I’ve been a fan of Rodney White prints (particularly this one) for what seems like forever. His work is so fun and being a fan of the modern/rustic vibe and having a special place in our hearts for all things vintage, it’s our cup of tea.

Last week, I was shopping with a friend at Garden Ridge when down in the corner of the sea of gobs and gobs of wall art, there she was…

I noticed some damage here and there, which is why it was marked as 50% off, bringing the price down to $40. Ordinarily, I would pass it by and think “Aww, man. I wish it wasn’t damaged”. But for some reason, that day I was feeling a bit ambitious and was pretty confident I could fix the damage. So, I snatched it up and brought it home.

Large 36″x36″ Rodney White art for $40? Yes, please. Now, time to tackle the damage…

You can’t really see it from a distance, but there are some pretty bad small tears and places where the art started lifting from the wooden frame. It was also pretty dirty from being stacked up in a warehouse-like store for who knows how long.

To spruce it up and bring it back to new, started by cleaning it up with a soft cloth a a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol. Then I grabbed some red and green close-matching craft paints, matte Mod Podge and a some Q-Tips. The edges were easily fixed with a bit of Mod Podge. I ended up using my finger instead of a brush to get it in the creases evenly. I applied little dabs of paint here and there with a Q-tip them rubbed it in with my finger so it wouldn’t look too shiny or new. After about 15 minutes of doctoring it up, it was just like new again. Woot!

We hung the art in the laundry room over the green dresser (which we use for tool storage, extra light bulbs, batteries and all that jazz).

Since this is our “hub” for going in and out everyday, I wanted to keep the top of the dresser relatively empty to have room for stuff like mail that needs to go out, things that need to be returned, etc. So, all we have on the dresser is a small key tray, a faux Ikea plant (the best kind because I can’t kill it) and we moved the white ceramic bee container from the foyer to here – and yes, it is now holding dog treats for Bentley. He always gets his way.

I guess it was a good thing I was feeling extra confident that day in the store because you really can’t see the places where I repaired the artwork unless you look reeeeeeealllly hard. It’s nice to have a piece of Rodney White in the house, plus the $40 price tag isn’t too shabby.

Pictures of Rodney White prints found here.

Between the late night coding sessions and last minute tweaks for the new blog design, we managed to take the first step in sprucing up the empty foyer by hanging the new light fixture. The flush mount fixture we had before (this one from Home Depot) was doing the job, but it lacked personality and didn’t bring anything special to the space…

Even though we still aren’t completely sure about the plans for this area (we’re just going to let it evolve over the next week or two), the light seemed like a good place to start. After narrowing down our favorites to the fab five, we finally decided on the Olivia Star Pendant.

As we unboxed the fixture, we knew we’d made the right decision. It’s fun, different and classic all in one. The black iron will tie in with the new dining room light fixture, too. Don’t worry–you haven’t missed anything. It’s still in the box waiting to be hung. In other words, it was perfect.

We’ve installed many a light fixture in the almost three years of owning the house (wow, has it been that long?!), but we weren’t sure what the process of going from a flush mount to a pendant light was going to be like. The main concern was we couldn’t remember what was under the flush mount when we replaced the old fixture (a dated brass beauty with ducks etched in the glass). Normally, we wouldn’t be too concerned about this kind of thing, but the builder (or maybe a previous owner) cut a few corners when installing a few of the light fixtures in the house. They just poked holes in the drywall and fed wires through it. We’ve fixed most, if not all, of these spots, but there’s always that little bit of worry in the back of your mind.

Come to find out, we were in luck! The flush mount came down like a charm and the only evidence was a light gray ring on the ceiling which was easily covered up with a light coat of white ceiling paint.

For starters, Greg held the light up to the ceiling to get an idea of how long we wanted it to hang. It needed to be high enough to clear the front door, the closet doors and the top of Greg’s head (he’s the tallest person around here, including all of our friends and family, so it seemed like a good gauge to go by, haha). We ended up with 5 or 6 links of the chain left after we trimmed the links and the wires.

As usual, we made sure all the switches were off before we started messing with the wires. Greg is pretty comfortable with this sort of thing by now (he’s worked with my dad on projects like this around the house enough to know what’s what), but as the light fixture instructions said, don’t mess with this sort of thing unless you know what you’re doing.

While I held up the weight of the light fixture, Greg screwed the canopy in place. Greg originally thought he could handle this on his own, but this part was a two-person job. You need one set of hands to hold the fixture, and another set to hold the canopy and the screwdriver.

Totally painless! And here she is…

You can still see a very faint circle where the old light fixture was. We just need one more light coat of ceiling paint. …and a rug… and maybe a coat of paint on the inside of the front door? And here’s another shot with the front door open…

Seeing this big pop of red in the space has me excited and eager to add furniture, accessories and color to this space in the very near future. Stay tuned for more foyer-related news in the coming weeks!

You guys remember me talking about our “lovely” patio furniture in this post, right?…

…Well, it’s about to get a serious facelift! We’ve had this set since we lived in our apartment. Down the road, we’d like to get a new set of outdoor furniture (maybe something like this), but until then, we decided to spruce up what we have. The set has held up really, really well and is still like brand new! On the other hand, the orangey-beige wasn’t working for us and definitely not getting along with our bricks. So, it needed a facelift. Badly!

For this transformation, we turned to our favorite tool and the easiest and fastest way to transform virtually anything… spray paint! The patio furniture is made out of plastic-ish resin that looks and feels a ton like wicker. We wanted to make sure the paint would adhere to the wanna-be-wicker surface, so we chose Rust-Oleum’s Ultra Cover Primer to get things started. The can says it covers plastic and wicker, so we were in good shape. As for the top coat/color, we went with Rust-Oleum’s Painter’s Touch in Satin Espresso. Both the primer and the paint cans say one can equals two. Knowing that we have a lot of “wicker” to spray paint, we had hopes of this feature helping us out in the long run.

First, we removed dust, dirt and any various “outdoor residue” from the furniture by spraying it down with the water hose and dried them off with a “project towel”. Once everything was dry, it was time for primer! The primer went on really well and took a lot less time than we expected (yay for time savers!). Almost two cans later, the furniture was all primed! We let it dry for about an hour and moved on to the Espresso.

Now, this step seemed like it took foooooorever. The wicker-esque furniture has a bajillion tiny grooves and crevices that can be seen from pretty much any angle. Just when you think you have a piece finished, you look at it from another angle and you see a sea of the original orangey-beige. Now and then, we had to just step away from it for a few minutes to get a different perspective – and to give our hands a rest. When it was all said and done, we emptied 5 cans of spray paint. Good thing this paint has double coverage, right?

About an hour after the last coat, the furniture was dry enough to handle – but still not quite dry enough to sit on. I couldn’t resist bringing all the pieces over their new resting place in the carport. We played around with a few arrangements but kept on coming back to having the love seat centered on the fireplace wall facing the two chairs and side table with the coffee table in the middle. Truth be told, I’ll probably switch it up about a hundred times before we’re ready to style and prettify everything. Ahh, I can’t wait to get some color in here!!!

Did you notice the new outdoor rug? We picked up this 8′x11′ bad boy at Target (this one). I really like how it’s neutral enough to go with pretty much any style and blends in nicely with the concrete floors (which we’re plaining on refinishing a little later down the road) without being too “bam! in your face”. Though the color is great, the selling point (for me) was the herringbone detail on the edges making the rug a perfect marriage of modern and neutral. The rug immediately helped break up the sea of concrete and defined a designated seating area. It still has some waves in it here and there from being rolled up in the store for so long, but those will fall out within time.

Oh, while we’re talking about the great outdoors, we upgraded our water hose with this fancy shamcy one from Home Goods (for only $12!) and also installed a new hose holder from Lowe’s (this one). Now we just need to do something this that big ugly box known as the air conditioner. Yeah, I can’t live without it, but it sure is ugly to look at. It’s a pretty old unit, yet still works really well, but when it dies and goes to Air Conditioner Heaven, we’re going to install the new one on the side of the house where it can’t be seen from the patio.

So, Phase 2 of the patio makeover is now complete! We’re one step closer to enjoying the upcoming Virginia fall weather out in the new carport turned patio. On to Phase 3! …not completely sure what’s next up on our list, but excited to get started nonetheless.