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Schenectady Airbnb Design Project – Spiral Staircase Apt

Hi Friends,

If you’re having trouble viewing the photos on this post, please click here.

How are you? I hope you’re doing well! We celebrated our 20th anniversary over the weekend with a trip to Burlington, VT. We had such a wonderful time and I’ll share all the details soon, but here are a few teaser photos for you:

For this week’s makeover, I’m BEYOND excited to start sharing 1 of 5 Airbnb’s that I designed and have been working on with my client, Adnan, and his construction crew out in Schenectady, NY. Adnan met with me in June 2022 to get help with the room layouts and designs for converting 2 floors of a commercial building on State Street into 5 airbnbs.

This first apartment was just an office, hallway, half bathroom and spiral staircase into the law firm below. They had already started removing the staircase and that was the only space where we could fit any type of sitting area in the space. Here’s the before and after of that area:

This is the design board for that space:

Look how cute it is now:

There was a half bathroom in the space where we wanted to put the kitchen so we moved it to the end of the kitchen and opened up the room completely.

Here that section is before:

Here’s the design board for the kitchen:

Here’s the room once it was completely done:

Stay tuned!! I’ll be sharing the before and after photos of the bathroom and bedroom in this unit as well. If you’d like to rent this airbnb, click here.

Could your home or airbnb use design help, I’d love to be a part of the project! Please message me today to set up a consult and get the project started!

Check out more details about our Interior Design Services. 

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

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Swiss Coffee and Lincoln Cottage Black Kitchen Makeover

Hi Friends!

How are you? I hope you had a nice weekend! We had a mix of baseball, church events, and time with family and friends so it was full and beautiful!

If you’re having trouble viewing the photos in this post, click here.

I’m excited to share this kitchen makeover because I love the transformation, but also because I think the couple who had us do the work are pretty great! Ann Marie and Tim have been cheering us on for years. Tim even designed our newest logo. Check out his website if you could use help with your website or graphic design.

Here’s the before photos of their kitchen:

I love their home to begin with. It’s modern, but with great art work and design (just like I’d expect from a couple who does graphic design and marketing).

We painted the kitchen cabinets with Benjamin Moore’s color Swiss Coffee, the island Valspar’s Lincoln Cottage Black, and added all new hardware.

If you’d like to see how we paint Kitchen Cabinets, click here to check out our video on YouTube. 

Ready for the after photos?

Oh and we also painted their kitchen table.

What an beautiful transformation!! 

Could your kitchen use an update? We’d love to help!! We can help pick out colors, finishes, product and do the cabinet painting, tiling, add new hardware. You can use our Contact Us form to request our design services or a quote for painting your kitchen. Please check out other kitchen projects on our For Sale page. We’ll need to see a picture of your kitchen, a list of how many doors and drawers there are, and where you are located to email you an estimate. This change ups the value of your home and gives you a whole new look at a fraction of the cost of new kitchen cabinets!

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,

Sarah ;)

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Modernize an Outdated Hutch

Hi Friends!

I hope you all enjoyed the holiday weekend! We went out of town to visit friends, and had a nice time unplugging from how busy life has felt lately. I think it’s the spring cleaning and yard work mixed with baseball and normal work, but I’ve felt like we’ve been non stop for a while.

For this week’s makeover, we had an old oak hutch that our client wanted to update. So we altered the base to remove the curvature, installed all new shaker doors, and new hardware.

Here’s the hutch before:

After making all the alterations, we painted the box with BM Black.

If you want to see how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. 

Here’s a couple photos of the afters:

This hutch isn’t available to purchase on our shop page because it was done as a custom order. Be sure to visit our SHOP page to check out what other pieces we have available for purchase or custom order. 

Or contact us to get a quote to let us redo your furniture for you! 

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

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Repurposed Idea House Patio

Hi Friends!

If you’re having trouble reading this in your email, please click here.

Four years ago we bought an old farmhouse house built in 1802, and have been redoing it room by room. At the end of last year we finished all the inside projects, and you can check those out here. One thing you may not know though is that the house is set on a lot that is set back from the road and has over 3 acres. I love how serene and beautiful it is here. That’s actually one of my favorite parts about this house. Our last house was probably even cuter than our current house, but it was on a busy road so it wasn’t as quiet or peaceful. In this house, we’ve been wanted to work on the gardens and outdoor space, but had to keep our focus inside to get the projects done on time. This spring we finally had the time to complete our final large project. The outdoor patio! We had stamped concrete installed, built a Gazebo kit, and decorated it all. I’ve so enjoyed working outside and having drinks with friends in this beautiful setting.

Oh, and can you spot our adorable June just for extra cuteness! I’m so happy with how this turned out, and I hope it inspires you to get outside and enjoy the outdoor space at your home!

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)


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Repurposed Nursery Dresser – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s reading this blog! I hope you felt loved! We enjoyed church together, went plant shopping, and then had my family over for dinner! Such a sweet day with family!

For this week’s before and after, I wanted to share a custom project that we recently finish for a client who wanted us to repurpose a dresser for their babies room.

Here’s the dresser before:

They had a crib they were trying to match that was raw wood and black so we sanded and stained the drawers and top with Valspar’s Sunbleached, then painted the box with Benjamin Moore’s Black.

If you want to see how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. 

Here’s a couple more photos of the afters:

This dresser isn’t available to purchase on our shop page because it was done as a custom order. Be sure to visit our SHOP page to check out what other pieces we have available for purchase or custom order. 

Or contact us to get a quote to let us redo your furniture for you! 

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

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Painting a Pictograph Buffet – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

Why would we redo a newer piece of furniture? Well, even if furniture isn’t old, if it doesn’t work stylistically anymore, I’d rather have a client redo it instead of just buying new piece whenever possible. This is a perfect example of that!

Here’s the credenza before:

Pretty, but not quite the look our clients wanted so we sprayed the whole piece!

Box Color: Benjamin Moore Black

If you want to see how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. 

Here’s a couple more photos of the afters:

This dresser isn’t available to purchase on our shop page because it was done as a custom order. Be sure to visit our SHOP page to check out what other pieces we have available for purchase or custom order. 

Or contact us to get a quote to let us redo your furniture for you! 

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

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White Kitchen Cabinets with Glazing

Hi Friends!

I hope you had a nice weekend and are trying to find fun things to distract you from the many days of rain ahead. Actually, I hope this post brings some sunshine to your rainy day!

Last week, I went to High Point Market which is like Disney for designers. I learned so much, viewed all the new trends, and met amazing designers along the way who showed me the ropes. I can’t wait to share more about that experience soon! Here’s a couple teaser photos so you can see what I mean!

We had a client who asked to us to paint her kitchen cabinets. Kristen has worked with us before and we were delighted to have another project to work on in her beautiful home. She has a farmhouse set on a hill with a large double porch on the front. It’s dreamy!

Here’s the kitchen before we painted the cabinets:

If you’d like to see how we paint Kitchen Cabinets, click here to check out our video on YouTube. 

Cabinet Color: Benjamin Moore Simply White with black glazing
Island Color: Sherman Williams Black Fox

Ready for the after photos?

Could your kitchen use an update? We’d love to help!! We can help pick out colors, finishes, product and do the cabinet painting, tiling, add new hardware. You can use our Contact Us form to request our design services or a quote for painting your kitchen. Please check out other kitchen projects on our For Sale page. We’ll need to see a picture of your kitchen, a list of how many doors and drawers there are, and where you are located to email you an estimate. This change ups the value of your home and gives you a whole new look at a fraction of the cost of new kitchen cabinets!

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,

Sarah ;)

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

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How to add fluted wood fronts to a dresser! – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

You may have noticed that a big trend lately is to have thin wood strips on the fronts of dressers, bars, or reception desks. If you haven’t noticed, that’s ok. My days are filled with looking at designs and furniture so don’t feel bad. I’ll keep you in the know. :)

I’ve been wanting to try doing this to a dresser set, but it’s an expensive project to try. The wood strips are pricey (there may be a cheaper way to do it that I haven’t found yet). If I do find a cheaper wood product, I’ll update this post. If you know of a way, please comment and let me know below. I love the look of having the wood strips on the front of dresser drawer so I waited until I found just the right set to do the transformation.

This is the next in the series of furniture that has bee inspired by doors that we saw on our anniversary trip to Paris. I selected all the colors based on this photo.

Here are the dressers before:

I did a time lapse video to show the steps of how we removed the trim on the drawers and added the fluted wood. You can check it out on Instagram here.

We removed the drawers, and removed all of the trim work on the drawer to give us room to add the fluted wood strips. Then we repaired, prepped, primed, and painted the boxes.

Box Color: Benjamin Moore Mythic CSP-510

If you want to see how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. We also added furniture feet onto the dressers. We did have to spray them a different gold so they matched the hardware.

New Hardware: Gold Tab Pulls

Furniture Feet: Triangle Furniture Feet

Then we bought pole wraps with fluted wood from Home Depot and stained them with Valspar’s Sunbleached stain. It took 3 of those pole wraps for these two dressers.

After the stain was dry, we glued them onto the drawer fronts and secured it with pin nails. You may have to plane down the tops of the drawers to be sure none of them hit each other. Then we added all the hardware and we were all set! This project did take a couple of days to finish. It’s not a fast process.

Ready for the after photos?

This dresser set is available to purchase on our shop page. Be sure to visit our SHOP page to see if it’s still available, and check out what other pieces we have available for purchase or custom order.

Or contact us to get a quote to let us redo your furniture for you! 

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

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Farmhouse Kitchen Update with Built in Drink Station

Hi Friends!

If you live in upstate with younger kids, last week was spring break. We usually travel to Florida on spring break, but decided to stay home this year, and do a couple of day trips instead. I thought I was going to be sad without a big trip, but we all really enjoyed the day trips and the extra rest between work. It didn’t hurt that the weather was so beautiful this week! We’ve been redoing kitchens and furniture each week, but we also spent time working on the trolley house. We have a lot to do there and are trying to seize the warm days.

For one of my #40by40 challenge, I wanted to do a day trip where it was completely spontaneous. I love being spontaneous, but I often get a full schedule and don’t have time for things if I don’t plan ahead. So I just blocked off a day and John said, leave this one to me. We took a drive to Newport and Providence RI. We walked the cliffs by mansions in Newport, and then went to Providence to tour the college John went to for culinary arts, Johnson and Whales. After, we walked to the local shops ,and had delicious Korean BBQ for dinner at Mom Ban. So much fun!

I’m excited to share this kitchen makeover with you because it’s for a friend who’s house was built in 1775! I love everything about this house. When Tricia hired me to come help with the design, I loved it so much in fact that I forgot to take before pictures! This is the only before picture I have:

I took a picture of this section because she wanted it changed into a drink area with counters for extra space when they have get togethers at their home.

When working on a project in an older home, we’ve learned over the years that you never know what you’re going to find when you start removing anything. In this case, were we thought we could put cabinets, there was a duct vent in front of the wall. The duct couldn’t fit inside the wall because there’s a fireplace on the other side… so we had to find a work around. I recommended wrapping the duct with brick to make it look like there was a chimney instead of a jutting out section of the wall. We also had to customize the cabinets a bit and have the counters wrap around it. Check out how it all came together:

I just don’t think could be any cuter!

Here’s the rest of the kitchen for you!

If you’d like to see how we paint Kitchen Cabinets, click here to check out our video on YouTube. 

Cabinet Color: Benjamin Moore Simply White
Island Color: Valspar Lincoln Cottage Black

Could your kitchen use an update? We’d love to help!! We can help pick out colors, finishes, product and do the cabinet painting, tiling, add new hardware. You can use our Contact Us form to request our design services or a quote for painting your kitchen. Please check out other kitchen projects on our For Sale page. We’ll need to see a picture of your kitchen, a list of how many doors and drawers there are, and where you are located to email you an estimate. This change ups the value of your home and gives you a whole new look at a fraction of the cost of new kitchen cabinets!

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,

Sarah ;)

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

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Specialty Door Finish – Paris Spring Escape

Hi Friends, 

If you missed our prior post or are new to the FunCycled blog, we started specialty finishes on furniture inspired by old doors. This dresser was inspired by another door from our Paris trip and will be part of our specialty finishes posts. 

Here’s the door I loved in Paris:

We did a mix of teal on the drawer fronts and Revere Pewter on the box with glazing. We also added all new hardware and sprayed the piece with a protective clear coat.

Ready for the after photos?

Sooooo the only problem is…. this one already sold, but we can redo your furniture piece in the same specialty finish if you’d like us to! Contact Us today!

Thank you all for following along! If you’d like to get this blog in your email once a week, please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please like FunCycled on  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you don’t already. Keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We share fun tutorials, great before and after, and new design inspirations. 

We offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and repurposed furniture. Thank you, again, for working with us and for taking the time to spread the word about what we do. 

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)