Espresso Paint

I helped my friend, Robyn, refinish a dresser before Christmas and it turned out awesome. It was so fun to have someone to paint with and definitely sped the process up a ton!! We had the thing sanded, primed, and painted all in 2 days. Here she is...

Before & After

I haven't painted anything this color yet- which is really weird, I know- so I was happy to try it out! The piece wasn't solid wood, so we:

1. Sanded

2. Primed with KILZ (we had Home Depot  tint it cream color so it would show through once we distressed it)

3. Painted with Behr (if you'd like the color leave a comment)

4. Distressed with good 'ol sand paper

5. Rubbed a little stain over it (because I love how it takes normal cream colors and antiques them a little bit)

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We bought the hardware at Hobby Lobby (of course) but knew it would be too dark...

So we brushed on some extra cream-colored primer with our fingers (really technical :))...

Super excited with how it turned out and SUPER excited about the pictures I MADE my friend take of it for me :) Finally a decent furniture shot... thank you Jourdan!! ....

I always hate seeing furniture go, but love getting ready for new projects! :)

Restaining Furniture

My husband recently went to The Biggest Loser Fitness Ridge in Malibu, CA and was gone for an entire month so I thought it would be a good idea to finish my kitchen table while he was gone. THOUGHT being the key word. :) It was actually great timing to do it, but way too hard being a single mommy for the month AND trying to accomplish all these crazy tasks I set up for myself. I make life way harder than it needs to be... but it's fun, let's be honest. So here's the table project...

Before:

 After:

Not the best picture in the world (especially with my sweet salmon colored walls I always complain about), but you get the idea.

THE PROCESS:

We bought our table at an outlet store and it already needed lots of help. THEN somewhere in there I may or may not have spilled wood glue on it and forgot to clean it. Ooopsies. This is how bad my table was before...

I, with help of my awesome friends, carried the sucker out to my garage, took it apart and slapped a coat of stripper on it. You don't HAVE to use stripper, but it's awesome and saves a lot of time sanding. It lifts the stain without you having to do really any work, and it's great for all the crevices, sigh... I hate that word, it's almost as bad as "moist" :). Read the directions on the can... you want to be careful applying it, just brush it over one time, let it sit for 15ish minutes, then...

scrape it with a putty knife. A few layers of nastiness should come right off. (If it doesn't you've probably let the stripper dry on there too long.) ...

Tip: Use an empty box to scrape all the goop into, it makes the process a lot less messy. And p.s. WEAR GLOVES!

The left side of this table has been stripped once, the right side has been stripped twice (just to give you an idea of what the stripper does). ...

I stripped it one more time, then sanded the table almost all the way down to the bare wood. Most spots were bare, I left a few just to give it a little character. And, well, I was sick of sanding. :) As you get closer to being finished with sanding you'll want to use a finer grit of sand paper. I started out using coarse because I'm impatient, but if you're smart, start out with medium grit, then fine, then super fine...

After that I cleaned the table really well, then SHOULD HAVE applied a wood conditioner, but didn't. If you're doing this yourself I'd for sure recommend using a conditioner. Why? What happened? Well, I'll tell you what happened :) ... I started brushing my stain on and the table pretty much turned black! I wanted it dark, but not THAT dark! I used Minwax Dark Walnut and have used it plenty of times before and it's never been that dark so the table must have been super dry. So... I just decided to brush it on everywhere and hope for the best, and after a few hours it still looked sooo dark. I looked online to find any kind of answers and the few answers I did find weren't available to me at 11pm, so I came up with a little something myself. Maybe don't tell anyone. And keep this off the record, because I'm sure any professional would tell me I'm crazy and I totally messed up...  but ...

I totally Goof Off'ed my entire table. Yes, I said it. Goof Off. And did it work? Yes, it sure did! HA! Who'da thought!? The stain lifted just enough to make me happy. After that I ended up brushing stain on a few more times to get it just the color I wanted, waited for it to dry, then followed with a few coats of MinWax Polyurethane. Polyurethane (oil based) because I've read horror stories about anything water-based on kitchen tables - including this story HERE.

Then, and probably most important, don't use the table for 2-3 weeks. It may feel dry, but trust me, don't use it!

 

It's not a perfectly even job, but I like how it turned out with a little bit of the lighter color popping through! 6 years later and we finally have a nice looking table, phewsh!

Yellow

My husband would probably tell you I'm awesome at starting projects and not-so-awesome at finishing them... eh... oh well. I bought this credenza back in Utah for $40 or $50, which, usually would seem like a little much, but in this case the thing probably weighs 300lbs and is SOLID so it was totally worth it. I wanted to use it as a dresser for under my tv (yes, I already have one, but why not switch it up already?) so eventually that will be the case. I'm still waiting to decide what to do with the middle part... You'll see what I mean....

Before

After

I can't decide if I want to cut out a section of the cabinet doors so that we can put our cable box, x-box, etc. inside and still be able to use the remotes with the doors shut. Make sense? So let me think about it for a few more months THEN maybe I'll finish it :) Ideas or thoughts anyone?

 Love, love, love the handles from good ol' Hobby Lobby for 50% off...

I just noticed my daughter wrote on the dresser with marker the other day. Can you spot it in the picture? Yes, she got in trouble. Will it happen again? You can sure count on it.

Sorry for showing you, yet, another unfinished piece. But let's be honest, it might be a while before the thing is FULLY finished, so I decided to post it already. :)

5 Months Later...

HERE I AM!!!

Wow 5 months of no blogging?!? What is wrong with me?!? Well, I have no excuse, but a lot of them at the same time. We moved to Arizona and I guess my focus changed. Changed to what? Well... I started working out way too much (stupid aging bodies- can't keep up with them), started being (or trying to be) better at keeping a clean house, cooking more with different recipes- not the same ol' ones that circle your kitchen week after week and somewhere in there lost time for my craftiness!! So sad, I know. BUT in all of that I've still finished a few things here and there. To start off with, the vanity you never got to see completely finished...

Sorry, I'm pretty sure a few of these pictures were taken with my phone :( ...

It was my Great Grandmother's that she got for her wedding. My husband FLIPPED out when the set was given to us and said there was no way it could go into our home. Sooo this is the original set that started my love of furniture refinishing. I painted everything but the vanity until now because we never had the room, but my daughter LOVES to dance so I thought it would be fun for her to put her dance clothes in the drawers and be able to twirl around in front of the mirror. :) I was right, she loves it!

 The mirror that you never got to see...

 And the finished product ...

 (well... with a few kid smudges that still need to be fixed!)

 I L.O.V.E. all the detail...

 Like I said, don't look at the kid smudges, but the knobs are from Hobby Lobby...

It turned out a little brighter than I would've liked, but I still love it. I wanted her room to be teals, grays, creams with a little pink so we're slowly making our way to that. SOMEDAY I'll have her room finished! :) 

Sorry so short and sweet, but I'm making my way back to the blogging world, so that will have to do for now!

Vanity

Furniture Tip: Don't bring your painted piece into your house before it's 100% dry when you have a 3 year old running around the house. :) ...

Ok, it wasn't that bad. I finished staining the piece, brought it inside the next day (stain on paint takes a while to fully dry) and my little princess thought it would be neat to climb on the furniture. She learned quickly it was not that neat :). 

I half-way finished the vanity this week. The bottom part is done, but the mirror is still waiting for some love. Here are the before and half-way finished pictures...

Before (sorry it's not the best shot) ...

After...

 If you look close you can see where my daughter stepped... That will be fixed soon :(

I still need 2 more knobs, but I'm pretty happy with how these ones turned out. I bought them a while back at Hobby Lobby during their 50% off knob sale and they happened to look pretty cute on here. Yes??

*Sorry again for the pictures, I'm still needing to get my nice camera fixed :( . Half the pictures make the piece look SO bright and the other half make it look blue. Really it's aqua... if you were wondering :)

 More details to come when the piece is complete!

Potential in Furniture

Wow I'm terrible. We move and my world stops?? Hmm... 

To be honest I've been trying to find the motivation to get moving again... painting, that is. I've been busy trying to find a preschool for my daughter--which has been ridiculously difficult by the way, doctors, dentists, insurances, etc... And as frustrating as that has been I've been trying to regulate my health issues at the same time. I won't go into too much detail, but I have a thyroid disease that affects pretty much EVERYTHING and every part of me. The worst symptoms for me have been tiredness and muscle aches so you can imagine trying to motivate myself with those issues. It's AWFUL, I'll just leave it at that so I don't bore you to death!  :)

Anyway, I have two pieces sitting in the garage waiting to be finished and paint on the shelf to finish them. With a hubby away for a few days, I think I might actually get some work done! In the meantime, however, here are a few pictures of some bar stools I helped my friend refinish a little while ago...

Before:

After:

Nothing too crazy, I know, but I thought they turned out so cute and she did a great job! This isn't so much of a tutorial post, but more of a FURNITURE POTENTIAL post. I hope this helps you see what things CAN turn into. Whoever owned these was probably so sick of the old, outdated look, but throw a little paint on them and they're adorable!

So what do you have in your house that needs a little love?

My Love, Wherever You Are

I finished this dresser over the summer and I still miss it to this day. Pathetic, I know! I just loved how chunky it was, yet so feminine. Some of you have seen this one already, so I'm sorry about that, but here it is anyway...

Yes, all of the handles are missing except for one... that's because I always get too anxious to start my projects and forget to take the pictures first! So, this is me, remembering to take them right before I took off the last handle :) 

Before & After...

I sold this piece to a cute couple waiting for their sweet baby girl to arrive. It was going to be put in her bedroom... how cute is that!? :)

So going back to the title of this post,

My love, wherever you are... I miss you.

Ok, a little creepy, I know. :)

The Beauty of Modge Podge

One way to spice up your furniture is adding paper, fabric, paintable wall paper, etc. to your piece. Modge Mod Podge is basically glue that dries clear and is awesome :). Great definition, I know. It's super easy to use and adds lots of character to whatever you're doing.
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I kept this little table in my sons room right next to my rocker, but it was originally somewhere else in my house and never matched the rest of the room. So one year later I decided it was time to match! I, of course, forgot the before picture, but this is just after it's been sanded down just a little...
*After I sanded, I primed with KILZ spray primer and spray painted with Krylon black satin sheen. I only used the KILZ because I didn't have anything else on hand, but since I was painting the table black it would've been smarter to use a gray primer (just so I wouldn't have needed more coats). No big deal though, it's a tiny table.

*After the table dried I turned it over onto my piece of fabric, traced around the outside of it and then cut it.
*After modge-podging 3 different pieces I had cut out I finally decided I was too big of a perfectionist for the fabric thing so I ripped it off and went with paper instead... I know, lame, but every time I glued it it bugged me that you could tell the fabric wasn't PERFECTLY round. Note to self: if you're using fabric, maybe stick to squares and rectangles. Or maybe just don't be too picky like myself!

*My table was too big for one large sheet of paper so I decided to do a little patch-work. I first modge-podged all of my scrap paper together, then turned the table over onto it, traced around it, cut, then glued to the top of the table. Here's the final product...

Do you like?

A helpful Modge Mod Podge tip:

Be careful not to use too much!! If you use too much it causes air bubbles or can seep through your fabric or paper. Just brush on a small amount, then wait for your paper/fabric/whatever to dry, then reapply another coat on top of whatever you used. I always like waiting for it to dry because I swear you get more air bubbles if you reapply right over the top! I think it's personal opinion though, I know lots of people that reapply right away. So really just do whatever your little heart tells you to! :)

*By the way, after I mod-podged and laid the paper down, I waited for it to dry, then applied 2 more coats on the top, allowing dry time in between coats. I haven't yet, but will also add a layer of polycrylic to give it an extra layer of protection just in case... let's be honest, it's in a kids room, so it will probably need it!