Updating an Old Dresser | A Makeover

Right after we got married, Anthony and I shared a twin mattress on the floor in our first house because it was the only mattress we had (mine from college).  That set-up lasted a few weeks until we bought a new mattress and a secondhand bedroom set from a local thrift store.  We stripped the shiny varnish from the set of dressers and gave them a coat of satin poly to modernize them a little (key word:  a little).  You can see them in our first house tour.  We also added some new hardware I found on clearance at Lowe's.  (Was this the beginning of a lifetime of furniture makeovers?  Looks like it.)  We used that set for years and are still using the bed (though it looks a smidge different), but the dressers have hopped around the houses we've had.  The tall dresser eventually got traded for another tall dresser (that matched a long dresser we bought from someone online) and the long dresser went from kid's room to kids' room and landed in the living room in this house where it held the TV.  When I spotted a longer dresser on Facebook marketplace a couple of months ago, we decided to swipe up that one and swap it out with our old one in the living room.  Did you follow all that?  Basically, we still have this dresser we bought as newlyweds but now we have no place for it. 

It sat in the breakfast nook for a few weeks which drove us all crazy so, pushing all sentiment aside (which wasn't easy), we decided to sell it.  But it sat and sat and sat with very little interest.  *womp womp*  I might've been asking too much considering it still looks like it hails from the 1980's but I was trying to recoup the money we spent on that "new" dresser.

We knew something was going to have to change to get this thing out the door and we didn't really want it to be the price since it's in great shape and has great bones so...

Our Painted [Upper] Kitchen Cabinets

I've painted a thousand cabinets, ok, maybe not thousands...let's see - four kitchens now, four bathrooms, and more dressers and pieces of furniture than I can count - and each time, I've done things a little differently.  Each time, I learn a more efficient way, or a better way to get a smooth finish, or I use a new paint.  So I can't say that I have an ironclad, tried-and-true method to painting cabinets but I can say that I've had great success in the arena.  The same story follows the most recent endeavor of painting our current upper cabinets in the kitchen.

First, I removed all of the doors and the contents of the cabinets.

I wanted to replace the old cabinet pulls with new knobs so the next thing we had to do was fill in the old hardware holes and drill new holes.

Bleached Dressers - DIY

I'm really excited to tell you about this project!  It's a goodie but definitely not my normal "Hey!  Here's an easy peasy project anyone can do!" type of project.  It took a little more time and effort but it was so worth the end result.  Oh and hey, anyone really can do this, I didn't mean to sound deflating, just be prepared.  ;)

It all started with two of these little guys:

When we moved Seb and G over to their own room, separate from the twins, we needed a dresser (or two) to store their clothes in over in their new space.  I did my usual Facebook Marketplace/thrift store/resale group scours but came up short oodles of times...until I didn't.  I found these two small, matching dressers (the owners used them as nightstands but they're quite larger than your typical nightstand) for $20 each.  The only drawback was that I had to drive 45 minutes to grab them.  But, they're vintage, solid wood with some wood veneer, and in great working order so it was worth the car time.  Plus, they were perfect for what we needed them for.  His and hers.   

I could have just plopped them into the room as-is but that shiny yet worn dark stain and outdated hardware just wasn't my fave.  Painting was always an option and would have been a fairly easy update but then I came across this post on Within the Grove on how to strip and bleach wood furniture and I was SOLD.

I'll admit that there were more moments that I can count during this process that I wished I would've went down the painting route but I stuck with it, slowly but surely over the course of two weeks and golly gee whiz, they look much, much better.  👌 

Salsa Dancing With My Paintbrush

Before we start dancing to the rhythm of a spanish techno beat, I just want to thank you all of you who commented, sent emails, and wrote messages after my little heart to heart Thursday.  I think I had tears coming out of my eyes ten times that day just because of the overwhelming love and support.  You have no idea how good it was to hear over and over that, even though my life can come across as always neat, always perfect, and always sunshiney via a “pretty blog”, that you don’t take me as some self-centered, creativity junkie with an immaculate home.  Seriously!  You are all so amazing and I thank God for you!  :)

So, dance with me.  I’ll explain why a little bit later.  It involves the desk and that my friends, is done.

I LOVE how it turned out.  A big, big thank you to Sarah Dorsey and her amazing blog (seriously, if you click over prepare for hours of gazing) for the inspiration, her coral nightstand in particular.  I wouldn’t normally go to coral as a furniture paint color.  It’s bold, real bold, and I love it! 

Before I get to the details of how I primed and painted and all that jazz, here’s a picture I pulled out of the cobwebs of this old HP of the desk in the state Anthony bought it in:
This is how our guestroom looked a few days after we moved in and threw it together for company.  Pretty, no?  Off-white trim, stained walls, and mismatched everything made for a straight shot to House Beautiful.  I kid, I kid.  Anyway, the desk was stained an ugly blackish color with red streaks…perfect for an Anthony Bachelor in college, not gonna fly with me.

Soon after our guests left, it was one of the first things I tackled.  I wasn’t sold on a color and wanted to wait to see how the rest of the room evolved before I chose that, but I took some primer to it which brightened it up a thousand times.  I didn’t care if it was streaky (don’t they call that shabby chic?), it was tons better than the black-red.  Well, that was four years ago and I never did get around to painting that baby…until now.

Here ‘tis, moved to our room (the new workshop in this casa), ready to be painted: 

One big mistake I made in priming this thing, way back before I knew any better, was that I used water-based primer instead of oil-based.  Nor did I sand it down even the tiniest bit.  Not sanding wasn’t a huge deal considering it didn’t have a sheen to it at all but I definitely should’ve used oil-based primer because it blocks out stains and wood can tend to have spots/stains that seep right through water-based anything.  (Lucky me they stayed put in this case.)  FYI for any of you looking to paint any wood furniture.  Always use oil-based primer!!!  You can used water-based paint on top of that (but you can’t used oil-based over water-based!) and all will be grand.

So, moving on, before I got to painting I made sure to stick some tape over the backs of the hardware holes so no paint dripped through them and into the insides of the drawers.  Two second protection.  You can also see the existing hardware holes I filled in in the pic below.

Here’s where things got a little dicey.  I used a pre-mixed sample of Coral Reef by Valspar (Lowe’s) to paint the desk.  At jar’s glance, it looked like the perfect coral color.  However, after I got the first coat on…
  

I had a desk the pink panther would be jealous of.  Definitely not was I was going for.  (Bummer because then a few days later I came across this desk via Instagram that Krista at Goodwill Glam painted with the same exact color.  Hers definitely comes off as a little pink too but doesn’t it look gorge?)

I didn’t even try a second coat but instead loaded the twins up and off to Lowe’s we went where, after much deliberation, I decided on getting a test pot of Valspar’s La Fonda Spanish Dancer.  Nothing like that name to make you wanna dance, no?  I wish I could say I salsa-ed while I painted but I’m not quite that good…almost, but not quite. ;)

Here’s an in-progress picture that shows the difference in the colors:

One quick aside, I’m really picky about painting furniture and the direction in which my paint brush moves.  Using a roller is a different story since you don’t see “roller marks” but paint brushes can tend to leave faint lines, which I don’t mind, but which you have to work with.  So…
The above diagram shows how I do.  Generally, I paint in the same direction as the longest part of the area I’m painting.  Makes sense?

So, desk painted and dry, the last step was to put a coat of Polycrylic on just the top of the desk for added protection against coffee mugs, pens, the normal destruction that comes with working at a desk.  (P.S.  I let the paint dry for a whole 24 hours before this step.)

First I taped off the top.

Then, using my paintbrush, I painted on one coat of the Polycrylic.  Side note:  Don’t use Polyurethane!  It tends to yellow…I found that out the hard way (sorry Maria!).  Polycrylic does not.  Clear acrylic would also work.

A few hours after I painted the top:
 

While the poly was drying I wasted no time in putting the hardware back on the drawers.  I found these pretty silver and white darlings on a 70% clearance end rack at Target a few years ago ($3.99 each marked down to $.99).

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the desk is antique – dove-tailed drawers, casters, and all – so it’s been roughed up in the past, hence why in the above pic you can see some dents and scratches.  Character is what I call it.  :)

 

And finally, you ready for this?  My favorite desk of all time: 

Here’s a sneak peek of the fabric-lined drawers: 
Tutorial on those coming up this week.  Super easy.

And now, it’s off to freshen up the chair that’s going to marry it.  Should be fun!

 

Have a great weekend everybody! 

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P.S.  Anyone else ever painted a piece of furniture?  Have any tips you want to share?  Comment them!  Also, I’m a fool for pictures!  I don’t have time to make this post a link-up so post your pictures on Bean In Love’s facebook page!  :)

Guest Room + Home Office Combo

We've only ever lived in three bedroom houses.  Our first house was a 3/1 (with a fourth bedroom and second bathroom finished shortly before we sold and moved), along with our second, third, and fourth houses.  It's great when you're newlyweds because then you have two extra bedrooms (we had a guest room and an office...spoiled) but with four kids, three bedrooms fill up quick with no space left for anything else.

So, we were excited this house around to find something with another bedroom.  The fourth bedroom in this house affords us a guest bedroom, which is fantastic since the closest family members we have live seven hours away.  But, with the right situating and set up, it also affords us a home office - something I really wanted so that I could have a designated place to sew.

We got really lucky in finding furniture secondhand for this room - furniture that is multi-functional so that we can fairly easily switch from home office mode to guest bedroom mode.

Home Office Mode

Living Room Update + Some Fireplace Ideas

Whew!  After a whirlwind romance with primer and paint, we are FINALLY done painting the living room.  Ok, so there a few spots that need to be touched up like where I accidentally got some trim paint on the ceiling but they're not noticeable to anyone but me so I'm going to push them off like a lazy person.  I need a break from touching paint brushes and rollers to any part of this room.  ;)  It was a doozy of a project that required lots of painting after lots of bedtimes because of oil-based paint fumes but hip hip hooray.  We're over that mountain.

I took this a few weeks before we started priming:

So. Much. Wood.  Not even our modern-era furniture can make a dent in those aesthetics.  Instead of the furniture pulling the room more towards 2020, the room pulled the furniture back towards the disco age.  💃

Sometimes I feel bad for even wanting to paint over stained wood in great condition but, in this case, we're both so glad we did.  It's like a completely different room!

My Couch Baby

Ever since the screened-in porch on the back of our house was just an idea, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a great wood or bamboo couch to settle in back there.  The tough thing though, is having the idea and then actually finding something that would be perfect, only to realize that you have zero room in your house to store a couch to put in a space that may or may not happen.  Sometimes I feel like that’s the story of my decor life, I find something that would be perfect in some space in my mind but a space that I don’t have or don’t have yet in my house.  Womp.  Two years ago when we were searching for the perfect entertainment center to turn into the girls’ play kitchen, we stumbled upon the coolest wood frame couch in a thrift store in town and man, I wanted it for the porch we had just started saving up to build.  Like, I wanted it bad.  It was marked at $60 and it had clean lines and a concentric, cut-out circle pattern in wood on each side and in white, it’d would’ve been amazing!  I left a piece of my heart with it when I walked out those thrift store doors that day.

But it all turned out okay and I have no regrets because right after the screened-in porch was built, I was at another of my favorite thrift stores here and out on their front stoop they had a wood frame couch with a piece of computer paper taped to it that said “Please take.  I’m free!” 
I guess they had tried and tried to sell it but nobody wanted it.  I can’t imagine why…

It wasn’t my style at all – too many big curves – and the springs holding the bottom on were broken.  The fabric was awful (but I planned on reupholstering whatever I bought anyway) and the wood faded and in need of a good sanding and paint job.  But, it was FREE.  I was so torn.  Either way, at the moment I saw it, I had all the kids with me and no way to get it home so I snapped the picture above and home I went to later bring it up to Anthony.

Then, as fate would have it, we drove by a few days later on our way to church and the couch was still there.  We decided that, since we really wanted to get our porch put together, that’d we’d go grab it and see what we could do about making it look more ‘our style’.  Better than in a landfill, right? 

Here she was, home and in all her vintage glory:

And this is the story of how we made her a little, or a lot, happier…

First, Anthony removed all of the springs/metal rails that held the bottom in.  Like I said above, many of them were broken which made sitting in this thing impossible or dangerous at very best.  Then, I unscrewed all of the metal loops that held the springs in place along the inside of the couch. 

Now since there weren’t any springs, there wasn’t anything besides the two support bars left to hold seating.  This is where holding onto pieces of construction material for long periods of time comes in handy.  We have had a sheet of plywood stored away from our previous home (yes, we moved down the country with it) just in case we ever needed it.  Well, that day came.  Anthony cut it to fit down into the recess of the couch seat where it sat snugly atop those two wood support bars.

It’s so much more firm and sturdy than springs; nobody’s falling through now.  Stay away Dumbo.

To reign in slivers and to keep up appearances though, I grabbed some thin cotton fabric at JoAnn Fabrics and upholstered the side of the plywood that would be facing up.  It was as simple as laying my fabric out on the floor, cutting it so that I had a few inches of extra fabric all around, wrapping it around the plywood, and stapling it down.Since no one was going to see the underside of the couch lest they were a feline or pup, I wasn’t too particular about making straight cuts.

Lazy?  Maybe.  Efficient?  I vote yes.  ;)

Next up was prepping for paint.  After I had all of the looped screws out, I had to pry the fabric-covered piece off the front of the couch.  I didn’t know what it looked like underneath but there was no way on God’s green Earth I was keeping it there so find out, I would.

A flathead screwdriver did the trick nicely followed by a needle-nose pliers to get any remaining nails pulled out.  Luckily, all that remained was the flat piece of curved wood at the front of the couch and some nail holes.  After filling all the holes left behind by those nails and giving the entire couch a good sanding (a workout, let me tell you) to roughen it down to a matte finish, I was ready for paint.

Because it was wood and wood can bleed through latex paint, I opted to prime the couch with two cans of RustOleum spray primer in white.  Spray paint is typically oil-based (or maybe it’s all oil-based?) and better at inhibiting wood-bleed.  (Don’t ask me where I read this little rule but I’ve found it to be true in both following and not following that direction.  I’ve seen wood bleed through latex paint and primer and so I’ll stray from that combo as long as I live.)

To paint, I used a latex paint (Swan White by Glidden in an eggshell/satin finish) sprayed on using this paint spray gun*.  My friend Jesse let me borrow her Critter paint gun I had read great reviews about and then, at Christmas, I used some gift cards to buy my very own on Amazon.  It’s really as awesome as I had heard!  My favorite part is that it uses mason jars to hold the paint so, if you’re doing a big job, all you have to do is have a few mason jars lined up to be screwed on and you’re good to go until you’re done.  There’s no stopping because you have to refill the paint canister.  My other fave part is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg…it’s under $50 (I paid $41.97).  (However, it does need an air compressor to run so if you can’t borrow one from someone, you’ll have to tack that onto the cost.)

A few days after painting, I ruined the paint job.  Okay, not really.  I just upped the ante by distressing it a tad.  This part was the most fun of all.  I grabbed a hand-sander and some light-grit sandpaper and went around sanding down some of the edges of the couch.  Nothing to crazy.  Just a slight distressing for a slightly old piece.

So, the couch was painted and distressed and looking quite jolly but the cushions?  Even though the white couch made them look like they might convert to a cute outfit (distressed white jeans below with a plaid button-down up top), they did absolutely nothing to help aesthetics on the couch.  Plus, they were so old and worn that if you rubbed them, they’d start crumbling into tiny pieces.  Ewww…

I’d never reupholstered couch cushions before so the task ahead of me was very (very, very, very, very…) daunting but then I found this tutorial on how to sew box cushions by Christy from Confessions of a Serial DIYer.  I ordered 5.5 yards of this Robert Allen outdoor fabric (it’s says chocolate but after seeing it in person in JoAnn Fabrics, I’d say it’s more of a charcoal gray) from fabric.com and I followed Christy’s directions almost to the T; the only difference is that I wanted to make mine zipperered so I removed the zippers from the old cushion covers using a seam ripper and re-inserted them into my new covers.  I inserted the zippers first and then sewed the side seams and corners.  The foam cushions were in good shape, albeit a tad smelly and minus a large stain one had that looked like a big glass of wine was spilled (or at least I hoped it was just wine or coke or something not gross).  Oh the foam; cleaning it all was an ordeal.  I scrubbed and swelled with soapy water and squished and repeated that process with each individual cushion in our bath tub and then, when I was done scrubbing, I threw each one into the washing machine with some clorox.  My guess is that they had never been washed (because who washes couch cushions?  I know.  Not me.) and, even though they still held their shape, I didn’t want to recover them with brand new covers much less sit in them without knowing they were oh-so-fresh-and-so-so-clean.  Washing those was a labor of love, let me tell ya.

After washing, I cut the top cushions so that they were a tad shorter and only just hit above the back of the couch by sawing a few inches off the bottoms with a serated knife.  The bottom cushions, even though in good condition, had seen fluffier days so I wrapped some one-inch thick batting (from JoAnn Fabrics) around them to fluff them up.
Butttt also, I made the mistake of sewing the covers for the bottom cushions a little too big so the fabric was really loose and wrinkled once on.  I tried to figure out a way to resew and take them in so that they fit more snugly but, with the zippers, I couldn’t, so batting was the answer for that too.  Win, win.

Anyway, in case I lost you on all the details ten paragraphs ago, here’s the 1000% better after:




It’s not pictured outside in the screened-in porch because, in the time that’s passed since I finished this piece, we found a bamboo set for $40 on a resale sight and that couch and loveseat are currently waiting to be snazzed up.  I love you old, vintage, wood couch, but the bamboo really has my heart and so my heart I must follow.  We don’t really need the loveseat from the set so my plan is to fix that up and sell it but the couch will be my resting place all summer so you can be sure I’ll have all the details on that makeover.  I’ll be sure to write some better tutorials on how I sew the new cushions and wash the foam (if need be) on that since my first try was successful and now I kinda know what I’m doing...kinda.  Stay tuned.

As for this wood couch, we staged it for a blog and sale picture and sold it within four hours of listing it.  It’s a little bittersweet but the sweet lady who bought it is putting it in an old building in her backyard that she’s fixing up to be a little retreat; pinterest-style.  It sounds so delightful and this mom’s happy my couch baby went to a good home.  Okay, couch baby Sheena?  I know, forgive me of my unhealthy attachments to furniture…

But, it’s yet another furniture project in the books; quite possibly the most demanding furniture project to date.  I’ll be taking a short break from those to recover and working on some simpler stuff.  If you’re sitting back wondering how I got this thing done with three four kids under my belt, know that this took me weeks to finish.  I know it all looks like I did this in a day or a weekend but let’s be realistic, shall we?  Things around here happen slowly.  Just ask Dwija.

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So, let’s talk Labor of Love’s:  Home Edition?  What’s been yours recently?  Maybe painting a room?  Sewing?  Remodeling?  Give me all the details!  It’s my love language.  This week I’m deep-cleaning the kids’ bathroom and you know what that means…project in the bathroom time!  Here’s a sneak peek if you’re interested.  :)

Have a fantastic week eeerbody!

*affiliate link to paint sprayer gun I purchased

The Best Painting Tools, Say Us

This post is a long time coming; one I should have written a very long time ago.  (Thank you Rebecca, for helping me realize it!)  We've painted a room, or a hundred, and we've pretty much got painting down to a science.  But the science of it all doesn't add up if you don't have the right tools.  That's how it goes, right?  The right tools will help you succeed!  #communitycollegeslogan

I didn't know the first thing about painting an interior room growing up (and neither did Anthony).  My dad made my siblings and I scrape and repaint our white farmhouse when I was ehh, maybe middle to high school somewhere (I hated it so much I must've blocked out the time frame) and that's the most painting I did until we bought our first house and dove headfirst into changing the color of 90% of the walls in the house...and then 100% of the walls in our second house, 100% of those in our rental, and now what will eventually be the walls (and ceilings!) in this house.

All that's to say, you don't actually have to have any experience in painting to start.  It's not that hard!  Yes, it takes a little bit of time and effort but as far as I'm concerned, the time you spend is money saved and the effort counts as a workout.  Win, win.  :D

So, without further ado, these are our tried-and-true, all-time favorite painting tools.  We've used all of them for quite a while, so there aren't any newbies here.  Just oldies and goodies.  ;)  

One Room Challenge–Week 2

Week 2 of the ORC is here and, amazingly, I’m right on schedule (all the thanks to the two chicklets who have been taking awesome naps)!  My goal was to get the kids room painted before the week was over and bada bing, bada

BOOM!  Here’s what their room looks like right now!

Yep, week 2 also saw me, not only painting their room but “bedazzling” their wall with diamonds.

I CANNOT WAIT to show you how those diamonds came to be and I will in my next post (pssst…it’s CHEAP & EASY!), but before I could even get to that fun part, I had to cover up the tan walls.  If you’ve ever painted a kids room before while it was being inhabited by said kids, you know, it’s muy inconvenient.  To get to the walls you have to completely upheave their room – move beds, dressers, whatever else they use on the daily.  For us, that meant moving the furniture from one side of the room to the middle one day and the other side the next day.  It also meant moving the kids into the play room and our room to sleep for a few nights.  (This is why, if I get the chance to paint before we move into our next house, whenever that is, I WILL.)

Quite a Distressing Situation

We’ve been storing all of Gianna’s clothes in two drawers of Anthony’s dresser and two fabric boxes in the kids closet and, the older she grows, the bigger her clothes are getting, and the more that that’s just not working.  We had room leftover galore when we were talking newborn clothes but lately I’ve been just digging and storing excess stuff in a large tupperware bin…in the kids room.  Not efficient and definitely not pretty.

So, for the past couple of months I’ve been keeping an eye out online for a tall dresser that could fit in the kids room to house her things and then some.  Mid-century dressers are some of my favorite things and so I’ve been looking with that aesthetic in mind and coming up short.  The few that I’ve found had either been sold right before I messaged the owner or the owner just never messaged me back.  Well last weekend, my luck changed and I found one.  It didn’t really fit into the mid-century category but I loved the thick molding detail on the doors and the drawers themselves were simple enough that I flew in with a $50 offer (down from the $75 asking price) and they were sold. 

Here’s the picture from the listing:
The listing noted that the piece was solid wood and that all of the drawers “worked properly”.  I could tell it had been painted from the listing and the paint job didn’t look that bad via pictures so, if anything, I figured it might need a touch-up or I could totally go a different color with it.  Either way, it was painted white and with the addition of some new hardware, I hoped we could as least live with it as-is until I get around to making over the kids’ room.

Well, when I showed up to pick up the dresser, the owner had all of the drawers extracted and set by the door (which I thought was great since I figured we’d have to do that anyway to make it easier to carry).  At first glance of it, I could tell the owner used a semi-gloss or gloss paint and so I knew at that moment that I’d be repainting.  I also noticed that the paint job was really poorly done – there were brush strokes everywhere and it looked like maybe some spray painting mishaps.  But, like I said, I had already prepped myself for a possible repainting so that didn’t scare me away.  When we went to lift the dresser, the owner said he’d carry the lower side (we carried it horizontally) since it was heavier.  At the time I was like “Dude, the top is clearly the heaviest part with these doors that weigh a ton…” but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t really worried about not being able to carry it.  (Four babies over the years has given me quite the biceps.  Ha!)  We got it outside and slid it into the back of my van and I remember seeing that the underside of the dresser, the side he was closest to carrying the dresser, was pretty beat up.  Immediately after he saw me looking at the bottom, he distracted me by stepping in front of it and telling me it would be helpful if I got into the back seat and pulled.  And ok, this is me adding a little bit of assumption in saying he distracted me because maybe he was really in a hurry to get this thing gone (even though after he talked my ear off) but it all happened in the matter of a few seconds and dawned on me afterwards.  I thought about it the entire drive home (ten minutes) and really, I wasn’t too deterred by the state of the bottom of the dresser – I mean, it still stands perfectly and is sturdy and the bottom isn’t seen whatsoever.  But then I got home.  And we pulled the dresser out of the van and into the car port.  And I noticed a few things I hadn’t before because I didn’t take the time to really look it over.  First of all, it wasn’t “solid wood”.  Argh.  The sides of the dresser and drawers are all particle board…not the cheap kind but still, not wood.  There were a couple of screws – one in the top of the dresser and one on the bottom trim on the same side – that were definitely not meant to be there.  Also, one of the “properly working” drawers was missing an entire track so that it literally just falls out of the dresser if you pull it out more than six inches.  I was annoyed.  Annoyed with shady sellers and annoyed with myself for not taking the time to look over the dresser better before I pulled the trigger.

Either way, it was now ours, I was happy I didn’t pay the $75 asking price (I wished I would’ve offered more like $30), and something fun and unexpected happened after I cleaned it out (there was so much dirt and dust in the drawer slots!) and sanded it down.  It was somewhat of a redemption for the whole situation.

Wood and White

Here’s the story about the wood and white.  You might remember the girls’ hand-me-down dresser:

We went back-and-forth, from option to option, thinking of a bajillion ways we could update it.  We’re not huge fans of it’s ornate, curvy make-up so something needed to be done.  I even begged for your opinion of our final option(s) via Instagram, Facebook, and this post.  Well the landslide slid toward painting the drawers white, giving us a two-toned dresser.  Here’s how it all went on.

First we had to fill in some hardware holes with wood filler.  Put some tape over the backs of the holes, overfill, sand, fill a little more, and sand again for a nice flush finish.  We used Elmer’s wood filler from Walmart and a fine grit sanding block for the sanding. The two doors needed new holes that were centered between the door edge and the decorative groove and the two small drawers were just going to get knobbed instead of handled. 

Next step was more sanding.  I gave each of the doors/drawers a quick go over with a medium grit piece of sandpaper.  I seriously spent 30 seconds rubbing each door/drawer.  No big deal…thank goodness because sanding is not how I like to spend most ‘o my days. 

The drawer 0n the left isn’t sanded; the drawer on the right is.  See the difference?  I roughed them up just the littlest bit to make sure the paint would stick.

Then it was time to protect.  I was planning on using spray primer and paint so I had to tape off and cover the insides of the drawers.  I also made sure to stick a little piece of tape behind each hardware hole to make sure no spray got inside the drawers through those.  The prepping was probably the most time-consuming part of this whole project because all we had on hand for me to cover with were magazines.  So I tape page-by-page-by-page…

Then it was outside with them where the real fun began.  

I used Valspar spray primer in white, spraying two thin and semi-even coats.  I’m not too picky on how the primer goes on as long as every inch is covered and it’s nice and smooth.  That being said, my prime jobs are usually a little splotchy albeit smooth.

Here are the drawers all primed:

Next up, the real stuff.  I scored big with the spray paint for this project.  While picking up some landscaping plants a couple of weeks ago at Lowe’s, I found this can of white satin Rustoleum paint-and-primer-in-one.  (Side note:  I still used primer even though I had a p-and-p-in-one so I didn’t have to use as much paint and because I had it on hand anyway.)  It was marked down to $1 because it was missing a nozzle. 


Vvell, if you know me you know I’ve got a stash of spray paint therefore a stash of nozzles.  I simply borrowed a nozzle from another can and away I sprayed.  HOWEVER, even though I grabbed a nozzle from a can of the same exact brand, I still managed to get paint allllll over my right hand as it dripped from the nozzle.  I learned that I had to press and hold the borrowed nozzle perfectly straight or paint would drip.  A little annoying but still totally worth the $1 investment.  I might also mention that this Rustoleum paint and primer-in-one is theee BEST spray paint I’ve ever used!  It sprayed smooth and covered so well!  I’ll definitely be using this kind next time!

Beside the paint all over my right hand (which I donned for two days afterward despite a shower), I had one more minor happening.  While I was inside waiting for the second-to-last coat of paint to dry, the wind whipped two corners of two covering magazines up and onto the wet paint.  Grrr…  When I went out to check for dryness, I found them and ripped them off only to have a little paper left behind.

So, adding another step to my almost-done process, I had to sand the area where the magazines had stuck after the paint was completely dry (I was so annoyed I actually called it quits for the day and did the sanding and re-painting the next day) just enough to remove most of the paper.  I didn’t sand all the way to the wood because I didn’t want an obvious dip in paint nor did I want to re-sand the entire drawer.  So, I sanded until smooth and put an extra coat on the drawer while doing the last coat on the other doors/drawers.  All good.

After letting the drawers dry for a full 24 horas, we stuck hardware on them and admired our new beauty.
 

Cost breakdown:
Dresser:  f-r-e-e (hand-me-down)
Primer:  already had
Paint:  $1
Sandpaper:  already had
Total:  One Dolla…Holla!

The hardware won’t stay, it’s only temporary.  I’m on the hunt for some so I’ll be sure to update y’all when I find it.  Until then, we’re loving the white-and-wood combo despite the needs-to-go hardware.

So what about you?  Painted any dressers lately…or any furniture for that matter?  I’m always all eyes for pictures!  What about clearanced/oops paint?  Anyone ever score any?  I’m gunning for the “oops” paint section first thing next time I’m in Lowe’s to hopefully find more!

Two-Toned Down

Two weekends ago, our church had a yard sale filled with lots of donated treasures; the proceeds of which went to a bunch of our youth group teens who are going on a mission trip this summer.

Among those things donated was this solid wood table and chair set:

And actually, it was donated last year for the same fundraiser but didn’t sell.  It’s seen better days and a picture doesn’t really acknowledge that – peeling paint and a slightly warped top.  It probably had a really cheery life though considering the fun paint job, no?

Well, who shows up at the smell of great potential that apparently no one sees?  You oughta know by now…yes, yes I did.

I helped transform the table into this to be (hopefully) sold to benefit the mission trip:
(For some reason the fabric seat on the chair on the bottom right looks darker than that of the chair on the bottom left but they’re the same fabric so it must just be the angle of the camera on the geometric print.  Also, the table top was removed for delivery and so it’s a little off-center in the picture simply because it was just set on top for a quick pic.  In case you were wondering about those things, which you probably weren’t, I thought I’d fine-print them.) 
However, I can only take a little bit of credit because, even though I had the vision, I didn’t do all the work.  Some of the teens going on the mission trip sanded everything down just enough that the peeling paint was gone and what was left was nice and smooth.  Another teen (hey Duncan!) painted the big ‘ole base of the table and the love of my life painted the top.  I finished painting the chairs (the teens started), did the distressing, and added a little flavor to the table top.

But let’s break it down a little more than that, shall we?  Of course we shall.

The Chairs
Like I mentioned above, they were rocking lots of peeling paint and some slick vinyl seats that were in need of replacements.  First, we took all the seats off.  Since they were nestled right inside the chair frame, no screws were holding them in place nor did any need to be, so they just popped right out with a little pressure from underneath.  The chairs were then sanded and two or three coats of chalk paint (this in ‘Kid Gloves’ from Lowe’s) were applied.  We decided to go with chalk paint mainly because I had heard there was no prep or primer needed to apply it so we thought it easiest since multiple people would be working on the chairs.  I’ll go into more in a little bit, but I probably won’t ever use chalk paint again.  Half of the chairs were painted with a brush and the final coat was done with two cans of spray chalk paint because we ran out of the canned stuff and thought spraying them would be quicker, which it was.

Once they were painted and completely dry, I went over some of the edges with a palm sander paired with fine-grit sandpaper to give them a slightly distressed look.

A palm sander is a lot quicker than sanding by hand but it requires a bit more care as it can easily get away from you if you’re not paying attention.  After sanding, Anthony put a coat of polycrylic on each chair to seal the chalk paint.

The fabric that we recovered the seats with was a remnant donated by someone to be sold at the yard sale and it ended up being perfect for these chairs.  It’s a heavy-weight upholstery fabric so it’ll hold up great.  The boards that made up the seat on a couple of the chairs were broken, so Anthony grabbed some thin plywood and replaced them.  The seats were made of a wood frame that was curved at the front (you can see the that curve in front in the pictures) so the plywood was placed right over the frame.  We used thin plywood because it needed to be able to bend to the shape of the frame and chair once attached.
I’m sorry I didn’t take more pictures but I wasn’t around when a lot of the refinishing was happening.  :(

Each chair was the same but also a little different since the distressing was done in different spots but they turned out so great, didn’t they?

The Table
To help straighten out the table top (it was slightly warped), we laid it on the hard tile floor of the youth center for a day and piled some weights on the underside (and when I write “we” I mean Anthony…don’t go all freaking out on me because you think this preggo lifted some weights).  It didn’t completely straighten it out but helped and it made it far less noticeable and luckily, it wasn’t set-your-plate-on-it-and-watch-it-slide-off bad in the first place.  The base was painted with the same chalk paint we used on the chairs and the top was painted a gray color, mixed at 50% intensity (I think the color was “Woolen Stocking”, but in the paint can form). 

To add a little more character, I added a layer of this stain on top of the dried and quickly sanded chalk paint (sanding chalk paint with a fine sandpaper after it’s dry makes it really smooth).  Using a foam brush, I brushed on one coat, making sure I brushed in the same direction as the grain of the wood and/or the placement of the boards that made up the table top.

Halfway done:
Imperfection is completely okay with this step and really, the more imperfect, the more character after.

I actually had to do this twice because, the first time around, the polycrylic layer we put over the stain bubbled because of the foam roller we used.  So we had to sand the entire top down and repaint, restain, and reseal.  This picture was taken after the first time I applied the stain.  I loved how it looked before I had to wipe it off and I was tempted to leave it that way.
But back to round two, after applying the stain, I let it sit for two minutes and then wiped it off with an old t-shirt.  I made sure to wipe in long sweeps and once again, with the grain of the wood.  (I did stain around the edge too and along the small lip underneath, in case you were wondering.)


It took a whole day for the stain to dry and then, once it was, I brushed on (vs. rolling on like the first time) two coats of polycrylic, allowing the first coat to dry completely and be lightly sanded before the second coat went on.  I like using polycrylic instead of polyuerathane 1) because it doesn’t yellow near as much even though it still yellows a teeny-tiny, possibly unnoticeable bit when painted over white and 2) because it’s soap and water clean-up. 

So here’s the thing about the chalk paint.  I see it being used EVERYWHERE around here.  I’m guessing the no-prep feature makes it a hit because it definitely isn’t the price.  That stuff costs $$$.  The chalk paint we bought from Lowe’s cost $30 for a quart and, for us, that covered one coat of paint per chair, three coats for the table base, and a couple of coats of paint on the two small doors and three small drawers of a hutch that’s also being refinished to sell.  I feel like we could’ve gotten more painted with a quart of $15 latex paint…but maybe I’m not factoring in primer which I know helps a ton when we’re talking coverage.  Even still, it’s double the price of the latex paint I use to paint furniture and the coverage seems to be less or not that different without a primer.  Also, while no-prep sounds appealing, the thing with chalk paint is that you have to seal it.  I mean, you HAVE to…unless you’re painting something that will never be touched post-paint.  I know this because, while they were painting this table, another teen was painting another table and that table got water on it.  The water made it so that you could literally take your finger, swipe it over the surface of the table, and watch the paint come off with your finger – not something you want happening to your furniture ever, ever, ever.  A lot of people seal chalk paint with a wax and some with a polycrylic or even polyuerathane.  Wax sealer doesn’t harden so, while it prevents liquid and fingerprints from getting to the paint beneath, you can’t place anything hot on it because, like wax does when it gets near heat, it’ll melt and stain.  Also, I’ve read that it wears off over time so anything sealed with wax will eventually have to be resealed.  So, in the end, you don’t have to prep by sanding or priming but you do have to seal so really, you’re doing extra work whether you use latex or chalk paint.  It’s in the beginning with latex (primer) and in the end with chalk paint (sealer).  For me personally, the cost will probably deter me from ever using chalk paint again.  I mean, we spent close to $50 alone on paint for this table!  I can get the same distressed, antique look if I want with latex and I feel like, in the end, it’s a lot more durable.  But, that’s just me.  You painters out there, what do you prefer?  What are your experiences with chalk paint?

Anyway, back to the object at hand, which once was a fun table that is still a fun table, just a little toned-down. 

We all need that sometimes, right?  Maybe it’s called entering adulthood…or maybe just parenthood.  Supposedly that’s when all the fun stops.  Supposedly.

I beg to differ.  ;)

.           .           .

P.S.  The table ended up selling before the day of the yard sale and while it was half finished.  A lady came in to buy something else that we had posted online to profit the mission trip team when she saw the table and fell in love.  Next up is french provincial-style hutch that’s awaiting a makeover that I’m going to help with…hopefully before this baby gets here.