Summertime is Painting Time

Remember that one time I bought a pretty ugly dresser on KSL, brought it home and painted it but forgot to take a before picture?

(I swear that I took a picture, even one of me priming the dumb thing, but I can not find it anywhere)

The gist of the story is that the dress looked a lot like this.

Woodish, ornate, big heavy handles, and cheap, because no one knows what to do with these things. That is, until I come along and want to snatch up that ugly dresser like it is nobodies business. I even drove the 40 minutes one way to pick it up.

I knew exactly how I wanted to paint it, I just had to wait until we had space to do it.

I feel like the reveal pictures are very anti climactic without a before picture. Sigh...oh well.

This dresser is going to live in the boys room. It may be the first step in actually, one day, making their room not suck. 

Anymore, when I spot something...a little on the ugly side...and say that "I want it", Blake doesn't argue. I am not sure if it is because he trusts me...or because he realizes that he is fighting a loosing battle. Either way, for me it is a win.

With the weather getting warmer I am now able to spray paint things outside. Quite possibly one of my favorite quick fixes.

We have a very large patio on the front of our house that we lovingly refer to as the "party patio." We have a lot of impromptu BBQ's on the party patio and we hang out there a lot. Since a good amount of time hanging out there is also spent eating, I decided that I wanted a table that we could use for food. I wanted it to be cheap so that if the elements reeked havoc on it, I wouldn't care. I found the perfect table at the DI.

It had all of the things that I wanted. It was cheap, it had a leaf, and it was Formica which would be good in the rain.

It was speckled with gold, which left something to be desired.

Plus it was dirty as can be. I gave it a good healthy scrubbing and then used something that I had been wanting to try.

Appliance spray paint.

I gave the table three good coats just to make sure that it was well covered.

Then I painted the metal legs a bright teal that matches some of our outdoor chairs.

The table has been painted for over a month and, so far, has held up great. Truthfully, I am trying to figure out what other things I can paint with appliance paint that are not appliances.

On a completely separate note: We were hoping to close on our refinance this last Tuesday but it didn't happen. As soon as we close, demolition begins. I am very excited about tearing down the wood paneling.

Adventures in Thrifting

I like the DI. Our kids...not their favorite, but they endure it for the chance at buying a book when I am done looking. If I am looking for something specific then my trips are more frequent. I also am a stalker on KSL (just like Craig's list for Utah) when I am looking for something. Luckily, my patience and persistence normally pay off. When I am out Blake will get a text from me that looks a little like this:

"Check it! $15 and it is coming home with me!!"

Our kids may have said something along the lines of "Gross! that is dirty and ugly. I don't like it. Are you buying that?!"

Yes kids. Yes I am.

You may remember that I stole our extra storage out of the downstairs bathroom for our bedroom. I had found a few dressers that I liked online but they were all around $65-100. So when I spotted a $15 dresser...it practically jumped in my cart.

I made sure that it fit in the space and then I got to plotting its make over.

Pinterest once again to the rescue.

Blake said that he liked this one the best, so that was going to be the winner.

I used Citristrip and it removed that paint like it was nobodies business.

What caught me off guard, was how nice the wood looked underneath, and for one hot minute I debated on just having a nice wood dresser in there. Then I remembered that I still have 3 more dressers to paint so I snapped out of it.

When I had removed as much of the old paint as I could, I took it outside and gave it a real quick sanding, and a coat of primer.

Then I brought it inside and started painting it black before I could second guess my decision.

(Ignore the mess in the background! This is what happens when you do projects in the laundry room...you have to look at the piles of laundry.)

But not all of it was painted black, the drawers were kept white. 

After two coats of paint, I moved it into the bathroom, and then made a trip to Hobby Lobby.

When I went into Hobby Lobby I knew exactly what knobs I wanted (left middle--the swirly ones). That is, until I looked at the knobs. Then? I was completely useless. I found four choices right away, and then my choices quickly doubled.

Black and white?

Colored? Glass?

With back plates? With out? 

Well, wouldn't you know. I ended up with the exact ones that I had gone in to buy in the first place. I evidently just like to over complicate things.

The dresser has already been filled with the necessities like towels, soap, a hair dryer, and toothpaste.

The vintage metal magazine holder is going to be used for holding towels down the road, when I get around to buying them.

A little something like this:

The upside is our kids have told me that the dresser looks awesome. 

I wish I was the kind of parent that rubbed things in their faces, because I would be like 

"See! I told you!!"

The Little Things

I have been sick. Coughing up a lung sick.

Not awesome.

I have also been a bit busy with my shop. Nothing horrific, it just takes up extra time that I could spend doing other things.

But there is something about sitting at home and seeing all of the little things that are not getting done. Things that no one else probably thinks twice about, but bug you endlessly.

My list:

1. The paint on the wall going down the stairs. The paint didn't go all the way down to the new stairs because there used to be carpet there. With the carpet gone there was still part of the wall that needed to be touched up. I finally did it this last week. Woot!

2. The main bathroom has a "window" at the top of the wall. It lets in light from the master bathroom and gives the bathroom daylight that it otherwise wouldn't have, because it is in the center of the house. Around the edges of the window was paint.

The previous painter was not especially careful. It bothers me every time that I look at it....and yet...here it is 7 months later.

Because our kids just had spring break, and because I believe in slave labor, I made the kids clean the bathroom while I got to scrape old paint off of a window.

It probably took about an hour or two to scrape all the paint off, and my fingers were screaming by the end. Old paint does not come off gracefully. It is mean, and sticks around, and really puts up a fight.

Good thing I was determined. Now our window doesn't look like I don't know how to paint.

3. Our front windows next to our doors.

In all honesty they weren't horrible, and I feel bad covering them up because the previous owner was so proud about how he "got them professionally etched." But roses...they ain't my thing.

I knew I was taking a risk that might not work. Luckily, the paint that I was using was removable with paint thinner and only cost $4 for the can.

At Home Depot I found the frosted glass spray paint, taped up my windows and got to spraying.

About 30 minutes later, I had frosted glass windows that had stripes going down them.

Surprisingly, it worked much better then I had thought that it would. The upside is, if I get tired of it I can just remove it.

I also have a lot of projects half started right now. You should see my laundry room...it is nuts.

At one point last week our living room looked like a furniture store. It had two extra dressers sitting in it, a new chair, our green bench, two nightstands, my white cabinet, and all of the regular furniture that belongs in it.

Here is a really quick breakdown of the madness:

Our dresser and nightstands were just too big for our bedroom. I have been looking for small dressers online to act as nightstands, in order to get rid of our current dresser and nightstands.

I found this dresser online and was excited because we had a dresser exactly like it that would match, so I bought it.

The dresser that matched it was in the downstairs bathroom.

So I moved our nightstands and dresser out of our room and moved these two dressers in to act as nightstands.

(This is how it is, for the moment. Although, there is still tweaking to do.)

Then came the problem of our missing dresser in the downstairs bathroom. The dresser in the bathroom acts as storage, but also blocks the ugliness that is our fuse box and water softener.

Insert this $15 dollar dresser that I found at the DI.

So...right now I am working on...

Striping off the paint from the dresser and then redoing it.

I also need to paint our bedroom dressers, and the boys new dresser, and the new laundry cart that I bought.

Now you understand why our laundry room looks like a war zone. Removing paint is a messy business.

Something Old to Something New

I forgot to share this little gem. 

Months and months ago when we lived at our old house I found this cute little cabinet at an estate sale. I loved it. Plus, the guy that was having the estate sale told me that it was his sisters 50 years ago and that she used it as a toy kitchen. Once you know the story of something it makes it entirely more interesting, plus, I thought it was cute. Then I realized that I didn't really have anywhere for it to go. But I thought that maybe, I could paint it and replace this white cabinet that I had against the wall.

That was the plan anyways....

Welp. Like most things in life, it didn't quite happen that way. 

We moved and I still had this dirty little cabinet, with no where for it to go. I debated on selling it.

Then one day while we were working on the downstairs bathroom I got a wild hair and decided to paint it. We were thinking that it may be a good addition to the downstairs bathroom (prior to deciding on a vanity).

So I used my trusty Krud Kutter to give it a good wipe down.

Yeah...it was gross. Dripping yellow? How does that even happen?

Then I gave it a good quick sanding, and decided that I was going to spray paint it. It was going to be quick and painless. At least that is what I tell myself.

One thing I know? Mixing even remotely cold air, and spray paint doesn't work. Spray paint will bubble if it is too cold outside.

So I was left with a cabinet that looked like it has leprosy and so I stashed it in the garage until I had the strength to deal with it again.

That time came when I was painting the vanity. I wanted the cabinet to have a shiny finish and I was already using oil based paint for the vanity so it seemed like the easy choice.

After a few coats of paint and some caulking in the spaces (the left bottom side is caulked and the bottom right isn't. Crazy that by doing something so easy it makes it look way more finished.) it was done.

Only hiccup? I had no where for it to go.

I tried a couple of options but they didn't seem to pan out quite the way I had hoped.

In our living room I had the same white cabinet so adding another white cabinet seemed like overkill.

Then inspiration struck.

I moved the white cabinet downstairs to hold all of our blankets. 

Our downstairs gets cold so we need cuddling blankets, and you can never have enough fort building blankets. The white cabinet happens to be great at hiding and storing them.

And...the new white cabinet finally had a home.

It holds my vintage Pyrex dishes

and my pink depression glass.

The paint finish? Just as shiny and smooth as I wanted it to be.

Moral of the story?

Inexpensive furniture + paint = not too shabby.

The nice thing about redoing a piece of furniture is, if in a couple of years I decide that I just don't want it any more, then it isn't that big of a deal. I bought it for $10 so it is easier to get rid of.