How To: Build a TV Stand

I've shared how we've been tackling some of the living room projects we've been meaning to do.  We've whitewashed the fireplace, painted half the room green, built a modern style bookshelf, and added Marilyn to the mix.  The list is shrinking, I think.  One major improvement we finished recently was for our TV.  First, my fancy cover photo, for the people who pin & want to save this project for later:

Yes, that's mood lighting.. ooh!  OK back it up, here's our living room when we swapped the furniture around:

Take note of the TV, and what is holding it up.  This room has been so hard to arrange, because as luck would have it, each wall has either a door, or a fireplace/heater on it. Also a stairway practically in the middle of the room. Arranging a cozy living room around those obstacles was rough, but we finally found the solution - we just have our living room "zone" as I like to call it, floating in the middle.  And I love it!

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Spotlight: Caramel Solarium

We painted again this weekend, so my brain is in recovery mode.  So I thought in the meantime I'd share a piece of eye candy with you guys.  One of my favorite blogs in the world (If It's Hip It's Here) brought this amazing caramel solarium by William Lanson to my attention recently - I had to share. It's gorgeous:

Photo Sources: William Lamson, Storm King and This is Colossal - via If It's Hip It's Here.

No joke - this thing is made of sugar. Pure, caramelized sugar! I love rich color when the sun shines through it.  I have mega deer problems at this house (I'm sure I've mentioned that like 500 times) and have been on the hunt for a greenhouse so I can have SOME plants. Though, maybe the deer would eat right through this one...  

This is just a sneak peak, hop over to If It's Hip It's Here for some amazing photos and a wonderful video. So happy to have come across this, what an amazing use for sugar. 

Good luck on your Monday today! Remember, there are only 4 or so a month. 4 outta 30ish ain't bad...

-Jesse

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Installing a New Faucet

Last weekend our lives were forever changed.  We installed our new kitchen faucet! Life changing might be a little dramatic, but seriously - this pup has had such an impact on the dish doing life. I'm in love. And you know what? It was SO easy! The hardest part was figuring out how to remove the old one. That took FOREVER. It was like a puzzle... a rusty, mysterious puzzle... Here's the newbie:

wee-woo! I don't know how to spell that nasty wolf whistle, but you get the idea.  What a beast, huh? It's the Price Pfister Mystique - oh la la... Here's the link for more info.   Picking a faucet was a piece of cake. I was pretty lost as to how to know what would fit, being my first time and all. I went under our sink and counted 4 holes, and I was able to sort the Pfister site to only show faucets for 4-hole sinks, and it was good.

Read along as I tell you the tale, that is our new faucet....

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Marilyn Monroe String Art + 4 Others

I finally, finally finished up my largest string art installation EVER.  I had an idea one day in the shower (all great ideas come from a good shower) that I should try a face in string.  One thing led to another, and it got bigger and bigger, and I finally settled on Marilyn Monroe.

I'm so happy with how it came out! I wasn't sure how it would all work, and I think it's working pretty well...  this now sits above my desk, in the living room, which was formerly blank. 

Majorly spruces up my work zone & gives me something to look at when I'm brainstorming.  The string is navy blue, on 12 Tea stained tablets.  I wanted some plant life on my desk but since I'm sadly not next to a window, a vase will fill in just fine. I threw this redwood tree trimming in and it's stayed alive for a while now:

Cute widdle twee.  I had finally caught up on my string art orders one week & was able to experiment with my new designs, this is Bluebird 2.0 - much more detail! Available here.

I was goin' for the vintage swallow tattoo... I love that style. Nailed it! Haha... get it, nailed it.. 

Favorite fabric!

I threw this design in the shop, available here.

Then I made this "Create" sign for Cassie over at Primitive & Proper, she was the winner of my recent string art giveaway over at Redoux:

Really happy with this fade, that pink is great:

Another lovely fabric:

This one was for my sister as a wedding present:

 Their living room is reds, creams, browns...

And I finally got to finish my makeably sign, which I did as a thank you gift for the awesome people over at makeably.com

Just a lil update on the new stuff. Lots has been going on around the house too, we installed a new faucet - I can't wait to show it to you! It's changed my life. Well, the doing-dishes side of my life anyway. We also got the courage to paint a wall navy blue.  It came out awesome.

Off to Home Depot, what's new in your hood?

-Jesse

Linkies: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Subscribe & of course, Email me.

Up Next: Installing a Kitchen Faucet

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DIY Modern Bookshelf

Happy August! Happy Friday! Happy Birthday to my brother! It's all kinds of stuff today. Woot! OK I'm not exactly thrilled about it being August already, but I feel like I make that complaint every month.  You'd think after 30 years I'd get used to how time flies, but nope.

Which brings me to today's project, time flew by since we built this & I didn't get to write up a proper tutorial. Until now! We've been working on the living room and needed a bookshelf to fit perfectly. So you know we had to build it:

Yep, that's a bookshelf. We wanted something with clean lines, something simple - the plan to go with simple was heavily influenced by the fact that simple = something we can actually build.  I'd never built a bookshelf from scratch, and after looking at 3 million ideas I decided the best plan was to just jump in and see what happens. Don't you love when you've had just enough coffee to make really big, daring decisions like that?  Luckily it worked out in our favor. Here was our  before situation, our horrible horrible before :

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