Graham's Cracker Box

It doesn't take me long to find a project on a day off of work. My husband hates this about me! It was something like 112 degrees today, so we started swimming at 10am. We have a cool little covered cabana off of the pool. It needs a HUGE makeover, and we have big plans for it put it will probably be a year or two before we can do the plans we want to do. Sooooo, as most of you know, I do not sit well with undone projects. So I sat and looked at it for about 30 minutes and then I had a plan!.

So I started with the old metal countertops and covered them with woodlike contact paper....Oh yes I did! and it actually looks great! I would love to get solid stone countertops, but that is gonna take some saving...We also have a very tired and weathered wooden shelf, so I contact papered that too, and then stuck sticky vinyl tiles to the shelves. It really does look like I got a new outdoor kitchen! I spent $40 at Family Dollar on the contact paper and the tiles and I have tons left over. I am going to use the left over tiles for the tops of my little plastic end tables that I use outdoors. A little spray paint and tiles for the top and they will be good as new!

Anyway, back to the cabana, so I gathered up old chairs and an old picnic table and arranged them like a dining room. I got these perfect pictures at Interior Motives awhile back and the torch cintonella things are from Tuesday Morning during the winter 50% off.

The picnic table is in poor shape, and the wood is really bad, however I found out that it is not too bad of a thing. When you buy plastic outdoor table cloths, they have while cotton stuff on the back and it sticks great to "splintery" wood!!!!!! So well, that I cut up an old table cloth and put it on the benches as well.

A few months ago I went to a Mexican Import place that sold pottery, and asked them where all the damaged pots where, he showed me a huge pile and I bought I a ton of pots with small imperfections. It saved me a ton of money! The pots are going to be outside anyway, so they are going to weathered and probably kicked by a soccer ball.

Hope you like the redo, it was a fun project today and not it is clean and neat, this place is almost ready for company!!!!











This is the Cabana before

One of the reasons we fell in love with this house, was the huge den. We thought it had great potential and we loved the pull wall of windows and the two built ins that are the size of twin beds on the back wall. All the windows had pink verticals and the carpet was pink also. I am sure it was quite great back in it's day. But I wanted to warmify the whole space, so I painted the room a terra cota color and spent a lot of my budget on new carpet and custom wooden blinds from Ropers Drapery. The blinds are so pretty that I didn't even put curtains up. We found some great vases, candle holders, faux lemons, mirrors, greenery, bar high dining table, zebra otoman at Interior Motives in Carlsbad. The couch we have had for years. On the back wall I bought heavy weight fabric at Hobby Lobby on sale, and since I don't sew, I bought little clip rings and made a giant curtain out of it.It was much cheaper than custom curtains. I just turned the fabric under and clipped it. I huge them on a pretty rod and I love them!! We got the bar top redone and now everything is warm and a bit dark, like I wanted the den to be. Hope you like it:) Here are the before and after pics...