Gold, gold and more gold

I am not a "gold" person. But when it came to the tv bar cart, I felt gold was appropriate since the knobs were gold and the tv inlay was gold. It's growing on me. Kind of makes it a little more classier, in my opinion.

After looking at my inspiration photo, I decided I wanted a gold plated serving tray, some 1950's/60's inspired glassware, and some few other odds and ends. I went to my local thrift store, Sister's Thrift and Consignment Shop (AMAZING thrift store - with awesome owners), and hunted around in their massive glassware section.

I also stumbled upon a silver plated serving tray. Which, again, I forgot to take a picture of before I spray painted it metallic gold. I suck at this picture taking thing.

I purchased the tray, a set of 8 vintage looking glasses, and this gold painted vase looking thing. Haven't figured out what I'm going to do with THAT yet. Maybe I'll put swizzle sticks in it. I found a website on ebay that sells old school ones so that's what I may do. But that's another post for another time.

This post details my gold serving tray and gold rimmed glasses. Yes, again I find inspiration on Pinterest and decide I want gold rimmed glasses.

But before I forget, here is my new serving tray:

OK! Now onto the fun stuff. My glasses! This is a very tedious job, warning you now.

Supplies you will need:

• Glasses (or whatever you want to paint)
• Acrylic paint (usually under $2.00 at your craft store)
• Small brush (usually under $2.00 at your craft store)
• Painter's tape
• Exacto knife (MUST HAVE)

1) First measure how thick you want the gold rim. I decided on 1/4". This is the tedious part. You have to measure down every few centimeters and put some painters tape, working around the glass. I tried marking the glass with eyeliner (yeah, I didn't have a glass pencil so eyeliner it was), but it didn't work too well. It was easier just taking my time and slowly cutting small pieces of painters tape and applying it around the glass. Make sure you press the tape down well, even though no matter how hard I tried, the paint still got under it.

2) Paint the section with the color paint you want. Here it is after 1 coat. I let it dry for about 30 minutes and then painted another 2 coats on.

3) A few hours later I tried to get the tape off and the paint came with it. Not cool. I found that using an exacto knife really helped. All I did was very gently slice right above the painters tape so that it broke the tape away from the paint. So when I pulled the tape off, the paint didn't come with it. You will find some paint did get under the tape but I just used the exacto knife to chip away at it and make my line look smoother.

4) Once you fix the paint and the glasses look the way you want them to, you need to cure the paint so that you can actually USE the glasses (wash them, drink off them, etc.) **Always check the manufacturer of the paint you are using to make sure it can come into contact with food/liquid**

To cure it you do the following:

• Place glasses in a COOL oven.
• Turn oven on to 325 or 350 degrees (I set the oven to 325)
• Wait 30-40 minutes
• Turn the oven off and leave the glasses in there until the oven is COOL again
• Wait up to 5 days for the paint to completely cure before using/washing

Voila! Gold painted glassware.

Total cost: $3.00 for the tray, .50 cents for that painted gold vase thing, $1.50 for the glasses, $1.50 for the paint and about $1.00 for the brush.

1950's TV Bar Cart Transformation

I found this idea on Pinterest. Some cleaver person took a vintage 1950's tv, gutted it, and transformed it into a bar. What a genius idea! The moment I saw it, I knew I would have to re-create it. Here was the inspiration:

First I had to track down a tv. I scoured Craigslist and found someone who was selling one for $25 so I snatched it up.

In order to make a "bar" out of a tv, you need to remove all the "guts." Let me tell you now that removing the picture tube (inside of the tv) was a terrifying experience. I had read tutorial after tutorial online regarding the CRT (cathode ray tube). Every single tutorial I read said that if the CRT breaks, it would explode like a bomb sending glass particles everywhere. I.was.terrified.

I did not take any pictures of the tv before it was gutted, or of the actual picture tube itself. Why I don't know but here is a stock photo I found online to show you what I was dealing with!

It took me literally two weeks to slowly remove everything because I thought if I did it slow enough, I would somehow escape death. Well it worked. And I finally got it out. And then carefully put it in my trunk and took it to the landfill.

After that was done I was left with the gutted tv frame. Since I don't have any before pictures, here are the afters:

I knew I wanted to have a tiered inside so that there were 2 levels to sit the bottles (like in the picture). I took measurements of the inside of the tv and enlisted the help of my father to cut the pieces for the inside as he has all the power tools at his house. We cut ply board pieces for the sides and bottom, and then built the shelf insert. It was my plan to cover all the pieces in fabric and then glue the side pieces to the walls.

Testing out the tiered insert:

I made a huge dummy mistake and took EXACT measurements, leaving no extra room. What that meant was the cute little shelf fit nice and snug inside the tv...BUT the side pieces were not able to fit in. To solve this problem, I glued the fabric directly to the sides. **If you do this, you need to use thick fabric or else the glue will seep through and you will see glue stains.**

Don't do:

Do (check out that awesome retro print I found in the 1/2 off bin at JoAnn Fabric):

For the back side of the tv, I glued mirrors purchased at Ikea ($9.99 for four). Some mirrors needed to be cut to size so I took them to Lowes where they usually do it for free. Being a girl probably makes a difference here :) I did not use the sticky tape that came with the mirrors. I used construction adhesive and let it sit overnight. Worked like a charm!

Before - I added some weight so they would adhear better.

After (approx. 3-4 hours):

For the interior lighting I used LED lighting strips from Ikea ($14.99). They were extremely easy to put together and screw into place on the top part of the tv.

It looks magnificent all lit up!

I used Liquid Gold to clean the tv up a bit. I may put vintage casters on the bottom so I can wheel it around, but I haven't decided on that yet. I spray painted the knobs gold, repainted the numbers on the turn dial using black acrylic paint (not the prettiest job but it works).

Now I need to stock pile some booze! I see a massive ABC store run after my next paycheck. My next blog post will show the accents that will go on top of the tv (think DIY gold rimmed vintage inspired glasses, gold painted serving tray, etc. etc.). Hopefully by then I'll also have the alcohol inside the tv and the turn dial knob put back on so you can see it in its FINAL form!

I will end this post with a picture of my cat Lucy who decided to jump into the tv as I was working on it. "I Love Lucy" was on tv that night! Get it? Ha.ha.

SOLD!

Those, my friends (my figurative friends as no one reads this blog yet as I haven't advertised it at all), are the greatest two words I've heard in a year.

That God forsaken house is finally UNDER CONTRACT!

I purchased the property in December of 2010 and put it up on the market for sale in June of 2011. And it sat there, month after month, until May 7th, 2012 when someone FINALLY made an offer. Of course, on Saturday, May 5th, I decided to put it up for rent and went through the hassle of paying for advertising and scheduling 5 different couples to come look at it. So I wish this buyer had come forward two days earlier! But I'm not going to complain because I can't WAIT to sell this house. I just hope the buyer doesn't fall through. What a bummer that would be. Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up right away....

The purchase price was $26,000 (Loan is only $19,500) and I put approximately $20k into it (closing costs, down payment, improvements, carrying costs, etc.). The original list price was $69,000 in June of 2011, which would have yielded me a mega profit and I would have done a happy dance for hours. However, over the past year that price dropped, and dropped, and dropped until it reached $49,500.

So the profit I will make will not be significant, especially after taxes. But I will make SOMETHING so it's not a total waste. Not yet anyways... Still gotta hope that buyer's loan doesn't fall through.

June 29th is the closing date. Fingers crossed.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Normally I do not post about things unrelated to home decorating or renovations but I had to share this.

I've been on a strict 1,200 calorie a day diet since February. It's not the quickest way to lose the weight but I like it because I can pretty much eat what I want. If I want a big mac I can have one...... I just won't be able to eat the rest of the day. Haha.

I haven't had fast food or pizza in months. Most of the time I am ok with that, but then there are times when I just crave a huge slice of pizza. But with pizza containing like 400 calories a slice I've always talked myself out of it. If I'm gonna waste 400 calories I'm going to waste it on vodka, if you know what I mean.

Yesterday I was surfing around on Pinterest and saw this recipe for a cauliflower crust pizza. Yeah, my thoughts exactly. cauliflower. Gross right? But apparently it's the new thing with everyone eating cauliflower mashed potatoes so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Since the calories from pizza come mainly from the crust, using cauliflower drops the calories per slice down to 150 or so!

Last night I decided to make it for dinner. I had my doubts. I definitely raised an eyebrow as I was grating my cauliflower to turn it into a fake crust.

But after baking for 15 minutes, the crust didn't look half bad. I like thin crust pizzas so the fact that it didn't rise didn't bother me. If you don't like thin crust you might have an issue with this. But hey, do you want to eat pizza or not!?

After it baked for 15 minutes, I took it out and added my toppings. I made it just like in the directions below, only I added fresh pepperoni from the grocery store. I then broiled it for about 5 minutes. Voila!

Let me tell you what, it was amazing. Now I don't know if it's just because I haven't had pizza in so long I forgot what it tasted like but you really can't tell that you're eating cauliflower! The only negative is that the crust itself isn't thick so it's kind of flimsy. You probably will end up eating it like I did using a fork. Or rolling it up like a burrito.

But I got to eat pizza and now I'm happy.

I wonder what else you can do with cauliflower?!

Here is the recipe:
http://www.recipegirl.com/2012/01/16/cauliflower-crust-hawaiian-pizza/

As a side point, you can tell I'm a single lady. Tin foil central in my fridge.

- Emily

Granite!

It's been awhile since I last posted! I suck at this whole blogging business. I haven't been doing many home repairs over the past few months. I've pretty much run out of space in my 1,000 sq foot condo and because of that I can't go out and buy any new furniture pieces to refurbish because I have no where to put them!

Anywho - I finally pulled the trigger and bought granite countertops. I figure it's about time. For the past 2 years I've been using a "fake countertop" made out of plyboard! I found an excellent granite dealer out of Manassas. Their name is Natural Stones, Inc. They definitely had the best prices in the area. I purchased the Santa Cecilia Light for $30/sq foot. Everything, including the sink, was only $1,400 for my entire kitchen. And they delivered and installed it within 4 days!

Here is a picture of the countertop color. I love it!



Next I had to figure out what kind of backsplash I wanted. I bought a few samples from Lowes and Home Depot and decided I wanted a tumbled marble subway tile and a glass/stone accent strip. I want it to be perfect so it's taking me awhile to lay the tile and cut it. So far this is what I've managed to accomplish.

So to recap the past 2 years..... here are some progress pics!

Lucy

On a side note, my cat is really flippin' cute. She is my decorating side kick. I love this little fur baby more than I do my pink tool belt. Ok, who am I kidding? It's a tie.

Crafting seat covers out of table cloths

I can't remember if I talked about this in a prior blog entry or not, but if you need to recover something or you need a sizeable amount of fabric, do NOT go to the fabric store and pay $$ per yard. The easiest, most cost effective, way to go about this is to purchase either a fabric shower curtain or a table cloth and use that. This works because there are so many different styles and designs to choose between and a shower curtain, for instance, gives you over 60" of fabric for less than $25. Target has a great selection of both shower curtains and table cloths.

I had purchased this table cloth from Crate and Barrel's store because I loved the design. I have been using it as a table cloth for a few months but I have found I'm not a table cloth kinda girl. Since I needed to recover the dining room chair seats, I decided to use the table cloth. At least it's not going to waste, right? And I get to use my new staple gun.





Before and after: