For a Friend

One of the women I teach with at my church has hired us to finish her side table. 

We have been doing our regular process that consists of stripping and sanding. Right now I have been trying to strip all the finish and stain off of it. Here is what I have so far. 

   

 

You can see on the front of the legs how much stain was on it. You can also see tons a nicks and dings. The table is very old and has some great history with it. 

It has been a little difficult to get all the stain off of it, so we will be sanding it with the electrical hand sander. It will just help us get off the stain a little bit faster that just stripping the wood. Plus, I love to use power tools 🙂 My dad doesn’t let me use them too much. 

It is actually a nice day in Ohio today and I have no classes or work so I am going to go out to the garage and keep working. Hopefully I will have an update post soon!  

 

Vanity Bench

My step mom and I tend to do a lot of our projects together. In fact the bedroom set has been our biggest project ever. It is all stuff we have done before, just with way more pieces. 

I have shown you guys my vanity when I wrote about homemade chalk paint. She refinished the whole thing for me, and I love it! Now it is my turn for another piece on my own. 

While in Georgia she found this awesome bench for $15 from an antique store.  

It has great bones and just needs a little tender love and care. My plan is to use chalk paint to match it with my vanity. I also strongly dislike the fabric on the seat and it needs a new piece of plywood cause it’s a little flimsy. So I am going to go to the Bomb Shelter and find an old dress that matches the colors in my room. This will be a cheaper way to redo it, and it will help keep the authentic antique feel. 

The next thing I am going to do to make it unique is add a mosaic on the back.  

I’m thinking about going to Stage Coach Antiques and getting some china plates to make the mosaic. I think this will add a really cool aspect to a simple bench.  

Versitile Pieces

Do you ever go through times when you want to redecorate your whole house? I do! Or do you hate decorating for holidays because you have to move everything? I do! 

Here is a way to fix that. Get a shelved mirror! 

My step mom and I found this at a small artisan antique store in Downtown Akron on W. Market Stree near Highland Square. The guy who owns the store is super talented at refinishinf furniture, but he is a little on the expensive side. Plus I like to do a lot of my own refinishing. 

We found this and the paint on it had yellowed, so all we had to do was repaint it! That’s it! We took leftover paint that we used to paint the fake brick on our fireplace. It took maybe 30 minutes. And only cost us $30. 

The best part about this piece is it is so versitile. You can decorate it however you want and when ever you want. During Christmas time we put reindeers and snowmen on it, and during the fall we put leaves on the bottom shelf. It is a super easy way to decorate your house for a season without having to take anything off the walls. It saves you time and money, and is a super cool piece to have in your house. 

Guilty Pleasure

I don’t think I have shared my embarrassing guilty please with you all yet. That being said … I love HGTV shows. I just started to really love them this year. I don’t know if it is the stage of life that I am in or the fact that I have this new found love of antiques. Whatever the cause may be, I can sit down for hours and binge watch HGTV shows. Actually the other night I sat and watched a marathon of my favorite show. I know.. I have no life.

My top favorite has to be Fixer Upper on HGTV. It is about a couple named Chip and Joanna Gaines from Wacco Texas. They own their own company named Magnolia Homes. They find houses that are fixer uppers (hence the name of the show) and they present them to their clients. The clients then choose the home they like the best and they go in and create it into the clients dream home.

Joanna is the designer and Chip is the muscle man. They have a great fun and teasing relationship that will keep you laughing. Joanna’s style is very country/antique/modern. I love to see her designs and creative ideas to fix up a dull house. I highly recommend this show!

Homemade Chalk Paint

Previously I have posted about Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. It is my favorite product to use to refinish my antiques, however it is very expensive. I have searched high and low to find a cheaper alternative that I can use and I have finally found the one.

On Pinterest there has been many posts about making your own chalk paint, these posts would intrigue me but I was always afraid to try it. It looked really complicated and I was afraid to put it on my furniture and then hate it. My step mom finally got brave enough to try it, and I love it!

It is actually very simple. We go to any home improvement store and buy the paint that wasn’t the correct color for the customer. They are always very discounted so we pick up a bunch and use them to make our chalk paint. Then you get a powder that is called plaster of paris. You add the Plaster of Paris into  the paint until it comes to a thicker chalk paint consistency. There really isn’t much measuring to it, you just have to eyeball it.

Keep in mind that the plaster of paris is white, so when it is added to the paint it will lighten the color a little. The price is so much cheaper than Annie Sloan and the results are the same. Here is an image of the vanity that is in my room that was done with homemade chalk paint.

Happy Painting!

Make Up Mayhem!

Another part of my home that can get crazy way to fast is my vanity. I sit down every morning to do my make up, and sometimes have to search forever to find what I am looking for. I haven’t found any goons drawer organizers to help, because they are so expensive. So I found ways to organize my make up on a budget! 

The answer is Mason Jars! My dad loves to can, so we have a plethera of cans in my garage. If you do not have jars at your house, most antique stores have tons, and they are cheap. I have also found a ton at garage sales or estate sales over the summer. So if your out and you find some pick them up, because there are a million uses for them! 

I am constantly searching for my brushes, so I use a mason jar to hold them! It makes my mornings much easier. I found this great idea on Etsy. Etsy is a great site to go fine handmade crafty items. However, this holder is no longer available. By now you all should know that I am a firm believer in making things yourself. It would be so easy to make with a quick trip to Home Depot.  You just need a spindle that you like, jars, wire clamps, and a few screws! 

Edit

Now for those pesky drawers. I am always rustling through them searching for what I am looking for. This is a great way to keep that from happening. You can also find the material at antique stores for practically no money at all! This is a life saver for sure! 



I hope these tips have helped you better organize your make up or vanities. I know that when things are in place and in order I feel much better. 

I am also excited to announce that the weather seems to be breaking in Ohio, so I hope to get some before pictures up very soon! I cannot wait to share my summer projects with you! 





Jewelry Breakdown

Okay Ladies, my jewelry box is a mess. I will wear a piece of jewelry and have to spend 10 minutes untangling my necklaces and bracelets. It will frustrate me to no end.

Like I said in my previous post, I like to organize when I feel stuck inside and down in the dumps. I finally got the time to tackle my crazy jewelry box. I found this idea on Pinterest and thought, “I could do that! Why buy it?!” It was unique and vintage, and also gave an opportunity to use your jewelry as a decoration.

I was rustling through the paper looking for estate sales and found some really great ones in my area. There I found really cheap mirrors that were actually made to sit on a vanity, but I thought they would work as my jewelry hanger. I then just spray painted them and sanded them, this way the original metal would show through. I however have been searching for he perfect lace to put in the frame. I have been searching through many antique stores to find the perfect piece, but lace is hard to come by. If you know of any great places to get lace please let me know!

So here it is so far, it is still a work in progress but at least my necklaces aren’t tangled anymore when I want to use them. It also adds to my decor in my room. I love the way that the frames stick out from the wall instead of laying flat. Not only is it cute, but it saves me from wanting to throw my jewelry box across the room.

Melt Away the Blues

If you live anywhere where it snows, you know about this time of the year you hit your limit of being stuck inside. In the Akron area we have about a foot of snow on the ground, and we can’t seem to get a break. This time always puts a damper on my mood and get very antsy, and just want to be outside!

In the USA Today, Thomas Kostigen writes the article ” Ways to get rid of those pesky winter blues.”  In this article he gives some great ideas on how to make your winter better. My favorite idea is, ” Try something new! Give yourself something to look forward to every week.” I then began asking myself, “Self, how can we still do projects that keep things new during the winter?”  Then I had a lightbulb moment, I organize! When I feel gloomy and stuck inside I begin to organize and rearrange things in my house. Since you are stuck inside, why not make it prettier?

I am challenging myself to keep things new through the rest of this winter.The next three posts will be projects that will help make your home more beautiful and better organized. Please share your ideas as well by commenting on my posts. I would love to hear more ideas on how you continue projects when the weather does not permit!

The Lull of Winter

I found this post on pinterest, and I want to do this so bad with a dresser I have in my garage. Unfortunately I live in Ohio and the cold weather makes DIY projects hard. Click the image to go see how they did it.

Dull to Delightful

Since my last post was all about how I love Annie Sloan paint, I thought I would post a project where I used it. I got this old desk from a family friend when they were moving. It  didn’t have much going for it. It had nicks and dings all over it, and just wasn’t very pretty. This made it a perfect piece to experiment with.

I of course forget to take a before picture, so here is one of the drawers to give you an idea of the original look of the desk.

You can see the edges of the desk were really beat up, and have been hit multiple times.

My favorite thing about this paint is it is so easy to apply. You don’t have to treat the wood or sand it before you paint it. You also don’t want to be neat when you are painting it. The piece will look more distressed when you do random strokes and not all in the same direction. I had this desk done in one day. It probably took me 4 hours to do two coats of the paint. I then sanded the edges because I wanted it to really have that distressed look.

Here is the finished product! I am so proud of it and love how it turned out. 

The other great thing about Annie Sloan paint is you can paint it on fabric too. The chair came from an estate sale, and I got it for $8. Here is the before and after of the chair. 

Annie Sloan is so easy to use, and really brings pieces back to life. My desk went from a boring dull desk, to a delightful and bright piece.