Blog - Page 58 of 76 - FunCycled - Interior Design, Kitchen Cabinet Painting, Furniture Repurposing in Upstate NY

Posted on September 2, 2014September 2, 2014 by Sarah

Upcycled Retro Console TV – Tuesday’s Treasures

Happy day after Labor Day and day before school starts for many of us here in upstate NY. I don’t know about you, but I love hanging out with my kids. Sure they can be naughty sometimes (but so am I). Over all they are funny and love to laugh. That being said, I am gonna miss them like mad when they go back to school, but at the same time I’m a creature of routine and structure. I thrive in that environment. Having a normal schedule again will help me make time for all of the ideas I thought of for FunCycled over the summer. I can’t wait to get going on them!! It will also give me time to get back to emails quicker, create new designs and post more on this site. So stay tuned fans (and thanks for your patience with me over the summer).

The Time’s Union interviewed us for an article about upcycling in their 518 Life magazine’s September issue. You should be able to find one at Price Chopper, Hannaford, Bruegger’s Bagels and some Starbucks. If you don’t live around here, but would like to read the article, here’s a link to the Upcycle Your Want to Unique Furniture and Decor article on TU’s website.

The last full week of summer vacation was packed to the brim with beach days, late nights, just ONE more quick play date. Crazy times and they were all a blast. That being said… I want share my favorite moment from this week. My friend, Jo Ann, bought us tickets to go see Josh Groban at Tanglewood. Tanglewood is a place that reminds me of life before children. John and I would get up on sunny, summer Saturday mornings, pack a late breakfast or early lunch, and bring it to Tanglewood. We would listen to the Boston Symphony Orchestra rehearse for the performance that night. It was much cheaper for rehearsal tickets and I enjoy it just as much as the live performance. I loved listening to the conductor tweak different sounds here and there. I can’t put my finger on what I love so much about live classical music, but it invigorates my soul. Maybe because I play the piano… or maybe because I love when people who are passionate about something actually get to do it as their job. But really it might just be the sound. When I close my eyes and listen I feel this overwhelming sense of how blessed I am. I’m living in a time when I can be exposed to this amount of musical talent, instruments. God is sooo good to us, friends. Even during the stressful seasons of life, God gives us moments like He gave me this week. He gave me a friend who has loved me like her own daughter for the last 8 years, a moment of kid free time to talk, beautiful music to enjoy, a hubby who never says no when I ask to go out. So so many great things to be thankful for. Thank you for this special memory, Jo Ann!

Are you ready for a retro makeover? Get ready. Get set. Go!

John built a shelf inside the TV and added a back to make it a small bookcase. We also had to order new knobs from ebay. I really wanted it keep its retro vibe so we attached new fabric on the front where the speaker is and painted it aqua. The fabric is from Hobby Lobby. If you’d like to see how we paint furniture, please check out our How to Paint Furniture post.
Cuteness, right? ;)

The furniture photos are by Chelsea Bos Photography. Have a great week friends! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Having fun upcycling!
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. There is a box at the top right of this page to enter your email address in to receive notifications by email when I post something new on this blog.

Please sign up today! Last but not least, let us customize a furniture piece for you. We create custom furniture and will deliver for customers in upstate NY and will also 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 furniture for sale page.

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Sarah

Slate Grey Hutch For Sale – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

This is the last full week without school and I can’t even believe it!! We had a great weekend trying to savor the last bit of summer time with the kids. Our church reserves part of a camp in the Adirondacks and we all reserve spots if we want to go. It was so much fun hanging out with our second family… the friends that go to our church. The camp site was beautiful, the laughter was plenteous and the family time was refreshing.

I’m a visual person so I thought that I’d share the weekend quickly through mostly pictures. Probably my favorite part of the weekend was getting up at 6:30am and taking a walk with my little man. We walked, he talked and then we both played mini golf. I’m not a morning person so I’m surprised that this was my favorite part, but I very rarely get time with just him and we had a special one on one.

I came back to camp to find this handsome fella cooking breakfast for all of us. He goes all out when we go camping and the food is always so good!

Also, our little man learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. Yay!

Sweetie’s helmet, that has to be another one of my favorite parts of the weekend, everyone kept saying that the unicorn was riding by. I love her – her helmet, the way she eats a S’more, her laughter. She’s just the cutest little thing.

I loved sitting at the campfire and getting lots of time to chat with my friend Sarah. This summer has been a crazy busy mess so a quality time girl like myself felt great getting time to chat with all my friends.

I loved that the Vielleux family made us feel like we were part of their family, too! We all felt right at home.

Sitting around the fire on Saturday night singing worship songs with people from our different worship bands was a blast.

And I LOVED having church outside at the campground on Sunday morning. Nothing like a sermon in God’s great outdoors.

And the sad part?? Leaving

It was soooo much fun!

Ok, ok Furniture time now!! ;) We had this dresser:

And we had this top…

Doesn’t quite seem like a match made in heaven, right? Right! But I knew it would come together, well because the size was right and once I added unifying paint and new hardware, it would be sooo pretty. I’ve been wanting to do another grey hutch since our last Grey and Cream hutch, but haven’t had a chance. This hutch is painted with Benjamin Moore’s Wescott Navy which is a slate grey.

Drum roll please!! This hutch is for sale! We just added it to our Furniture For Sale page! It’s lighted with a mirrored back, glass shelves and glass in all the doors. The glass has been removed for the photos. If you’d like to purchase it, please use our Contact Us form to reserve it.

The furniture photos are by Chelsea Bos Photography. Have a great week friends! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Sarah

Black Furniture Makeovers – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

This mid August week in upstate NY has felt more like autumn than summer. It’s been great sleeping and working weather. Perfect for meeting friends for a bonfire or enjoying a walk at the park. We seized those moments and loved every minute of it. Sadly, I shared the summer cold that took me out of commission a few weeks ago with John last week. He was out for the count poor guy! With owning your own business, sick days don’t seem as relaxing because you know tomorrow you’ll have to work twice as long to catch up. That being said, John did and was a real trooper about it. We had some very long days and worked throughout the weekend, but in the end I’ve got to say that the work was just beautiful. Every piece this week I wanted to keep in my home. You’ll have to keep an eye out on our Furniture For Sale page this week as I’ll be adding a rustic industrial bookcase, a retro TV makeover and a stunning dark grey hutch. Just beautiful!

I have to share my favorite moment from this week. We went to Washington Park Playhouse for the August performance of Oliver. If any of you local readers have never gone to a play in Washington park, you must. It’s AMAZING. The talent is unbelievable and it’s FREE. F.R.E.E!! I’m a musician and a lover of so many Broadway musicals but could never afford to bring my kids to NYC to experience them. It means so much to me that Albany cares about the arts and so many people give of their time to make these performances possible. You have to get there early so pack a picnic dinner and some games, go at 5:30 or 6pm and wait for the show to start. It makes for a fun, free family night out. Or bring friends… we brought our pal’s the Fischers! :)

And John and I were delighted to have these guests of honor with us. Our little monkeys…

Yeah… he could use a hair cut, I know. ;)

As for the furniture this week, I’ve been featuring bold modern designs and colors lately, but I thought it would be nice to show you some of the classic, timeless pieces that we’ve also been creating as custom orders for our clients. They knock my socks off in a traditional, ritzy sort of way. Does that make sense?

Here’s a buffet that we redid a while ago for our returning customer McKenzie. Before:

After:

This piece was from our Upcoming Projects page and was redone as a custom order for a first time customer Kelley. Before:

After:

Another black transformation… for Jill son’s Kevin. Jill has many pieces from us and always knows which ones will go quickly and snatches them up just before everyone. Here’s the bed we redid and posted on our For Sale Page and she snatched it right up.

Before:

After:

And one more black pieces that we just added to our Furniture For Sale page. Go on and check it out… I think it’s calling your name. :) Especially if your name is “buy me, buy me”.
Before:

After:

If you want to see how to paint furniture like this check out our How To Paint Furniture post. I almost always use Benjamin Moore’s black enamel and we paint it with a sprayer. I’ve tried brushing it on and it doesn’t come out with a professional finish.

The furniture photos are by Chelsea Bos Photography. Have a great week friends! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Posted on August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 by Sarah

Orange and Ombre Mid Century Desk – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

How was your first full week of August? And when I say that, I really want to know. ;) Leave me a comment if you have a second so I can keep up with you all, like you keep up with what I am up to. We had an AWESOME week at Vacation Bible School at our church. Being a pastor’s kid, it’s ingrained in me to want to be at everything and help in any way that I can. This is our first summer of full time FunCycled with the kids at home, so I ended up dropping the kids off and worked while they were at VBS. With over 200 kids most days and over 100 volunteers, I felt so humbled to have this time to work the day away. I wanted to officially say thank you to all who took off work or took a part of their summer to serve. You made amazing memories for our kids and impacted them with the truths of God’s word. They loved it more than you even know!!

So many things are in the works over here. We’ve been looking into getting a store front (with no definite answers quite yet) just praying, walking through opened doors and waiting to see where God directs. We are more than happy to stay as is, but also had this opportunity arise that we didn’t orchestrate and wanted to see if maybe this is what God wants for us. I’ll keep you posted as we have more details either way.

Also, this week Chelsea from Chelsea Bos Photography sent over all of our family photos and I updated our About Us page with them and wanted to show you a few of my favorite here.

As for furniture, I have another modern one for you today with a bright pop of color. Here’s a picture of it before.

It was going in a room designed for our customer Jessica. It is her son’s, Oliver, room. Oliver wanted the room to be orange and blue. So we went with a slate blue grey and orange palette. We incorporated orange on the desk and blue accents while still keeping wood grains on the drawers and chair.

If you would like to learn about how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. We painted this using Benjamin Moore’s Festive Orange. We also painted the hardware Old Navy by Benjamin Moore.

The after pictures are done by Chelsea Bos Photography. Have a great week friends! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Sarah

White Distressed Hutch For Sale – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

Happy August! Say what? Yeah, I blinked and there went July. We had a busy final week of July working on creating a farmhouse table for our home. We plan to start offering custom made farmhouse tables on our for sale page. You’ll be able to pick the wood, finish and size of your table. I am sooooo excited to have it done and I can’t wait to share it with you! We should have pictures and more information for you later this week so stay tuned!!

I also added a new page to our website where you can see a quick gallery view of our furniture projects. You can check it out on our Pinterest Gallery.

Hayley reached out to us to find out if we could revive her mom’s favorite piece of furniture. It was a hutch and she wanted us to have it, hoping to see it upcycled, given new life and loved by someone else for years. The top was too damaged to repair easily so we ended up only keeping the base.

Then I looked through my inventory and found this hutch top with no base that was just the right size. I love this hutch top – I love the curves, lighting and detailing.

We tried them out together and I loved how they looked. I bought this fabric for the back from Hobby Lobby. It was brand new to the store. (It’s a little sad that I know when fabric is new in a store… lol)

It’s a very warm teal with grey undertones. I melt over Quatrefoil patterns!

So on to painting we went. I asked John to paint it white for me. He did and I went out to “inspect”, as he calls it. Well… it was cream. I wasn’t quite sure because it wasn’t that noticeable but when I asked him if it was white or cream, he fessed up that he had added a little cream to the white… Oh nay nay… just won’t do! So, I was THAT wife who asked him to paint it again but white this time. Yeah. He was a really good sport about it which I don’t think I would have been had the roles been reversed. He painted it Simply White by Benjamin Moore.

This piece is on our Furniture For Sale page now! If you aren’t a fan our our Facebook page yet, you should like it. Last week we offered 25% off all our furniture for sale pieces to thank our Facebook fans for over 2,500 likes.

If you want to learn how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post. Here are the after pictures for you friends!

Hayley, I hope your mom would like the transformation! Everyone else who’s reading this… I hope you love it so much you want to buy it. ;)

The after pictures are done by Chelsea Bos Photography. Have a great week friends! Thanks so much for stopping by. :)

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Posted on July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 by Sarah — 3 Comments

Stained Ombre Dresser Set – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

Once upon a time there was a lady named Jessica, Jessica with the curly auburn hair. She came to my house for the first time to look at customizing the Teal Mid Century Library that we had on our Upcoming Projects page, and brought her entire family along. Her little one had to go potty and my house was… let’s say, less than company ready. ;) Jessica handled all of my mess and the chaos with grace, treating me like a respected friend, not like just someone to buy furniture from. She and I liked so many of the same things – modern furniture with pops of colors, Jonathan Adler, teal and aqua, fine foods.

Our month of July has been filled with projects for her and her family. After custom painting furniture for her dining room and living room, Jessica and Brent decided to go ahead and have us redo 13 furniture pieces for 2 of their children’s rooms, a guest bedroom and their master bedroom. In addition to the furniture makeovers, we did all the interior painting. We worked with them to pick out paint colors and we talked through so many of the small details that make the room – the bedspread, wall treatments, lamps, lights. They had us over for dinner last weekend and when asked who my favorite customer to work with so far was… I could honestly say she is. She makes me coffee. She brings us sweet treats. She claps and squeals as we bring in the furniture pieces. She invited us over for dinner and the word kind would be an understatement to describe her family.

We were planning out her master bedroom and we both agreed that this Mengel dresser set would do the trick. It’s modern lines were perfect so all we had to do is add a pop of color. Mengel Furniture Co. was started sometime just after the Civil War in Louisville, Kentucky. They made household furnishing and also wooden washing machines. They also started making wooden toys. These are high end solid oak pieces. Not something I’ve come across too often.

Here they are before. We were going to paint them all one color, but once we realized that they were solid oak, we just couldn’t cover it all up. We painted the outside of each dresser with Benjamin Moore’s Teal Tone 552. Then we stained the drawers – 1st drawer stained driftwood, 2nd drawer stained weathered grey, 3rd drawer stained dark walnut, 4th drawer stained ebony. Continue reading Stained Ombre Dresser Set – Tuesday’s Treasures

Posted on July 22, 2014July 22, 2014 by Sarah

For Sale!! Shutter Cabinet – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

How’s it going? We’re enjoying such beautiful weather here in upstate NY! It’s been great to work in the sunshine and have very few rainy days causing paint dripping and long drying times. If you missed our mid week post last week, take a second to go see all the pretty pics from the Interior Design and Painting Project that we just finished for our church.

Want to know the highlight of my week?? Getting to meet my newest nephew Elijah. He’s already 7 weeks old. One quick look at him and I fell in love…

Soooo cute! Now no piece of furniture will compare. ;)

One of our friends, Beth, owns a demo company in Troy. She calls me when there is something that she has been asked to trash that she thinks may be FunCycle-able. When she sent me this pictures, I just loved it! I couldn’t wait to transform it, but it’s been waiting for months and months for us to get time to transform it.

Once we started prepping it, we started sanding the shutter doors and found all of this beautiful red scrolling popping through.

I just couldn’t paint over it!! I wanted to find a way to keep the detailing while giving it a new look and feel. We decided to make it into a wine cabinet, but it could also be used for extra storage anywhere. We can take the X out of the bottom as well.

I mixed a couple of different reds together that I had and repainted the outside. I cleaned the original shutter part well and clear coated the entire thing to seal and protect it.

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

If you’d like to buy this piece, see our Furniture For Sale page to see if it’s still available, check for pricing, and size info. Here’s more photos for you!

The after pictures are done by Chelsea Bos Photography. I hope you all have a great week! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Posted on July 17, 2014September 25, 2017 by Sarah

Interior Design, Interior Painting Project and Custom Furniture

Often when we go to clients’ homes to deliver furniture or when we meet new people, they will ask what our business is. When we tell them refinishing and painting furniture, color consults, design and interior painting. They are usually surprised, especially about the interior painting and design. Most people know about the furniture, but I don’t often get to share the “afters” of our interior painting projects.

Well, here is one of the interior painting and design projects that we did for our church a few months ago. I’m glad I finally took time to post about it because it was a fun project and shows how “funcycling” can be so much more than furniture makeovers! We worked with my friend Kim (who goes to my church and was given the design job) to pick out decor, paint colors, furniture finishes, and room design/layout. We also ordered furniture that we didn’t have – like couches and chairs, and rugs. It was sooo much fun to turn empty. lackluster rooms into beautiful, welcoming places for visitors and church members alike.

First we picked out the paint colors for the family room. It’s called a family room because it is a place for families to go sit with their kids and listen to the sermon. Sometimes when parents aren’t comfortable putting their toddlers/babies in nursery yet, or they have a talker or crier who might distract other people – it is a great room to retreat to. The sermon is played live in that room so people can hear the whole thing.

We wanted the seating to be comfortable but easy to clean. So we went with leather chairs and a couch from Overstock.com. Very cost effective and surprisingly comfortable. We painted the one large wall Benjamin Moore’s Majestic Blue and the other three walls Benjamin Moore’s Carlisle Cream.

We painted this cabinet with the same color Majestic Blue. When you paint furniture with the same paint that you use on the wall, it almost always looks one hue lighter which makes it blend well in the room without being too matchy matchy.

Continue reading Interior Design, Interior Painting Project and Custom Furniture

Posted on July 15, 2014November 11, 2014 by Sarah

My Porch Swing From an Old Bed – Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!

If you’ve been on Pinterest or googled “porch swing images”, you’ve probably seen beds turned into a porch swing. I saw one years ago and fell in love. I wanted a porch swing made from an old bed soooo badly!! I found a bed on craigslist TWO winters ago and actually paid the guy to bring it to me in the middle of a snow storm because I knew it was exactly what I wanted. You know how they say the shoe makers kids have no shoes… well, this has been one of those projects we just didn’t make time for. John finally decided enough was enough and he set aside an hour here and there for a couple of weeks to make me the porch swing of my dreams.

John was speaking a girls love languages over here… a place for quality time, acts of service, gift. Overall, I’m feeling the love from John and want to give him a public thanks because I’m impressed by how he made it, too! :)

Sadly I don’t have ANY before pictures. Just picture an old headboard and foot board. John took the headboard and made it the back of the swing, took the footboard and made it the front of the swing. Then added side boards and wooded slats for the seat. We painted the swing with Benjamin Moore’s Advanced paint in Atrium White.
Continue reading My Porch Swing From an Old Bed – Tuesday’s Treasures

Posted on July 8, 2014July 24, 2014 by Sarah

Red, White and Blue, Take 2- Tuesday’s Treasures

Hi Friends!!

Around this time last year, I did a post about Red, White and Blue Furniture. So I thought today might be a good day to do another Red, White and Blue post – take 2! It’s fun looking back to see similar pieces that we’ve done and also notice how things have changed a bit. First off, my pictures are now done by Chelsea Bos Photography and man you can see the difference. Secondly, I love vintage, rustic and chic but I also have part of me that craves modern designs. I think you’ve all seen that more this year with our West Elm Inspired Patchwork Dresser and our Aqua and Ombre Mid Century Desk.

I hope you all had a great 4th!! We had a super busy day with deliveries, pick ups, and customers stopping by because they had the day off with no parties to go to until the evening. Then we hosted a party at our house with about 25 of our closest friends and family. Usually when I have a party at my house, I feel this pressure to make sure everyone is having a good time and end the day totally bummed that I talked to everyone for 30 seconds and had no good conversation. Do you ever feel that way? Well, not this year. This year was marvelous. I chilled, let everyone chat naturally. It was so relaxing and I left the house that night feeling so thankful for all of the friends and family God has blessed us with and for the many freedoms we enjoy as American’s.

John decided that he wanted to do a smoked turkey on the grill for the 4th. I was on the front porch trying to make everything look pretty for our soon to be arriving guests. John came out front with a look of fear in his eyes and says “the turkey is on fire”. To which I laughed and said sarcastically, “isn’t is suppose to be? it’s on the grill”. “Yeah, but I can’t get the fire out”. Oh man! A grease fire and all the meat for our large party was now destroyed 2 1/2 hours before party time. I actually laughed. What can you do in those moments?? Off to the store I went to make pulled chicken then all was right with the world. lol

Onto furniture! Before I start the before and afters, remember if you’d like to see how we paint furniture, check out our How to Paint Furniture post.

A red hutch for Susan from Troy. I loved working with Susan because she has a good eye for design and totally gets upcycling. She’s upcycled most of her downtown Troy home. Coming from someone who had a downtown Troy home and loved it’s historic charm and beauty, I appreciate so much when people bring the original beauty back to a home that really needs it. Oh, and she has a cool doorbell ring. I know that’s random, but I like it.

Here’s the hutch before:

After with a custom paint color from Sherman Williams, hardware from Home Depot and glazing with Vaspar’s Antiquing glaze from Lowes… Here is the label for the color of this hutch from Sherman Williams so you can ask them to duplicate it if you’d like.

White… This is Hannah’s dresser that she bought at an auction. I know there will be some that say don’t paint this wood. It did have veneer damage that you can’t see well in the picture and the style just didn’t fit the look that Hannah wanted. What I love about Hannah, she was raised on a dairy farm like my mom. She has this hard working, genuine heart and she understands and appreciates what it takes to own a small business and work hard to make ends meet. Not to mention… she trusted me with the design. Thank you, Hannah!

Before:

We painted the bottom using Benjamin Moore’s Navajo white and distressed it. Kept all the original hardware because it was so pretty. No need to change it out if it’s as beautiful as these were… we just cleaned them up.

On to the blue… I love how this one came out, but to be honest, it wasn’t worth the work it took to make it this beautiful. We got it on garbage day in a pile along side the road. It needed a lot of veneer repair. John built most of the back up and repaired the top. Then he primed it and when he did all the veneer bubbled. That means somehow the moisture was getting to the under side of the veneer so we had to rip more veneer off and more off and more off. It took John hours and hours to redo this. So, to the novice or even semi experienced DIYer, let me say steer clear of furniture with veneer damage. It can be tricky! Unless your up for an adventure, then go right ahead. ;)

Here it is before.

We painted the outside Benjamin Moore’s Silver Fox, the 1st drawer is Spirit in the Sky by BM, 2nd drawer is Meridian Blue by BM and 3rd drawer is Navy.

Thanks so much for stopping by and thanks to all those who serve our country or support those who do!

Having fun upcycling!
Sarah ;)

Sarah Trop