Dining Room — Domestic Imperfection

Sometimes I Give Terrible Advice – A Plate Wall Update

I mess up a lot of DIY projects. In fact, I mess up nearly every single one, though usually I am able to fix my mistakes before I blog about it and give y’all terrible advice. That was not the case with my plate wall though (original post HERE). I finished that project, then I blogged about it a couple weeks later, and all was well. Then about a month after that, things went south. Quite literally. (That is if you are assuming the sky is north and the ground is south, which I know is not actually the case.)

My plates had been doing fine, then one morning the boys and I were working in the kitchen and heard a giant crash. Elijah yells “Mommy! Plate broke!” and sure enough…

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The biggest plate had come busting right off the wall. It wasn’t that the paper clip had broken or bent, it was the glue…the gorilla glue wasn’t holding. Then over the course of a week or so three more came unglued and shattered all over my dining room. Funny thing, that first plate was only one that came off during the day…all the rest broke in the middle of the night. So after a few exciting nights I took them all off the wall and pulled off the paper clips. The original place that I had found the idea for DIY plate hangers had used hot glue and said they had been there for 10 years, so I figured she knew better than I did and I hot glued them all back on.

That very same night two more plates came unglued and shattered all over my floor. ACK!

So I took them all down and did a little research. Then I went to Amazon and bought a tube of E-6000.

E-6000

This stuff is serious. I did’t take any pictures of the back of the package, but its covered in cancer warnings. Anything that may possibly give you cancer has got to be good, right?

So I found some more thrift stores plates and redid all my hangers with the E-6000.

DIY Plate Hangers

The stuff smells pretty bad and takes 24 hours to set, and this time I feel REALLY confident that those plates and paper clips are going to be together for life. And if start to come crashing off the wall in a month I will fess up to giving you terrible advice…again.

So the moral of this story – no to gorilla glue, no to hot glue….yes to E-6000, for now.

Here is what the plate wall looks like now…

Plate Wall Before and Now

Anyway, that is my confession. I updated the original post so that all those innocent Pinterest visitors won’t have the same thing happen to them!

The Mystery Table

A few days ago I showed y’all my new command center and asked for guesses as to what color I painted the small console table that sits below it.

Kitchen Command Center

Well, 98% of you (let’s not check that math, mmmkay?) thought I chose green. Two of you said orange, and one lonely intuitive soul guessed correctly (Yay Molly!).

What color is it now? Yellow!

colorful kitchen command center

Wait, yellow? I know, yellow seems really random. It actually started with my plate wall…

DIY Plate Wall

See that dark yellow plate at the top? I really liked it and thought the color looked great with the navy-ish cabinets. Then I started collecting other yellow accents for the kitchen, and one thing lead to another…now the kitchen is (or will be) mainly blue and white with pops of yellow and green. This whole white wall thing has given me license to use color as much and as crazy as I want. It’s kinda fun.

I’m not one to leave you with a painted table and no story, so here it is…complete with adorable kid pictures, of course.

First, I mixed my own paint in attempt to save some money and clear out my paint closet.

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Then I let Elijah mix it up… and when he was done I actually mixed it.

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Then we gave it a quick sanding and started painting.

(Jimminy Christmas that kid is cute in my painting shirt.)

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After it was dry I put it in it’s spot and stepped back to admire it….but something was off. It looked so…bright? Nice? Chipper?

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So I grabbed some stain and set out to give it the ‘ol dirty cowboy. Then I stepped back to admire my work, but something was off. It looked too…well, dirty. I definitely over cowboyed.

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Sooo, I grabbed my paintbrush and gave it a thin coat of yellow to decowboy it a bit…kinda like whitewashing. Yellowwashing, if you will. Then I stepped back to admire my work….and it was juuuusst right. Phew.

Colorful Kitchen Command Center

To hold all my pens, pencils, and kid markers I grabbed some canning jars I had on hand and added some rope and twine (both were used in the command center, so they match).

canning jars as pencil holders

Here is a close up of the distressing. Adam said that while hes not 100% on the color (I don’t blame him, he can’t see what I have planned in my head) he thinks I did a great job on the finish. That’s a great complement, cause men don’t usually notice or care about stuff like that. He’s coming along nicely, I’d say.

Distressed Yellow

And a few more pictures, cause I know y’all want to see every possible angle. Are you having a hard time deciding if you love it or hate it?

Kitchen command center

I have to admit, I’m not 100% confident that this was the correct color choice. This tiny little wall space is really colorful and out of my comfort zone….and because of that, I love it. I feel liberated.

Family command center

Since y’all were so good at guessing that my kitchen shelves were my completed and not (yet) blogged about project I have another one for you. This one is way harder, way. I’ll be surprised if anyone gets it. But here it is…I will give 1000 (!) dedicated reader points to whomever can tell me which project that handle on the table came from. And then I will block you for being a creeper. Just kidding (or am I?).

Looking for more furniture ideas? Check out THIS POST.