Music Sheet Dresser

I finished painting a small dresser I keep in my office and what an adventure it was. 

I used milk paint for the first time and I can't say I'm a fan but at least I gave it a shot. 

This is what I started with. This actually belonged to my grandmother who purchased it secondhand. She moved across the country so I ended up with it. It wasn't in the best shape so I always planned to refinish it. 

   

 The motivation to finally get on with the project actually came from this sheet music I found in the attic of my parents house last weekend. It's Irving Berlin Army music from the 1940s.  

So, back to the milk paint.  First, it's really expensive if you want to do a piece of furniture. Between the paint and the additive to paint the finished piece it was around $45. I also didn't care for the lumpy curdled texture I got no matter how much I mixed. It also chipped on me. I wasn't going for distressed here but I ended up having no choice but to go with it.  Where the paint chipped, I encouraged it.  

I made templates out of regular paper by pressing it around the pattern on the dresser.  It was tricky, but it worked.  Then, I cut out the template, matched it up with the music and traced the template onto the music.  Then I adhered the music with decopauge medium and applied a few layers of it over top.

I also covered the top with sheet music.

I think it turned out pretty well considering, but I think I'll be going back to regular old latex.

Linking to 

Share It One More Time on Shabbyfufu 

Metamorphosis Monday on Between Naps on the Porch

and 

That DIY Party on the DIY Showoff.  

Kitchen Table - Shabby to Chic!

Years ago, we purchased a table for a space in our kitchen.  It has served us well and over the years the chairs went from white, to blue, to green.  

Over time, both the table and chairs took a pretty good beating.  The kids carved into the paint on the chairs and the table chipped badly ... and it wasn't a good kind of chipping.  Whatever paint was used by the manufacturer was very brittle and came off in chips like this.  An ugly mess.

Refinishing it was on my list for years, but I only now got around to doing it and really even deciding HOW I wanted to refinish it.  I considered doing it the same way I did my dining room table, but in the end I decided on a more distressed, sort of weather worn finish.  

Step 1:  Sanding.  Lots of sanding on the table.  I love my Rigid orbital sander for this, but even then, it was a tough messy job getting through that thick layer of paint.  

Here it is fully sanded except for the pedestal which was in pretty good shape.

Step 2:  Whitewashing.  I used about 2:1 paint/water mixture and applied it with a brush.

Then, I wiped it off with a sponge.  

Step 3:  Distressing.  Next I sanded the table all over to get even more depth with the finish.  This is where I started to feel like all the work had been worth it.  SO much better than the chipped mess from before.

Step 4:  3 Coats of Polyurethane.  I used oil poly because I think the finish is more durable, but water based is fine too.  Table complete.

Step 5:  Next came the chairs.  I went back and forth trying to decided what to do with the chairs.  I thought maybe I would just paint them from this spring green to a solid white and I even started to do it but I wasn't happy with how it was looking.

 I opted to strip the chairs since my dad told me how EASY it would be to strip the multiple layers of paint compared to sanding.   

This was a messy job.  No matter how careful I was, I seemed to manage to get the stripper on me, but I did the best I could.  Here are the chairs after they were all coated with the paint bubbling up.

After only a couple of hours, I could scrape the paint from the seat past 3-4 layers of paint and down to bare wood on the seat, but the rest was a pretty good mess that didn't come off well at all.  Even where it did work well, there was still all this goo to contend with.  

Eventually, I moved back to the sander once the majority of the stripper was off and the chairs were dry.  In the corners I did the best I could sanding by hand.  This was a long, hard job and it took several days - much longer than the table.  After the chairs were stripped, I applied the whitewash, but did not remove it with the sponge as I had the table.  I wasn't getting the same effect.  Instead, I just sanded the chairs after the whitewash was dry which was pretty much as soon as I had finished applying it.  It dried fast.

I could have stopped there, but while these were outside, we were using our dining room chairs and noticed that the finish of those chairs, which I'd distressed with stain, looked great with finished table so I decided to go a little further and use the walnut stain as I had previously.  

I just applied it and quickly removed it with a rag.  You have to move fast though because the stain doesn't give you a lot of time to work with it.  After this, I did a little more sanding to get the look exactly how I wanted it.

For the chairs I used a spray polyurethane just for convenience sake and to avoid all the potential drips.  After a couple of coats, I was finally done.  

I could not be happier with the final product.  

It blends great with our kitchen island and it's so nice to sit at a beautifully finished table without all those dings in the top.

I'm not sure about the dark cushions, but with kids, they're good for now.  I'm hoping to find a nice cream or pale pattern eventually.

My advice if you want to tackle a project like this - 

1.  Get a sander and lots of 80 grit sanding disks.

2.  Take your time.

3.  Enjoy the results!

Linking to the Home Sweet Home Party.

The Chair

I'm not sure I ever shared this here, but there's a story behind this chair.  I found it at one of my favorite thrift stores in Delaware when I was visiting my parents.  It was pretty much as disgusting as it appears, fabric worn and trim falling off, filthy and the bottom was matted with cat hair.  But, much to my husband, Tom's, dismay, I fell in love with it and brought it home with the dream of someday having it re-upholstered.  

After getting it home, I could see that it was actually stuffed with horse hair instead of the usual batting and foam.  I looked into having it reupholstered with the original horse hair and found that it could be done, but it was a very involved process and not something that would ever be in my budget.  The chair lingered around the house being part of celebrations and birthdays covered with a throw as a "throne" to the guest of honor.

I think Tom got tired of the ugly chair so for my birthday, he quietly found an upholsterer, dragged the chair out for an estimate and surprised me!  The upholsterer's best guess was that the chair is from the 1930s.  This is the last picture of it in the shop the day we went to choose fabric.  A couple of months later ...

This is what I ended up with!  I chose a very plain white fabric that neither Tom nor the upholsterer were sure of, but after seeing the finished product, they both saw what I had imagined.  I love it more than ever!  I think it goes perfectly with photos I took in Paris and converted to sepia on Shutterfly.

I changed the red accents I had around the house in February for Valentine's Day in favor of some green in anticipation of spring.  I love the snow, but I'm ready for some changes.  

I'm going to continue with more green around the house this week.

Saturday Morning Project

Remember this tea towel?

This morning, it became a pillow.

I originally planned to put it in my bedroom, but for now, it's here on a chair in my living  room.

Hoping to head out and find some springy things for around the house today and maybe some paint samples for my living room. 

Enjoy the weekend!

P.S.  Don't forget to enter the Novica giveaway if you haven't already.  Ends Monday!

Shed Exterior Finished!

I'm FINALLY done with my shed ...  the exterior anyway.  I thought we'd go back in time to revisit the history of the shed.  Here is our yard in October 2003 when we were househunting.  I suppose most people might run screaming from a yard like this, not to mention the house with all the updating it needed.  Actually, despite the fact that the market was hot, everyone did pass up this house.  It sat on the market for a year before we bought it.  Everything else we saw was either more than we wanted to spend, small or worse than this.  I remember one house that had a garden growing out of the gutters.  See the yellow patio support?  That was the color of our house.  You might say the traffic stripe yellow is whimiscal but it looked ridiculous on a street of understated white houses.

 
Back to the shed. 
In 2004, I used barn red stain on it. Below is what the shed looked like back in April before I began painting.  Not only can you see the shed improvement but there are actually live plants here now, some grass and the years and years of unraked leaves are gone.  The stain has worn over the past few years so a new paint job was in order.

Here's the inspiration picture I started with ...

And, the finished product ...

The windows don't open like in the inspiration picture, but that honestly isn't something that would have been useful for us.  Mr. T did such a good job installing those windows.  Even the old milk cans (that we use as a barrier to keep little ones out of there) got a paint job.  The white never did anything for me. 

Speaking of the windows, I forgot to take a "before" of them, but they were just beat-up, old wooden windows with white peeling paint on them.  My parents acquired a bunch of them and shared a few with me.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them when they gave them to me but here they are in their new life.  Since the white didn't work, with my plans here, they got a coat of red paint. 

The window boxes were black when I purchased them.  They also got some red paint.

I decided not to plant the plants in the window boxes.  I've done this in the past and the window boxes tend to wear a lot faster.  I purchased a few plants and just placed them inside for now.  I'm hoping to find shallow containers that I can plant in and use as liners.

These side windows actually aren't functioning at all.  I used brown paint on the glass (black would have been better, but I had brown on hand and didn't want to buy more paint) and installed them directly on the shed.  I would have loved to install more windows, but we would have lost much needed shelving space inside.  Initially, I had purchased iron trellises.  They were too big so I exchanged them, but I also realized that they just didn't "fit" with what I was going for here.  We ended up getting some simple wooden ones (that were 1/3 of the price), cutting them to fit and spray painting them a shade close to the trim green.

The inside of the shed is on the "to-do" list, but that's probably going to be a job for next year.

I've linked up to Metamorphosis Monday on Between Naps on the Porch and Project Parade on the DIY Showoff and DIY Day on A Soft Place to Land .

Half-Bathroom Improvements!

Welcome to my new bathroom! Its so much brighter and more spacious than before.

Here's how it looked before ...

It wasn't horrible, but the counter took up so much space, we had no storage whatsoever and the ugly exposed pipes beneath the counter really bothered me.

The mirror was originally an old mirror that came with a dresser I bought at a garage sale years ago ($10 for both pieces!). Over the summer, I added all the shells to it. The mirror was my inspiration for this bathroom.

This sink was originally supposed to go in our main bath on the second floor. When we put it in, we realized it was WAY too big for that room. We realized that it would be perfect for this bathroom so we just stored it. I absolutely love it.

The little waste basket came from a thrift store and was a funky gold color. I painted it white, but didn't like it so I went with blue. I like the color, but there is a carved detail on it that is hard to see so I'm thinking of dry-brushing over it with white to pull out the detail and tone down the color a little.

My dad did a fantastic job painting that corner cabinet that I got for only $75. The glass knobs were flea market purchases. I'm so happy to have a place for extra toilet paper!

Oh, the frame above the toilet is probably going to go. I wanted to hang it vertically and put a sea fan in it, but it may not be possible to hang it vertically. I'm going to have to see if I can come up with something.

I'm planning to change the light fixture. I have a few vintage style fixtures in a chrome finish in mind.

Another room completed! The laundry room will be next. Oh, how I'm dreading that.

EDIT: The mirror was EASY to do! I did the entire mirror while my girls were napping one day so about 2 hours. I was working fast but it really isn't that hard if you do it over a few days. All the shells came from the $1 store. I used a hot glue gun starting with the larger shells. Once those were done, I filled in with the small shells. The starfish was the last thing I added.

I've linked this project to Metamorphosis Monday on Between Naps on the Porch and DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land.

Mercury Glass Lamps

The other day, I was browsing at HomeGoods and I saw some mercury glass lamps. I found the one below online for 198 pounds. I'm not sure what that is in dollars, but its out of my budget nonetheless.

So, I thought of the lamps in my basement that I'd been intending to paint or replace. They were once brass and I painted them to this rusty finish and replaced the old shades.


So, I thought of the faux mercury glass pumkins from the DIY Showoff and got busy. Here is the result ...


I didn't get the shiny glass finish because the previous paint was textured, but they still turned out better than before. To be perfectly honest, this was a little tricky for me. Getting the mottled effect involved layering the paint, sometimes not shaking the can so that the paint wasn't mixed and it was splotchy. I loved the brown shade in the first picture, but since these are for our basement family room, I went with white instead.

My corner cabinet arrives tomorrow. Finished bathroom pictures will follow soon thereafter!