Mini Houses

After seeing some rustic miniature wood houses on Crate & Barrel, I conned Jeremy into cutting a wood post into house shapes for me.  It was not hard.  The conning.  I just held a bowl of ice cream in front of him while I asked.  Frozen dairy is his kryponite.  He gets love drunk and will agree to just about anything that doesn’t involve the words “pluck” or “blindfolded”.

We used a miter saw and a table saw and got various heights and shapes going.  Then I sanded them down and spray painted them with Rust-Oleum’s flat white spray paint.

I could have stopped there (don’t they look cute as a little Christmas vignette?!) but I wanted to get all frisky and make them look a little more rustic.  The inspiration was all rough-hewn and manly so I buckled to the peer pressure.  And yes, Crate & Barrel always peer pressures me.  Such a bully

I added some house details to make it look a little more like a house instead of just wooden blocks.  It was simply a Sharpie on the paint.  No biggie.  And then I roughed up the edges of the sprayed surfaces so that it could take on a rustic shabby chic look.

Then came the real game changer….some stain.  I’ve been saying this for months now….Kona is my new favorite stain color…it’s super rich and it dries in one hour.

Wearing gloves, I simply dipped a paper towel in the stain and rubbed the houses down like a Bachelor beach massage.  Speaking of which…that’s what I want to see people on The Bachelor do….not these over the top romantic dates….I want to see them try to build a piece of furniture with kids running around.  That’s what real life will be like!

Didn’t they turn out cute?  I think with a little faux snow and some twinkle lights, they would be great as a table centerpiece or mantel-scape….now that I have a mantle to work with

I think if you made them different colors and put them next to one another, it would also look like a version of Manarola….which by the way, add that place to my bucket list….holy moly is it beautiful.  Hope you guys are having fun this weekend…if you want, you can see a sneak peek of our latest project on Instagram!  I am so excited to share it all soon!