if they are wood bookcases that you left partly wood. I haven’t found any DIY projects specifically like that online.

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