Home Improvement

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and a great start to 2016!

As usual, I was really busy with orchestra work and free-lance jobs through Christmas Eve, then I had some much-appreciated time off.

I even had time for a few Crafty Household Adventures.

I made a cool black and white bath rug for my cool black and white bathroom.

I pieced together 5 1/2" squares, then used a towel for the back.

There's no batting (it's thick enough with the towel back) and no binding.  I used the "turn and topstitch" method of construction.

It was a great way to use up scraps and assorted small pieces of fabric.

I like it so much that I'm considering adding something like this to my Etsy shop stock.  There's very little like it there now among all the bath rugs for sale there (surprising to me, yet true) and it might be a nice complement to my selvage bath mats.














Also, I painted my refrigerator!

Before you start questioning my sanity, let me explain:

I have a beautiful renovated kitchen with a nice set of matching white appliances:

Stove, with matching microwave above it;

matching dishwasher;

too many scuff marks!

And a rather old, scuffed up BLACK refrigerator that works perfectly well but was simply not aesthetically worthy of the rest of the kitchen.

I rent this house, and when I asked the landlord where the refrigerator came from, he said that when he was redoing the kitchen his office was moving and they were giving the refrigerator away.

Hooray for free appliances.

It was also a low-risk makeover project.

It looked better even with just primer on it!

Now it's a chalkboard!

I followed this tutorial that I found on Pinterest.  It wasn't a difficult process, although I did spread out the drying times for the coats of primer and paint overnight due to the freakishly hot and humid holiday weather that we had.   It's a great way to give new life to an old appliance!