Bed Frame from Kijiji

The head & foot boards for this bedroom suite were never used & sitting in our garage for years. 

A good sanding & whitewash gave the country chic/rustic look I was going for....Just the perfect amount of imperfection!

Candle Baskets

I had a vision in my head of what I wanted to achieve for my candle baskets, but wasn't quite sure what materials I would end up using.  It was while pulling out some potatoes in my pantry that I had my ah-ha moment & the light went off....and the potatoes had to find a new home!  With some simple tweaks I converted them to hanging candle features to put on either side of the fireplace. I was so happy with the end result!  1/2 meter of sheer fabric for $3.00, some fabric glue, trim, candles & voila!

Up-scaled from my "potato basket" in my pantry to my new candle boxes!

I had to take the handle off one side & re-attach it at the "bottom" of the basket for an easy hanging solution.

The wire mesh on one side was easily cut out to give me access to the "top" of the basket for easy access to the candles.

Fabric glue was used to adhere the fabric to the front edge & then trimmed with satin ribbon to give a clean finish.  For the back (or bottom) of the basket, the material was just cut to size & applied over a layer of spray adhesive.

I was so pleased with the final product!  It achieved the exact ambiance I was after.  The candles I purchased were perfect (from Michaels), simulating a real flame, battery operated & controlled by remote.

Alex found this guy advertising on Facebook that he had live edge available.  He works for a farm on the outskirts of Kamloops, so we took a nice drive out to the country one afternoon, set to pick out our stairs.  He was such an entertaining & knowledgable guy, we ended up staying for quite awhile just visiting.  I was in my glory exploring through his piles of different wood species..(and trying to navigate through the very friendly...too friendly chickens scurrying all around his grounds) haha :)  The planer that he had made short work of  skimming off an extra 1/2" of depth.  It was pretty fun & impressive to watch, and we both felt good that we had our own custom, locally made life edge stairs & the story to go along with them!

Pat had already sanded them down for us, so I just had to do a light sand & clean the bark up as much as I could.  We could have gotten him to take the bark off, but both thought it just added so much character to them.

After staining, I applied 4 clear coats, even to the bark.  The lacquer gets kind of caught up in all the nicks & grooves of the bark, so just to make sure there were no runs, I lightly sponged just the bark.

From Storage Dungeon to Chic Pantry!

This thing couldn't have been uglier!  And it was way worse on the inside!  With an inconvenient fake floor & no lighting, whatever was thrown in there was never to be found again!  It was such useless space, but precious space that we needed!  Originally I had in my head that I wanted to put a little bathroom under the stairs (because I saw it on Pinterest, lol) but apparently just because it's on pinterest doesn't mean it's possible, so my husband keeps reminding me ;)

So initial demo begins to see what kind of can of worms we're opening up....

Woohoo, there's an actual full human doorway finally!  No turning back now!

This the part of the process Alex doesn't enjoy, finding out just how deep he got himself in....lol

oh, look, dirt floors....ugh...but on the bright side, it's now a huge space you can actually walk in to!

Guess that means we google how to lay concrete floors!!

So with the flooring done, we could hang the Slatwall that I had wallpapered.  I love how it turned out.  It looks like an actual brick wall & you can't see the slats at all.

Progress with the wood panels on ceiling & wall.  I happened to have a remnant counter top slab that I had picked up about 3 years ago intending to use it in our ensuite....3 years later it was still sitting in our garage & ended up being the absolute perfect counter top for our pantry.

Worn out shelf turned eclectic

I found this cute little shelf at a local Restore for $2 (love those finds!)  But I was planning to hang it on a wall above the living room couch, which meant that anyone sitting down would only see the ugly under-side if they looked up.

A little starch, little spray adhesive & fabric remnant fixed that!