You're So Vain-ity (Betcha You Think This Blog is about You)

Last week I finished the vanity...yay! (I finished it the day after the end table, but decided to wait and post about it for my post this week so I would something to discuss this week.)

So I started the vanity back at the end of August, which means that it took me almost two months to complete this project. There are a couple of reasons for this, 1) the level of detail I put into each step requires a lot of time and effort, 2) I changed directions after about 20 hours of work.

To refresh everybody's memory, I originally painted the vanity eggplant:

Which seemed like a great color until it was all over a large piece of furniture. Here's the thing about painting large pieces of furniture (and furniture in general) is that it's really hard to tell how a color is going to look until it's all over the piece. You can bring all the color swatches home and test all the color samples you want, but you really only get a general idea and that general idea may or may not be accurate. Like most creative processes, you can really only start with a general idea of what you want to accomplish (have a vision so to speak) and then take time along the way to evaluate how well you're achieving this. And sometimes this means you change your mind about what you're doing.

So I changed my mind on the eggplant, picked out a grey-purple that Behr calls Arabian Veil, then painted a couple of coats of the new color over the old color. Unfortunately, the new color didn't stick to the old color and I had to strip the whole piece clean and redo all the prep work. It took me about 20 hours to do it all and when I got done I was very sore and very tired.

Here is the piece with paint stripper all over it:

Here are my fingers after 8 hours in rubber gloves, which are a must when working with stripper:

And here is the piece completely cleaned:

After prepping the vanity again, I primed it and started the painting process over again. I put three coats of paint, with between coats wet sanding, and a couple of polycrylic coats. I also repainted the inside of the drawers and refinished some vintage hardware. (The vanity lacked hardware when I bought it.)

Before

After

All this took another 20 plus hours and now it is sitting in the back of my garage covered with sheets, waiting for my parents to come visit and take it back Missouri where it will live until I have an actual place to put it. I had originally thought I would sell it, but after spending so much time on it I couldn't part with it. It's too nice of a piece to let go. Here it is all together. Snazzy!

Just to let you few who read this, I got a real job, yay! This, in addition to the growing cold weather, means that my pace of production will slow down. I'll try to post once a week, but it may be more like every other week. I'll link to my blog posts on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but you can also follow via email. (Or you can just check in every once in a while and see if there is anything new.)

Until next time, be good and have fun!

Working on the Night Moves-Stand

So I finished the gray nightstand last week and it's still as beautiful as it was last week when I gave you the project update.

To jog everybody's memory (or to help out those who missed last week's post), here's what the nightstand looked liked when I first got it.*

When I started, I thought I would do something kind of funky with the paint color because this is a trendy sort of piece, so it made sense to try a funky paint scheme. So it looked like this for about a day.

I did a quick run at this paint job (not really worrying about clean edges or covering everything) to see if I liked the scheme. And I did. For about a day. Then I was like "oh no, this is clearly a clown car nightstand". So I went back to the drawing board (or, in real terms, my couch and a pile of paint chips.) I played around the idea of painting it black and distressing it or black with a light blue stencil, but finally settled on the Mined Coal color. My thinking was that because the gray color was clean and modern it would bring this piece into the 21st century rather than just being making an outdated piece funky. 

The finished project has two coats of "chalk paint" or Behr paint and Webster's chalk powder,a coat of polycyrlic and a coat of clear furniture wax. I decided to do two types of top coats because I wanted the durability of a polycrylic coat and the sheen of furniture wax.

Anyway, I'm really excited about how this one turned out. I've had it sitting in my house for the past week and keep looking at it going, "damn, that is a sweet nightstand." For more pictures of it, check out my Etsy listing for it. 

Come back soon for a long post on the vanity, which I just finished this week.  Until then, be good and have fun.

*I feel like I should mention somewhere in this post that when Stan should me this piece and I got all excited about, my mom got really surprised. When we told her that these step-style tables are currently very popular, she was just kept saying "I gave away a ton of those back in the eighties, they're popular?" She still doesn't totally believe me, though the gray paint has helped her not totally hate the piece.

Garage Projects Updates

I know it's been over a week since my last post and I don't really have anything newly finished for you all, but I do have some updates.So there's that, I guess.

End Table:

I showed you all this guy last week in my post--Loot and Such:

Well, here is what it looks like  after a good sanding and a couple coats of paint:

I actually used chalk paint on this...sorta. It's technically Behr paint in Mined Coal with Webster's Chalk Powder and water added to it to make it "chalk paint". 

I choose this form of chalk paint rather than just buying regular chalk paint for two reasons: 1) I rarely use chalk paint, so while it's nice to have the option to work with it I don't want to have a bunch of barely used quarts of chalk paint sitting around my garage...it's already cluttered enough; 2) i am still, basically, using latex paint which is really my preferred paint. *

Vanity:

I know that it has been over a month, but remember when I showed you this project? Yeah...me neither. 

And then I showed you these pictures? Again, me neither.

After deciding that I didn't like the particular shade of purple above and making a couple of mistakes, I got to strip all the paint off the piece and start over...exciting. Here's how it looks currently:

As you can see, it's now a grey-purple over the previous eggplant shade. I still have a decent amount of work to do on the vanity, including a last coat of paint, top coats, between coats sanding, lining the drawers and refinishing this great vintage hardware that I found on eBay:

There will be a lengthy blog post on the vanity and all that went into it when I finish it, but because that is about another week out I thought it was a good idea to post an update. 

Upcoming Projects:

Last weekend I received a shipment of new items. (AKA my parents visited and brought me a couple of things that I couldn't fit in the mustang the weekend before.) 

Mom sent this Bombay chest from the piano room at home. The style of the piece goes well in the room, but the colors and the hand-painted flowers are too traditional for the room, which skews toward the eclectic. 

Mom and I are thinking it needs to painted red, then black and distressed to show some of the red through on the details. Mom thinks it needs crystal knobs. (It needs knobs of some style, the original ones fell off in transportation.) This is the red and black combo that I'm thinking about:

I also got a bookcase that my family friend Stan wants to use to store clothes and such for his grandson. (The bookcase looks a lot bigger in the picture than it really is. It's probably only about four feet tall, not the eight feet it looks below. Also, the wood veneer is in a lot worse shape than this picture lets on.)

I am going to do it in a yellow color called Buttered Sweet Corn, which I'm pretty sure is about the coolest name for a yellow ever. 

I'm also going to attempt to make some decorative knobs out of John Deere Miniature toys from Orscheln's...we'll see how it goes. I found some pretty ceramic knobs with tractors painted on them for backup. 

Okay folks, that's it for now. Be good and don't hurt yourselves!

*The reasons for this are a whole other blog post that I may eventually get to. 

Window Dressing (and Dressing Up Like a Breaking Bad Character)

The barn windows are officially finished! They look pretty good, if I do say so myself. To refresh your memory here is what the windows looked like when I got them:

Pretty standard barn windows--old, chipping and a dirty. I cleaned them off first and then gave them a quick lead test, which is always a good idea with anything you think has been painted pre-1970s. All except for one tested positive for trace amounts of lead, which meant that as a precaution I got to dress like this when I went to strip the windows*:

It took me a couple of days to strip the paint off, because 1) there were several layers of paint to get through, and 2) it was really freakin' hot outside, so I would put on all my garb to put the stripping gel on a window, then take it all off to go sit in the air-conditioned house while I waited the 30 minutes for the gel to do its magic, then put it all back on to scrap the window clean--I'm sure that I dropped a weight class the days that I worked on these guys. 

After they were all cleaned, I sanded them a bit, put some painter's tape on the window to keep from getting paint on it and put some wood glue on the two that had broken spots. 

Then I painted and distressed them. I used some white and yellow Behr paints that I had on hand and also got a couple of samples--red and purple--to use on the bigger windows. 

For the bigger windows and one of the single-pane windows I had some luan plywood cut and chalkboard painted them. Here are the results!

The Traditional Ones

I decided to keep two of the windows traditional and just gave them a couple of coats of white Behr paint, distressed them and actually applied a couple of coats of light furniture wax, which yellows white paint a bit and builds up in the corners and crevices of the windows. Both of the windows have a ledge feature on the exterior side that would make a great picture stand.

The Bright Ones

I wanted the other two single-pane windows to be brighter and real focal pieces. I just painted and distressed them. The yellow one was missing the glass when I got it, so I put a piece of luan plywood that I had chalk painted in that space to make it a more functional piece.

The Functional Ones

Because these were larger windows and each was missing at least one pane of glass, I decided to add chalkboard pieces to each and a pin board to the purple one. (I took one of my handy pieces of plywood, layered on a piece of foam and covered it all with some home decor fabric from Joann's.) The red one looked so nice on both sides that I covered the back of the chalkboard piece with a Toile pattern fabric that I also found at Joann's. Toile is a French country pattern, so it is part rustic and all refinement. 

The Extra One

This one wasn't in the first batch of windows. I picked it up on a trip through Missouri last week. (See previous post.) There was no paint on it, just a lot of dirt and some remnants of wasp or mud-dauber nests. I spent about 45 minutes cleaning it with a Trisodium Phosphate Substitute solution and it looks perfect. The wood grain is visible and check out the hardware on this thing: 

I should note, just in case you can't tell, this is just a window frame. There are no glass panes in this piece. 

That's it for this post, folks. Be good and have fun this weekend. 

                                                                                                                          

*I'm told I look like a Breaking Bad character in this picture. Having never seen Breaking Bad, I can't really say that was my intention. 

Loot and Such

This past weekend, I went up to Missouri to see the parents and the Chiefs, mainly the Chiefs. While I was up there I visited with a family friend, Stan, who between his work as a carpenter and flea market stalls has a pretty good stash of old furniture, barn windows and other knick-knacks.* Here's some of my take:

This was really just the stuff that I could fit into the Mustang. A small cabinet and a neat old drafting table that will be making their way to Arkansas this weekend. 

Plans and Actions:

• I cleaned up the barn window to get some of the dirt off and show off the wood grain better.
• I gold-leafed one of the vintage frames (the one on the right in the picture above) and painted another Tiffany Blue (the center one). I plan on gold-leafing the other frame, but didn't buy enough gold leaf for both.--Turns out it takes a lot of gold leaf to turn out one frame.
• The end table is going to be painted a two-tone, green and grey (with purple undertones). 

I finished up the other barn windows this week also and did some more work on the vanity. I plan on working on some individual posts about each of these projects this weekend. Until then, be good and don't do anything I wouldn't do!

*Stan is how I got a hold of all the windows that I've been scrapping and painting.

Project Update: Vanity and Windows

Because it has been several days since my last post, but I'm still not done with anything, I decided to do a project update post. So here's where things stand:

The Vanity: It's Purple

Eggplant is probably a better description, though in the lighting on the first photo it looks straight up purple. 

The primer cured on it and I painted two light coats of chalk paint* on it last night. This morning I fixed a couple of spots that were bugging my OCD and it is ready to wax tonight!

I have some Fiddes & Son wax in light that should give the vanity a nice washed look. 

And before you ask, no I will not be distressing this piece before I wax. Just because I used chalk paint and wax polish doesn't mean I have to distress something, mm-kay? 

Speaking of distressing things...

The Windows: Throwing it at the Wall and Seeing What Sticks

I've painted all the windows in shades of red, yellow and white, except for the one that wound up the same purple as the vanity because it's special. (No seriously, it has this awesome rabbit ear gear on it that was used to open the window. It's special.) 

Right now, I'm working on what each window will look like when it's done. I have some antiquing glaze, some wax, other paint colors. I also have some custom cut pieces of plywood that I'll chalk paint and add to the windows that are missing panes of glass. 

In most of the DIY instructions for making note boards from old windows that I've read, they told you to chalk paint the window panes. This made no sense to me for two reasons, 1) I'm just not sure glass is a very good surface to go writing on on a regular basis, may just be me, but it doesn't seem sturdy enough; 2) why waste a good piece of old glass? I am always in favor in preserving the original bits of a piece because it helps keep the story of that piece. In my opinion, if you go painting over the glass then you lose the fact that this piece was once a window and really all you have is a rustic frame that you could have bought at Hobby Lobby for a lot less. 

Anyway, rant over. I should be finishing the vanity and windows this week. I still need to

•  Wax and buf the vanity
• Cover the inside of the drawers on the vanity (I'm thinking some funky wallpaper is in order for that job.)
• Add hardware to the vanity
• Finish distressing the windows
• Add chalk panels to the windows that need it
• List everything on Etsy!

I'll leave you all with a quote today, from art critic Robert Hughes, several of whom's books you'll find on my bookshelves...somewhere:

"A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop."--Robert Hughes


*I used Webster's chalk powder to turn some of my Behr latex paint into chalk paint, thus having the best of both worlds.