DIY Vase

I am ABSOLUTELY obsessed with vases. I probably have at least 10 in my house right now. I also have a crazy love for dried naturals. My love for them grows when they are 50% off at Hobby Lobby. Back to vases - the floor vases can be VERY expensive. I have purchased a few decent priced ones from Old Time Pottery. After we built our dining room table, I was determined to add some vases to add more character to the room. I found a few DIY vases online, but none that I fell in love with. I gathered ideas from a few sources, and decided to make my own. I liked the idea of using oatmeal cans from the blog "Frugal Ain't Cheap", but I wanted to add my own spin on it.

To start this project, I got three large size oatmeal cans. I carefully peeled off the labels. I cut the bottoms out of two of the cans. Then I taped them all together with a clear packing tape. There was a little bit of a bubble from the tape, but it was not noticeable on the finished product. I purchased a twine to wrap them with. Starting from the bottom, I wrapped twine around it using hot glue to keep it in place. I made sure there was no space between any of the lines. This was a very time consuming process. It took me about two hours to finish it up. I am a bit of a perfectionist, so I was meticulously hot gluing and wrapping.

And here is the final product:

I was quite pleased with the way it turned out! I added some dried naturals, and BAM, I had a perfect vase for my dining room. The entire vase cost me about $11. 

Our First Project: Dining Room Table

Hello lovely readers! Welcome to my blog! I am a Pinterest addict, an avid HGTV watcher, and a lover of all things DIY. The purpose of this blog is to walk you through my project successes as well as share my epic project fails. I have always loved the furniture and decor from Pottery Barn & Restoration Hardware, but I definitely do not love the very large price tags. Thankfully, I have a wonderful hubby who is amazing with tools and does not mind his long honey-do list! Please feel free to ask me any questions about any of these projects. I would love to share our tips and ideas we have learned through the process!

We recently moved into a large rental home. We are still deciding what area we want to live in, so renting was the best option for us at the time. Although I LOVE all the room, I definitely did not have enough furniture to fill all the space. We came from a smaller two-bedroom apartment, so our furniture did not exactly fill our new 5 bedroom space.

We decided to start with the dining room. I found this table from Ana White's website and instantly fell in love! She has a WONDERFUL website with TONS of plans and pictures of many types of furniture. I loved the overall simplicity of the table with the "Rustic X" details. I have found that I am really drawn to darker color furniture and wood. So the hubby and I started on our first project! We changed the dimensions listed on the site to fit our space perfectly.

(Photo Courtesy of Ana White: ana-white.com)

For the wood we followed the cut list provided by Ana White on plans for this table. We had to change a few of the due to our modifications of the sizes. I think we spent about $50 total for wood for the entire table! I just could not invision how this pile of wood would turn into my dream table... (please excuse the mess in the garage!)

I chose a dark stain. It was called Kona, and I absolutely love the finished results! The picture below is with no sanding and just one coat.

I was out of town for work while he was building this. He was constantly sending me updates (he knows how impatient I am) He said the building the "x's" was the most time consuming. He had to make sure the angles were cut correctly so they would piece together perfectly. 

That is with absolutely no sanding. I was finally seeing it come together! I couldn't help but poke a little fun at him... 

After he finished building the X's at the end, it came together so fast!

I really loved the natural knots in the wood. Once it was sanded and stained it gave it a slightly natural rustic look and I couldn't be happier with the results. 

And finally, the finished result! This table is very similar to a table I saw at Restoration Hardware for over $2,000! Unfortunately for Hubby, I learned he is an EXCELLENT builder. That coupled with my Pinterest addiction has kept him VERY busy the past few weeks. Bless him.

And here it is in our dining room: 

He is also building the matching benches. I will update with a new post once those are finished. We also decided to continue the "X" look throughout the house. More on that to come!