Work it Out!

I have a love hate relationship with running.  Right now its a like relationship because its getting a little hotter and I hate running when its hot outside.  When we first moved here a friend of our gave us a treadmill they never used.  Pretty cool right!  For a while we had it in the study but it was just taking up space and I didnt like how it looked there so we decided to move it.

One of the things that sold us on our house is the awesome storage space in the laundry room.  I used 1/2 of it for my Christmas decorations (the part under the stairs) but I had a whole bunch of space left and it actually was the perfect size for the treadmill.  It wasnt that hard to get it in the space since the treadmill had wheels and is just smaller than the door frame.  Once we got the treadmill in I had a GREAT idea...and I mean great.  We had an small TV from when we upgraded our 36" to a 55" so I thought it would be perfect in front of the treadmill.  Let be honest, its pretty boring running on a treadmill but its not so bad when you can watch GLEE!

We bought a wall-mount swivel mount from Amazon.com for $15 bucks and screwed it into the wall.  Make sure you find the studs so it doesnt fall out of the wall.  Luckily this was a swivel so although the studs were at the far side of the wall I could swivel the TV to be more in the center.

Pretty cool set-up right?!  My face fan, my towel, and of course the TV!  It is a little too close for me but I got used to it and it really helps when I have to run inside.  It gets pretty hot in Texas and isnt really safe to run so this is great. 

But guess what...thats not the best part about this post...what you cant see (well you can see the chord mess but not the rest) is the shelf we have holding the DVD player and the ROKU.  The ROKU is a cool streaming device for TV's that dont have internet, you can get stations on it like Pandora and Hulu so I cant watch GLEE on it...which makes running easier when you have some awesome songs punched in at great intervals.

While it looks a mess it was really easy to install.  we bought a pre-painted shelf from home depot for $5 and 2 brackets for $5.  We screwed the brackets into the wall, then the shelf onto the brackets so the shelf wouldnt slide off and in less than 15 minutes we had a shelf to hold our electronics!  Its not the prettiest but it does the trick.

All in all this cost less than $50 and makes for a great work out station when its too hot or raining.

Project Housewife Out!

Pallet of Colors

I have a confession...I may be slightly addicted to pinterest.  Im sure most of you are too, its a sickness that makes me want to spend all my money on cute ideas.  While I was trolling pinterest, I saw this really cool looking headboard

Source

So cool right!  Well I already have an awesome headboard (which you can see here) but I need some cool wall art for on either side of my TV and I thought this was simple enough to do the trick without overpowering the TV.  Now let me should you my before shot

No bad, but not good enough for me.  So now I can show you the project!!  I got the inspiration to use pallets from here.  But I wasnt crazy about the flowers I thought that might be too busy for the TV area so it was a blend of ideas to creat my final project, which see below for the after!!

Yes I am about to watch Once Upon a Time, and why arent you its an awesome show!

I think it brings a lot more color to the roon and is just a little cooler to look at...what do you think?

Ok on to how to make this baby...first you need a pallet.  My husband works for a plumbing supplier and they have loads of pallets so that was totally free yay!  So before I get down to the nitty gritty...here is what you are going to need

• 1 pallett---all of the pieces (free)
• paint of your choice, varying shades (free)
• crobar (free)
• saw (free)
• nail/hammer (free)
• painters tape/paint brush ($5)
• pencil/ruler (free)
• screw/wire (for hanging) (free)

Total cost for this project...$5!!!  What, thats amazing!!

Looks kinda ugly right?  Well dont worry we are painting it so no worries.  Now you have to get the boards off, and if you have a cro-bar that would be best. Joe had to use a hammer and that was pretty hard so if you have a crobar make it easy on yourself.  Below are the boards cut down to the measurements I gave Joe.  I wanted the project to be 15wide by 30 long, so I plank from the pallet was long enough for 2 strips.  You can also see from the picture here that we used the pallet support beams as cross beams for the art. 

Here it is all put together ready for paint.

I first thought to whitewash it (I hadnt decided if I wanted to do the color blocks or the flowers yet) and that turned out pretty well, and I think also helped with the paint.  It was kinda like primer but didnt bring up all the pulp that comes out of the wood when you use regular primer (more to come on whitewashing later)

I let these sit overnight to make sure the paint had set.  The next day I started taping out the lines for the stripes.  I wanted each pallett art to be different so I measured the stripes at different heights.

I used a paint stirrer as my guide and a pencil to do the initial lines then went back and put painters tape over the lines.  Remember that where you put the tape you cant paint otherwise you will have gaps between the stripes so be mindful of that when you put the tape down.  You can see below what I did to make sure I kept that straight.

Now you have your painters tape down get to painting.  I had plenty of leftover paint from the walls and color samples so that was free too!

Let that sit overnight so that when you put the second layer of painters tape down it doesnt pull off you paint you just did.  Once it has dried and you get your second tape down, paint again.

Wait for the paint to dry and remove the tape.  Now if you are like me you will have to do some touch ups, but if you have one of those sponge paint brushed that has a stright edge this is pretty easy.  Once its dry, you can screw your screws and wire into the back of the boards and hang them up!  Make sure you use an anchor when hanging these babies are pretty heavy!

Pretty easy, pretty cheap and pretty fun too!  I feel like an artist enough though I cant draw to save my life!  DO you have a space that this art would be perfect for?  Let me know, and what do you think of this art?  Should I leave it or do the flowers pallet art?  I think I need a second opinion

Project Housewife Out!



Im Linking Up!  Come check me out at A Bowl Full of Lemons, I Heart Organizing, Southern Lovely, Lil Pink Pocket, Vintage Gwen, My Girlish Whims, Beyond the Picket Fence, House of Hepworths, Bacon Time, Addicted2Decorating, Six Sisters Stuff