It's been a long time coming...

I have had this done for months now and haven't had it decorated the way I would like so I haven't posted my finished product but I guess this will have to do.

So here's what I started with.

 

And ended up with this.

You can see that I changed the hardware to an aged silver.

Glazed this piece.

I used Rustoleum's heirloom white, a dark-tinted glaze from Valspar, and Rub n' Buff's silver leaf wax. This piece took longer than it needed to just because of me taking my time.

Linking up with
T2T Tuesday on Sassy Sites

                                        Eve

Green is my favorite color...today

I have been putting this project off for a while because I hadn't yet found the perfect shade of paint for my project. I found a cute rocking chair for my Little One at a yard sale and brought it home.

He loves it so I decided to fix it up for him. The paint was peeling and had been painted over instead of repaired so I stripped it. That took a whopping 6 hours and considering the size of the chair and the lack of detail in the wood, I would have thought that it would take much less. Who knew. So after stripping the paint, hacking the screws in half, and questioning my sanity, I sanded this little baby, put it back together and filled in the holes with wood putty and sanded again. I primed it, and let it sit for about a month while I decided what color to paint it.

Since I am new to this and I don't have a paint gun, I am limited to spray paint that I can find at HD, L's, and W's. Up til now I have used Zinsser Primer, Valspar paint, and Rustoleum paint. I have done pretty well with all those and have been mostly satisfied but this time I opted for a color by Krylon. I used Krylon gloss in Emerald Green. I love this color. Though, I don't know if I love the paint. I have read many good things about this paint but I found it to be weak as far as coverage goes. When I painted my chairs I used Valspar and one can of paint covered one full-sized chair with lots of detail with two coats and then some. It took me two cans of paint to paint this child sized rocking chair with no real detail. After I had painted it, I went to HD for something and found a very similar color by Rustoleum. I guess you could say I have buyer's remorse. C'est la vie. It is a beautiful color, don't you think?

 

I don't think the picture does it justice. 

                                          Eve

I'm a Poly--urethaner

You know when you see something tasty and you think to yourself, "I'm full, but that looks good so I'm going to eat it anyway" and then you hate yourself afterward for eating it...well, that's me with this refinishing business. I get an idea in my head and think, "that'll be easy" and sometimes it's not. Well this time it wasn't. I have a sweet neighbor who was getting married soon and I asked her family what she would like or need. Her aunt told me she was in need of some dining chairs. I thought, "that can't be that hard to do." So I did it. First, in my usual style, I procrastinated and did a project that wasn't necessary but I wanted to do first and that took longer than I had anticipated, but that's another story in itself. Anyway, we decided on black chairs but I really wanted to try a two-toned look. Not something obvious, just very subtle. So I decided on trying to do some red-black chairs. I think it turned out pretty well. What do you think?

I found these cute chairs on KSL and sanded and primed them.

But then, to get the two-toned color I painted the chairs red. I got some awesome red paint for free so in the interest of saving money, decided to paint the chairs with a brush because I don't own a paint sprayer. Not my best idea. If you don't like the "country" look and by that I mean trees and rustic wood not twang and spurs, then I don't recommend using a paint brush especially on chairs. As there were so many nooks and crannies, it made it difficult to paint with a brush. I have to hand it to all the old time artisans who only did it by hand.

After I painted the chairs red, I sanded them again to try and get rid of my brush strokes. I may be wrong and just used a junky paintbrush but I seem to recall buying a nice one. Who knows, maybe you've had better luck with your brushes.
Next I painted the chairs black leaving some of the red showing through. I tried sanding but I went straight to primer when I did that so I found that if I just lightly painted certain areas it left the base color showing through just where I wanted it.

After all my painting was done I researched how to apply polyurethane.  I also researched polyacrylic but for some reason I chose polyurethane. I don't remember why. I round lots of websites explaining how to apply it and what the best way to apply it was and I kept reading that foam brushes were the best and cheapest way to apply it. So that is what I opted for. I read some forums for people finishing surf boards and I thought, "surely these people know what they are talking about." Well, I bought the cheap $0.99 foam craft brushes and tried them out on my chairs. I applied very thin layers of poly to assure that I wouldn't have bubbling, I did it in straight, even strokes in the same direction to avoid any weird bumps. I took my time and tried to do everything right applying I think four coats of the poly whilst waiting my recommended time in between. For all my hard work and following directions, I got streaks. STREAKS! It was awful! Well, it was to me. I'm hoping it ends up being one of those things where it looks bad to me because I am the one making it and no one else will even notice, but I'm sure with my luck...it won't be. Next time, I'm buying a gun. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you.

                                  Eve

Matching Hardware.

I get home one day and use my key to get in my house.  I get in fine but the key isn't going to come out of my doorknob.  After trying my general fix of "tapping with force" to get it out I gave up and retrieved my screwdriver to remove the knob in whole.  I figured I may not be able to get it out but someone else might be so it was better to have a hole in my door then leave my house key out for the taking.  Before I could sneak out and get a new knob the Hubby came home and removed the key, but there was no using the doorknob after.  We put it all back together and went on a quest to find doorknobs we like to use and to look at. We opted to not use the brass finish we had before.  Seemed perfect at the time but we ran into a problem after we got home. 

I do really like the look of these doorknobs and they fit our style so much more.  We are taking tiny steps to make our house our home.  These tiny changes are adding up to this being our place. 

Here is the problem.  The rest of our house is done in brass knobs and there is no way we want to swing replacing all doorknobs at once.  There are a lot of things higher on the priority list. 

This is my Sons door just around the corner from our new hardware.  Shiny brass in view of our black just drew out the attention more that we needed to change things. I again turned to my dollar a can spray paint and added three coats.  It takes a while to dry before you can really grip it or you could leave finger prints in the paint and end up doing it all over again but other then that its simple.  I stand the knob up in the lid of the spray paint and that way I can shot from all angles and turn it around with out touching the still tacky paint. 

Its not perfect but it is better then what it was.  It will work fine until we can buy the matching doorknobs.  Ive loved being able to make the changes myself instead of wait until our budget said we could.  It means a lot to me to work my budget instead of my budget working me.

XOXO Mist 

Cheap fix for an old light bar.

My house is getting old enough it needs tiny fixes and its not a top priority in our budget.  Id love to be able to fix it all but Id love more to live comfortable in my home and pay my bills at the same time.  My bathroom light bar has been rusting bit by bit.  I just wanted a new look to get us by until we found the perfect fixture and brought it home. 

You can just barely peek the rust at the bottom and no matter how many shots I took it shouldn't show better then this.  This is the light bar that came in our starter home 10 years ago and what we have hanging today.  My hubby is against the idea and he may have a point but I decided to paint it black.  He may have a point but really I think I cant break broken so why worry about it.   Its just a temporary fix but I think it matches our style more then brass and rust. 

Don't laugh at my light bulb choice.  They throw great light.  We will upgrade these too but for now temporary fix with a total cost of $1 for the cheap flat spray paint they sell at Walmart.  We are in the slow process of changing the decor to a Mickey Mouse theme.  Now we just wait for the Hubbs to get home.  Better to ask for forgivness then permission. 

XOXO Mist

Hardware Reformations

I am in the process of transforming a dresser to my liking and one of the things that has stumped me was the hardware. I spent a great deal of time trying to find a dresser in my price range that had a lot of detail and I finally did.  The next thing to do was pick a paint color. Done. And now I am addressing the hardware. The hardware on this piece was rather specific to the dresser and I think3
I would be hard pressed to even attempt to change them out because they are so specific with the design. But who knows, maybe I'll try that later. So what could I do? Paint it perhaps. I had decided to go neutral for the dresser color doing what I know so many other people have done. It's really because I haven't picked out my wall colors yet so I don't want to make my dresser some funky color only to have to paint my room to match or worse, have it clash with the wall colors. I digress, the hardware should have been easy. Clean it up and paint it...black?...red?...green?...ARGH! I don't know. But I found a way to fix my problem. So I will give you this small sneak peak of my dresser transformation. Here is my before picture of the hardware.

 

Kind of bleh. Here it is after I fixed it.

And a side by side comparison.

Awesome, huh! The picture doesn't really do it justice. If you see it in person, it isn't quite so silver. It looks very distressed. I really wanted to do a pewter kind of patina with gray undertones instead of the brass/bronze undertones but I couldn't work it out this time. I'm going to try it out with my completed dresser and we'll see how it works out. If it doesn't, then I'll try something else.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this transformation. If you've done something similar or what worked for you. We love comments.

Lininking up with 

A Creative Princess

DebbieDoos

                                            Eve

Shert...Skeet...Skeert...Skirt/Sheet

So do you remember my Skeert...Skeet...my Skirt/Sheet? Well, I tried on my repurposed sheet and guess what? It didn't really look like me. What to do, what to do? Do you know what I did? I gave it away. To my sister. I gave her the explanation that "it just doesn't look like my style." She agreed. So she took it home to see if it was her style. It wasn't. So it came back. I was bound and determined that this not go to waste so I decided to just wear it. I'm cool like that. I make these split second decisions that leave me going out in public wearing an all-too-see-through-skirt-that-I-really-should-have-had-a-slip-under-but-didn't-realize-it-until-15-minutes-before-the-end-of-church-and-no-one-said-a-thing-to-me-because-who-thinks-that-you-can-see-through-brown-anyway. Yeah, that was me last week. So this week I just put on the skirt, did my usual checks in the mirror and I know you can't see through this one because of all the layers and it's at least double from top to bottom. So we were good. I guess. At least as far as modesty goes. But my day didn't start out so hot because the day before, I fried my curling iron and was having a bad hair day so I had to pull out my last resort which was my hot rollers. I have never really figured out how to properly use those without leaving an odd crimp in my hair from the clip. So I made do. I left with the kids on this Sunday morning, again to church in the hopes that I could redeem myself. I arrived at church and saw myself reflected in the glass doors and do you know what? It didn't look half bad. I even garnered a few compliments. Who knew? I guess it pays every now and again to branch out of your comfort zones. So here it is. Before and after.

My sheet in its original state.

Me in my Skeert trying not to think about my sun deficient legs on display for all eternity because the internet is forever.

And there you have it. Out of my comfort zone but, not too bad.

I hope this inspires you to get out of your bubble and try something new. If you decide to try this link back to us and share the blog lovin. We'd love to see your projects and hear about it.

Linking up at
DebbieDoos
The Tattered Tag K.I.S.S
 

    

                                               Eve

 

In the works

I am taking on my first furniture project ever. It is a little daunting to think about all the work that will be involved but I know that the work will be worth it. Here are the before shots of my dresser.

I haven't settled on a color yet but I have a little time yet. If you have any suggestions, throw them my way. I'd love some help. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I linked this up on DebbieDoos Newbie Linky Party

        

                                              Eve