Saturday I took on the task of painting our shutters on the front of our house and our front door...I was not prepared for how time consuming it would actually be!  When we bought our house a year and a half ago it was literally painted all one color...the shutters included.  There was no pop and it looked a little dingy to be honest but that's life with cedar siding.  Our front door needed TLC too from moving in to my husband having the scoot our refrigerator and stove it was in bad need of a paint job.

I decided that since we had the blue on the siding painting the shutters white might be a good option so I got to work on that first.  They were easy enough to take down, only 6 screws hold them up so my hubby helped me with that part.  Once I had them on the sawhorses I took a broom and swept them to get any remaining dirt.  I didn't want to get them wet or I would have had to wait for them to dry.  I started off by doing the edges and the interior of the shutters with a brush.  Once I had that done I was able to take a roller and just roll the paint on.  Doing all four shutters took me about two hours, maybe three. 
Once I had them all painting I laid them in my husbands truck bed to dry which we left them dry for about six hours.  Then putting them back was as easy as getting them off, six screws and they were back on the house.  To be honest, I like the white a lot but I could live without the shutters too...when we bought the house they left the paint for the house so maybe in the spring I'll take them off, power wash the house and just paint the non-painted area but for now at least it looks better than shutters the same color as the house.

Next up was the front door...as you can see below it's seen better days.  From moving into our house, juggling to open the front door with two kids in my arms to moving in a refrigerator and stove that were WAY too big for the door it needed some paint and TLC.  I went with the muted yellow "Melted Butter" by Behr Paints because I wanted a pop of color again the blue grey plus I thought it would be more inviting than a plan old white door.

The door wasn't hard to paint at all just waiting for it to try was the hardest part before I could close it...we definitely have a couple flies in our house today because of it.  I did learn a nifty trick that nail polish remover on a q-tip can take the paint off your hardware...I opted to leave our door knob and dead bolt on out of sheer laziness!

As you can see the door is now bright and fresh and it does really pop!  The shutters look good too but like I said I might just take them off eventually.  All in all I think it was a great project and I was really proud that I did it all myself with the most minimal help from my husband (he was pretty proud too!).  My mom is coming by Sunday so it will be interesting to see what someone who isn't me or my husband thinks but I give myself a big pat on the back for a job well done!

For as long as I can remember I've always had a Queen sized bed but when David and I moved into our new house we splurged on a King bed...while I love all the space in the bed I did miss having a headboard, for some reason it didn't feel like a "bedroom" to me without it.  Though I've done quite a bit of online research I just couldn't find anything that I liked that didn't fall into the $500+ price range and that my friends I'm just not going to do.

Then came Pintrest! Tons of posts from people all over creating their own DIY Headboards for a fraction of the cost of buying it online...immediately I knew I had to give it a shot, all I had to do was convince my amazing husband to help me, which of course because he's amazing he agreed to do!

First step was going to Lowe's, my total cost was around $30 and for that we got:

1.  1/2 inch Sheathing which the associates cut to 72" W x 42" H - $18.37
2.  Flat Picture Hanging Kit - $7.96

After Lowe's we went to JoAnn's Fabric, total cost that I spent here was larger but that was to be expected $74.37 which included:

1.  4 yards of fabric which was 50% off, original cost was $16.99/yard but I got it for $8.49/yard (by the way 4 yards was WAY TOO MUCH! I could have gotten away with 3 yards) - $33.96
2.  1 can of spray on adhesive to keep the foam on the plywood - $10.99
3.  2 rolls of foam (2 1/2 yards per roll) - $13.73/roll
4.  1 roll of batting for a Twin Bed - $10.99

Okay, so we've got everything right? Right! Now how to do this with 2 kids running around? Then enters my saving grace, my Mother-In-Law, she lives right around the corner and she offered to watch the girls while David and I got the headboard done, so we dropped the girls off, came back home and got to work!!

1. Set the Plywood (Sheathing) on sawhorses

3.  Place your batting over the foam, start from whichever edge you like use a staple gun to attach it to the plywood.  Batting will help keep your foam in place and provide a buffer between the foam and your fabric.

4.  Now onto your fabric...we chose a dark brown with some raised stitching on it that creates multiple diamond patterns, we were doing to do a plain fabric with tufted buttons but a texture seemed a little easier for our first try at this kind of project.  Lay your fabric on top of the batting and again use your staple gun to secure it to plywood.  We started with the bottom part of the headboard first then were able to keep the fabric tight while we stapled the top and sides.


5.  We are heading into the home stretch now!  It's time to attach your hanging method, we chose a flat panel instead of hooks but that was just what we chose to do.  David helped me attach this to the back of the plywood and also into the wall using toggle bolts.  I will mention here that when we went to hang this we needed the extra piece of plywood from when it got cut at Lowe's because of the foam on the back the panels wouldn't fit properly so we had to add the additional plywood then re-attach the hanging piece so it had enough room to stick out and snap together.


6.  Now it's time to take your beautiful creation inside and hang it up on the wall! Here my friends is the final product! Love it!  Looks great and I'm happy with it for being my first real DIY kind of thing.  What do you think??


YAY! All done! I really do think it helped the room feel more pulled together.  Because the stick on saying "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" was kind of crooked so we hung these little brown boxes I had above the headboard to make it look more even.

Extending a HUGE thank you to my hubby for all his help, I couldn't have done it without him and I really do like it!  Hope this helped any of you who would like to do something like this.  Next time I might attempt a tufted headboard (maybe for the girls rooms) but like I said this is a great job for a 1st attempt!

My next DIY project will be taking my husband's grandmothers antique mirror from brass and spray painting it white and roughing it up a little to give a vintage look to hang on our turquoise wall in our kitchen, so stay tuned for that!