Friendship and a Guest Room Transformation

Hi!  I'm Ashley at Woodard Gang (soon to be a new name!)  

I'm excited and a bit nervous to be posting on Tracey's wonderful blog!

You see...I've gone back and forth with blogging for a long time, 

until recently when Tracey has encouraged me to just do it!  Little

did I know I would be asked to guest post for her...nothing like

jumping right in!! 

So I hope you enjoy a little story about how we met and 

then my Guest Room Transformation that Tracey & I did together.

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About a year ago, I met Tracey in the mall at the store, A Children's Place.

I was wearing a Lisa Leonard necklace, which got us to talking about

blogs.  Come to find out, we had a lot in common!  We both had blogs,

we both lived basically in the same town and most importantly, both were

believers.  Now tell me that isn't a God thing!  I don't believe it was just a 

random thing, a coincidence, or luck at all...I believe God knew we were

supposed to meet that day, in that store and what followed was the 

beginning of a new friendship that has been such a blessing to me...and what

a fun story to tell!   

One of the things Tracey and I have been working on is getting my guest

room looking pretty...and the timing was perfect as my sister will be staying

in it tomorrow!  I had one piece of furniture that needed some repurposing

MAJOR LOVE!

The picture quality is terrible (my Nikon is on the fritz), but here is the before...

And here is the step by step process of what we did...

Primed with Kilz and painted it a Cottage White by Behr.

Then we sanded randomly all over to give it a distressed look.

This part was all Tracey!  She used the foam brush and black, brown and gray paint to make it even appear more aged and rustic.  It's a lot like glazing, but it gives more of an appearance of worn wood instead of an all over aged look like glazing does.  After watching for a while, I decided to give it a whirl...I learned you really can't mess up and when you do, you can just wipe off and start over.  

That's my kind of mess!

We went out searching for just the right knobs.
Wondering what in the world this rope has to do with it?!

Tracey came up with the idea of making "rope" handles!

LOVE.IT!!!  All you do is make knots on the inside to secure

the rope and I quickly learned that Tracey is the "master knot maker"!

I don't have a good picture, but the two knobs you will see

are just cheapo wood knobs that were covered in burlap

fabric that I had laying around...CUTE!

And here she is all done and beautified!  The baskets were $9.99 each

at TJ Maxx, the plant from our local farmer's market and the fabulous

glass jar...just $12.99 at TJ Maxx (sense a theme?)

 This is a view from the door...the hutch is just to your left in the corner.  

YES...I put BABY in the corner!  I couldn't resist!!

IN.LOVE.WITH.THE.LAMPS!

Great find at yet again...TJ Maxx!

A few things still yet to do...

A custom headboard, drapes and a throw for the end of the bed!

I'll be sure to blog about those hopefully soon!  Thanks for reading and as Tracey would say...

Love and Transformations!

Ashley