Blog - Page 21 of 74 - FunCycled - Interior Design, Kitchen Cabinet Painting, Furniture Repurposing in Upstate NY

Posted on December 29, 2020January 12, 2024 by Sarah

Movie Theater at the FunCycled Stays Airbnb

Hi Friends,

This week, I’m sharing a room that is a fan favorite at our airbnb. It’s on the top floor of the building with ceilings that makes the sound bounce around and makes your ears happy to be there. :) First, let’s start by showing you the room before. We actually didn’t do a lot of changes to this room.

Here’s the room when we went to look at the building to purchase it:

I felt like the recliners were too bulky so I switched them out with two click clack couches that can be either in the reclining position, all the way down or upright. I also love that there’s a center arm on the couches that have cup holders in them. Perfect for any movie night at the airbnb.

We get the most question about the couches in this room. Even though they have a high end look, they are pretty inexpensive. The reason I went this route is because I needed something that would fit up the narrow, angled stairs (normal couches wouldn’t). These just barely fit even without the legs on them. I also wanted something that was reasonably priced to replace if need be because it is a movie room and accidents happen. If you love them and want to order one for your home here’s the link.

We also redid an antique record player to be the entertainment center for this room, but it wouldn’t fit up the stairs. So John built this beauty in about 3 hours as a deadline emergency piece (opening was the same week). I love how it turned out and said we should offer this as a custom order for people. Do you all agree?

The TV is a smart TV – we decided to go with faster internet in the airbnb and not do cable. So we bought smart TV’s and it allows guest to sign in using their own credentials to watch the shows they would like.

You can’t see it in the pictures, but there’s also a microwave for popcorn and a skylight with a little bench to soak up some sun mid day if people want. The LED lighting on the floor makes everything pop when the lights are out and the movie is on!

It would mean so much if you would share this link with any friend you think might be interested. You can book your stay on Airbnb’s website today!

We loved being able to do all the design for this space. We focused on using as much repurposed items we could for accents and furniture throughout the space! Making it green, beautiful, and one of a kind for your home away from home stay.

If you’d like me to help you with design in your home (can be done virtually to help anyone in the US) or if you see anything in the photos you’d like in your home locally, let me know. We made most of the signs ourselves and build many of the furniture items throughout the space.

Thanks for being the best funcycler’s around!

Sarah Trop

Posted on December 22, 2020December 21, 2020 by Sarah

Bright Yellow Kitchen with Gray Cabinet – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

Merry Christmas! I debated on sharing this kitchen on the week of Christmas, but it’s so bright and cheery that I thought it might be a fun way to start your week. Even if it looks more like summer than winter! We all could use a little extra sunshine, am I right?

Sue reached out to me for a design consult and for painting their kitchen cabinets. Last year, we redid Sue’s daughter Brielle’s kitchen. You can check out Brielle’s kitchen here. In 2020 Sue decided that she wanted her cabinets redone, too!

Here are the before pictures:

She wanted the walls to be a really bright yellow so she went with Flutterbye by Benjamin Moore. We painted the oak cabinets with Benjamin Moore’s color Revere Pewter and sealed them with a protective clear coat. We also added new hardware which really helped and installed subway tile with gray grout for them to make everything pop.

Ready for the afters?

Could your kitchen use an update? We’d love to help!! We can help pick out colors, finishes, products, and do the cabinet painting, tiling, and install shiplap. 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!

Check out some fun new furniture for sale in our store now:

Please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture.

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

If you like what you see, please like FunCycled’s Facebook page to keep up to date on the newest finds, vote on colors and give your input on our creativity. We also offer interior design, kitchen cabinet painting, and custom built tables, barn doors, and furniture. We can deliver for customers in upstate NY and also help you ship throughout the US. Send us a note with what you would like using our contact page. Or buy something that we’ve already designed from our online shop.

Posted on December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 by Sarah

White Flat Top Steamer Trunk Makeover

Hi Friends!

How are you? We are doing well! This week, I wanted to share a quick custom order project that we redid for a design client of ours – Kathy. She had this steamer trunk:

She loved it, but wanted it to have a more modern look. She asked us to paint it Sherman Williams high reflective white and spray it all with protective clear coat. She also wanted all of the original black to be left as is. Believe it or not, that was the most tedious part about this makeover. We taped off every single spot of black and then painted everything else white.

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

Ready for the after photos?

This was done as a custom order so it’s not for sale, but you can check out new pieces on our For Sale page:

Please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture.

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

Posted on December 8, 2020December 7, 2020 by Sarah — 4 Comments

Grand Opening of FunCycled’s Showroom

Hi Friends,

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to celebrate the opening of our storefront over the weekend!! What a fun couple of days this has been!! A huge thanks to each of you who were part of our ribbon cutting and grand opening this week! We all know 2020 hasn’t been an easy year so ending it with this celebration was an absolute delight. We loved seeing the smile in your eyes and getting to catch up with so many of you. Here’s to all good things ahead!! We’re ready for you 2021!

This week, I’m excited to share some photos of our new store for those of you who couldn’t make it this past weekend.

We made it so much easier to order custom items.

Our custom signs are numbered. You can just pick your number and we’ll select one from the back for you or custom make it for you if we are sold out.

We also have table legs in stock with different finishes the you can choose from for any custom built table:

We have mini barn door examples so you can easily pick the the style and color you’d like.

One of my favorite additions; we have a kitchen cabinet area where you can see our most popular cabinet colors. We can meet with clients when they want us to paint their kitchen cabinets, show counter top options (compliments of Klassic Stone), and offer our favorite hardware options (we can order those for you now, too). It also shows the style of exposed shelves that we offer. We can build the shelves for you to install or we can install them for you.

The ribbon cutting was a special time for family, long time customers, and friends. We had to limit our numbers due to COVID, but we were so thankful that Mayor Madden was able to be part of the event.

Mayor Madden and Deputy Mayor Monica Kurzejeski

A huge thanks to Pam (our store manager) for her hard work with making signs and setting up to be ready for this event. We did a lot of long hours over the last couple of weeks to make this happen.

We would love to have you stop by our new location! Check out our location page for hours, parking and direction information.

And for the transformation this week, I wanted to show you the before and after of our storefront!

Here’s the building the day we bought it:

Here it is now!

We plan to paint the red brick a different color either next summer or the summer after that, but it was in good shape so we kept it for now!

So pretty, right?

Please stop by and shop local! This pandemic is not an easy thing to get through as a small business and we are so thankful for each and every one of our FunCyclers. We couldn’t do this without you!!

Looking forward to all the exciting things ahead in 2020!

Sincerely,
Sarah Trop

Posted on December 1, 2020January 12, 2024 by Sarah — 2 Comments

Game Room Remodel – FunCycled Stays Airbnb

Hello Friends!

This week is our Grand Opening at the new location – 336 Congress Street, Troy, Ny 12180. We’ll be open Saturday, December 5th, 10-2pm and would love for you to stop by and see the new space. I’ll be there the whole time to wish you happy holidays and answer any questions you may have!

For this week’s makeover, I wanted to show you another room in our FunCycled Stays airbnb! If you’re looking for a spot to stay while visiting anyone in Troy, Ny, we’d love for you to stay with us! You can also check out other completed rooms in the airbnb here.

Here’s the game room from the day we went to go look at it to consider buying it:

Most of this room was changed with new furniture and flooring. The green rug had to go!! We ripped it up first thing and installed a new flooring. Since this room was narrow, we were able to use roll out sheet vinyl for this space. It was super easy to lay and is really durable for this area since it gets a lot of traffic.

What a difference it made!

In this picture, we had just laid out the vinyl and painted the window trim white.

Then we brought back in the air hockey table, installed baseboard, and added all the decor.

Boho Game Room in the Urban Industrial Airbnb

This whole room design started with the couch. It’s a vintage velvet couch that my friend Monica gave me! It was her mom’s for years and in perfect condition. Thank you, Monica! I loved the lines of the couch and the rich rosy color. The next step in the design was finding a rug. I couldn’t find one online that I liked. I knew I wanted it to be bohemian, but I also wanted it to have some of the rose color in it. I took a trip to Home Goods and found this adorable rug! It was perfect! Had all the colors, the style and the size I wanted. I was so excited!!

For the coffee table, I wanted to do a narrow piece and we had this old reclaimed wood board at our house. So we added the hairpin legs onto the table. Bam – repurposed and adorable.

We painted old lockers, removed one of the doors and added wooden shelves to the middle.

We replaced the fan and added wooden blinds which really helped bring warmth to this space, too.

It would mean so much if you would share this link with any friend you think might be interested. You can book your stay on Airbnb’s website today!

Thanks for being the best funcycler’s around!

Sarah Trop

Posted on November 24, 2020November 23, 2020 by Sarah

Farmhouse Kitchen Makeover with Painted Cabinets by FunCycled

Hi Friends,

How are you? I hope you’re having a great week so far! We’ve been pushing hard to finish up our new showroom/store! Quick behind the scene pic of the new store!

Grand opening at the 336 Congress Street, Troy location is December 5th – 10am-2pm. Mark it down friends! We’d love your support! Our final day at the 272 River Street store is this Saturday November 28th 10-2. Stop by that day for steep discounts. I don’t want to have to move anything out on Sunday! 😉

I could jump up and down with excitement over this week’s kitchen makeover. It’s one of my favorite in 2020! Lynn started by hiring me to do a 1 hour consult for her kitchen design and then had us paint the kitchen cabinets and install all the new tile for her as well. It’s so helpful to make a solid plan before starting work in any room, but especially in the kitchen. Making sure the counters, backsplash, wall colors, cabinet colors, backsplash, and flooring all blend together well before you purchase anything will save you money in the long run. Trust me! The consult is worth every penny.

Here’s the kitchen before:

The granite was in wonderful shape so we didn’t want to change that out. We pulled colors from the granite for the island and painted the island Chelsea Gray by Benjamin Moore.

She replaced the valance with a bamboo roman shade and I think it’s so beautiful.

All new hardware always helps to update as kitchen, too. I love the matte black hardware in this kitchen, too.

4×12 subway tile with a medium gray grout was a perfect compliment to the counters, too!

We painted the cabinets with Benjamin Moore’s Advanced paint; color White Dove, sealed it with a water based protective clear coat, and added new hardware. The island is BM’s Chelsea Gray.

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!

Check out some fun new furniture for sale in our store now:

Please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture.

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

Posted on November 17, 2020November 17, 2020 by Sarah — 2 Comments

3 Big Announcements – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

We have a week of big announcements for you! We’ve teamed up with two other local woman-owned businesses to take the guesswork out of the holidays… and it just so happens that these incredible creators are family! My two sister-in-laws.

Bring a little lightness and joy into someone’s year with a box full of thoughtful and carefully-made goods — home-roasted coffee and hand-poured candles. To order yours today, head to Thoughtful Gardner website. You can order online and have it shipped to anywhere in the US. Or you can choose local pick up to get the set at our store and save on shipping.

Our FunCycled storefront is moving!
In case you haven’t heard, we’re moving our store from downtown Troy to 336 Congress Street in Troy! Our new building has a parking lot and we’re excited about this change!

The new store will have more options for custom orders. You’ll be able to see the different barn door options, custom tables, exposed shelves, and kitchen cabinet painting options before placing a custom order. You can also order just about any custom sign that you might want for your home.

We’ll have furniture, our favorite signs (made in house), candles (The Thoughtful Gardner), DIY paint (MudPaint Vintage Furniture Paint), FunCycled merchandise, and other decor items.

Our LAST day at the 272 River Street store will be on November 28th. Small Business Saturday. We’ll be selling whatever we have left in the store that day with steep discounts.

Our FIRST day and grand opening at the new 336 Congress Street store is December 5th at 11am. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us both days. Until then… enjoy great deals on all your favorites and one of a kind home decor!

Home Decor: 40% off this weekend
Furniture: 40% off inventory still at the 272 River Street Location this weekend!

Our Repurposed Idea House was just featured in the Sunday’s Time Union! If you didn’t get a chance to pick it up, you can also read it online here.

Thank you for taking time to stay up to date on all the FunCycled news! You’re the best FunCyclers arounds!

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

Posted on November 10, 2020November 10, 2020 by Sarah

Master Bedroom Makeover – FunCycled Repurposed Idea House

Hi Friends,

How are you? I hope you’re doing well! Want to know a little trick for getting all those little projects around your house done? Just have your local newspaper ask to feature your house! That’s what happened to us and sent us rushing to wrap up all the little left over details in the rooms that were ALMOST done in our house this week. It was actually a good thing because I’m not sure we’d every finish them without it. lol! Now I can share our master bedroom makeover with you all, too!

Grab a Times Union newspaper or checkout their website this Sunday the 15th to see the article about our house in the home section. We learned so much about our repurposed idea house when we did some research for the article, but I’ll save that for another time.

Let’s start with the before pictures of our master bedroom. As you could see… it didn’t lack in wallpaper or mint green. lol!

Whoa baby!!! My eyes are tired. 😂 My mom came to help me remove the wallpaper but there were soooo many layers and they didn’t want to come off. So we ended up ripping out all the lath and plaster was a really good thing. Once we ripped it out, we realized there was no insulation in the walls. So we insulated everything, too! Right after we bought the house, we also had all new windows installed.

We painted the walls Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore. Instead of adding a headboard, we installed a full wall of Shiplap where the headboard would be and paint it Black by Benjamin Moore. I actually wanted to keep the mint accent color in the room so we left the mint doors and I incorporated that color with accent pillows from Hobby Lobby. We added all new baseboard and trim and painted all of that Simply White by Benjamin Moore.

We ripped out the carpet and found beautiful wood floors underneath that we refinished as well. Then we added this area rug under the bed.

I wanted a very specific dresser set so we waited quite a while to find a mid century set on Facebook Marketplace and then refinished it to give the look I wanted for this room.

The plant in the corner was actually from the original owner. I’m trying to keep it alive since it came with this house!

You may also like the blinds from Amazon that we added to the windows or the chandelier over the bed.

Ready for the afters?

If you have any questions about other elements in the room, please comment below and I’d be happy to help! I would love to hear what your favorite part of the redesign is!

You can use our Contact Us form to hire me to help with design work in your home. Check out our Interior Design page for more information about the process.

Please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture.

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

Posted on November 3, 2020November 10, 2020 by Sarah

Repainting an Christy’s Old Painted Dresser

Hi Friends!

How are you? Today, I want to talk to you about furniture. Not politic or COVID or anything else… just pretty furniture. This week’s furniture makeover was for my dear friend Christy. Right at the beginning of COVID, Christy reached out in the kindest way (as always) to see how she could send a project our way to keep money coming in. That meant more than she even knows and helped our family!

She had painted this dresser for her son when he was a little boy and now she wanted to use it in a different way in her house.

Here it is before:

We repainted it Benjamin Moore’s Simply White and sprayed it all with protective clear coat.

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

We also changed it from pull to knobs and, to me, it doesn’t even look like the same dresser.

What do you think?

This was done as a custom order, but you can check out new pieces on our For Sale page:

Please sign up for our weekly newsletter by adding your email in the little box below my picture.

Happy FunCycling Friends,
Sarah ;)

Posted on October 27, 2020January 12, 2024 by Sarah

FunCycles Stays Airbnb Geometric Bedroom Design

Hi Friends,

I’m so excited to share the full sized bedroom remodel that we did for our Urban Industrial Airbnb! Let’s take a look at the room before we started working on it!

I wanted the headboard wall to be the first thing to catch your eye when you walked into the room. I also knew I wanted everything about this room to be geometric and fun. I started by designing the furniture with a triangle pattern.

Then I moved to the headboard wall design. I knew I wanted a shelf to add decor so I used this repurposed barn board that we already had. I also added triangle decals to the bottom area and painted above the board with Benjamin Moore’s color Black.

To save space and add more texture to this wall, we attached antique crates directly to the wall to create end stands.

We also added pendent lights to this wall and made our own Sleep Sign and Troy Sign. If you’d like either sign, we can custom make one for you. Use our Contact Us form to order and pick up locally.

We also used mustard as our pop of color in this space with throw pillows and throw blankets.

It would mean so much if you would share this link with any friend you think might be interested. You can book your stay on Airbnb’s website today!

Thanks for being the best funcycler’s around!

Sarah Trop