Somehow this blog entry never posted...so here ya go!  Happy customers! So, we finished the Craigslist customers living room, dining room, entry way and kitchen. I would like to thank the Academy and God and my manager...wait, that's my other life. But seriously, I would like to thank our families for putting up with the long hours of not seeing Kasey and I ...as she would say, "our built in babysitters." Cody and Jonathan really are amazing husbands and dads. They are up for rent. Remember everything is for sell! Completing this project really confirmed that you do not need a huge budget to have a complete, beautiful and personalize space. Mixing new and old pieces is truly the key. Say you hate your huge entertainment center you bought off the side of the road in 2000....like everyone else did that year. Don't throw it away! Think of ways to give it a facelift. You could chop it half or maybe turn it side ways...definitely paint that big boy! For the customer's end tables in the living room, we used an antique saw horse and a table made from an old suitcase. The coffee table is a cabinet door attached to a metal thingy with wheels I found at a junk yard. It turned out to be the perfect height! Instead at adding a traditional love seat to match the couch, we found a chase lounge. Just as much seating but with an different look. The small table by the sitting chair did not have a drawer face when Kasey bought it. She was able to customize the color of the fence wood, nail it to the front, which added a pop of color to the room. Yes red, but a small, tiny, inzzie binzy bit of red. Most of the bigger pieces of furniture was either in our garages or found on Craigslist. Their entry way table was an old sewing machine repainted with a cool duck egg blue color and a black stain. The entertainment center is an antique buffet. So cool! You just are not going to find a piece like this at Pottery Barn...for sure, a one of a kind! We used an antique foot board that someone had added a board it to make a shelf behind the couch. Chippy paint and all. Once we had the big pieces in place, we wanted to personalize their home based on our first consultation. On the fence wood entryway wall, we hung up a picture frame with chicken wire for photos.  If you look way up high you will see that we burned their initials on one of the planks like you would see lovers do on a tree. I could go on and on about the projects we did for these guys but the pictures really explain themselves. On to stage 37... The office. ~Jessie

Stage two of the Craigslist Customers...sounds like a title to a horror story. Pppsssttt...ask Kasey if she was really scared when I hid in one of the empty rooms and jumped out a scared her. Oh, good times. Remember that budget, lets just say it saved us! So many times I would find a perfect piece ..refer back to budget...and then put that perfect piece into someone else's basket because it deserves a home and wasn't coming home with me. However, I do have to say the hard work of weeding through the too expensive and "yuck that's red" paid off!