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15 Painted Floors You’re Gonna Love

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Hey everyone, I have a very special guest for you today! Her name is Caitlin and she is a fabulous interior designer. She lives in the San Jose, CA area with her wonderful husband and their two adorable daughters.
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She and I share a similar design style and I use her as my sounding board. (Maybe more often than she would like.) She’s arguably one of my best friends, but she and I have been known to fight on occasion too. I also know a lot of embarrassing things about her, but she’d kill me if I told you them like she used to be able to belch like a full grown man when she was TWO!
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Why am I embarrassing this poor gal? Because that’s what sisters do! It’s true, she’s my littlest sister and Caitlin has agreed to fill in for me on occasion when I need a break.) Please welcome her with open arms (or I’ll have to beat you up…that’s sister talk for you better not mess with my baby sis.)
Hi everyone, this is Caitlin, a loyal admirer of Pretty Handy Girl from the start.  One might argue that I am one of her biggest fans.  Thank you Brittany for allowing me to pop on over and visit you and your Pretty Loyal followers.  As an interior designer, I am a sucker for all things home design and today I wanted to give overdue attention to the workhorse of our homes.  Day in and day out the floors we walk all over don’t get enough love. Sure, the walls are the first place we typically think of dressing up with paint, wallpaper, artwork and stencils.  But many times our poor floors get covered up and forgotten about. Not anymore! Today we are celebrating those hardworking horizontal surfaces we couldn’t do without.  Here are my top fifteen picks for hand painted floor treatments and even one for those of you afraid to commit.  But be warned, you’ll love these floors so much you might want to get rid of all your furniture just so you can appreciate them even more. Read more

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How to Cut Bar Stools Down to Counter Height Stools

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Yes you can make those wood bar stools fit your counter.  Here’s an easy DIY fix to make bar stools into counter stools (and a quick makeover too!).

Bar stools typically sit at 30″ high, this is fine and dandy if you have a proper bar where the countertop is elevated higher than the working countertop space.  Kitchen designs are trending now away from the proper bar towards one even countertop surface.  No worries, you can still use those bar stools for your counter by easily cutting off the bottom 4″ to reduce the stools to a counter height of 26″:

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(The white stools above are counter height and in the picture for comparison purposes.)

In addition to fixing the height of your stools give them a fresh look with a quick paint job and a new design: Read more

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Kids Bookend Kit: Build your own bookend

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Do your kids want to build and paint just like you?  This project a great beginner build for young ones who want to get in there and make something to call their own. And once they’re done building they can paint it too!

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Or give the build as a unique personalized gift for that artsy friend who loves to paint:

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Attach a cute gift tag (download my tag free from here) and include some fun acrylic paint colors and brushes:

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This project is super kid friendly, I tested it at my 6 year old daughter’s birthday party and all the girls absolutely loved building their own project .  We used kid sized drills (like these kid sized drills) and they truly enjoyed painting their bookends: Read more

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Outdoor Planter from an Ice Bucket #LowesCreator

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Being a Lowe’s Creative Ideas blogger is one of my favorite jobs as a DIY blogger. I love walking the aisles of Lowe’s, with my provided gift card in hand, dreaming of finding mundane objects to transform into amazingly beautiful objects. For example, what do you get when you cross an ice bucket with a stove pipe connector?

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Read more

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Gray, Grey or Greige {Finding the Perfect Gray}

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Work is progressing in the kitchen and I finished painting the upper portion of the wall a very light greige (a cross between beige and gray.)

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Light Greige
Our Kitchen Command Center – Sherwin Williams Aesthetic White

With the abundance of light colors in the kitchen, I was craving a little dark paint for some drama. A small accent wall near the mudroom and pantry seemed like the perfect spot. I knew I wanted a chalkboard wall, but my sister (my interior design consultant) worried that black might be too dark. I filed her feedback in the back of my head as I headed to Lowe’s to buy primer. The paint gal tinted my primer with black to achieve a 50% shade of gray. (It is easier to paint dark colors if your primer isn’t a stark white.)

After applying the primer, I thought, “Hmmm, I kind of like this.” But decided to sleep on it. In the morning, that wall had a message for me: Read more

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