Monday, November 7, 2016

On The Lighter Side...


Ahhh...  Since my last two posts were on the more serious side, I thought I would post a little project that I did that really helped calm me down a lot.  One of the things that Dr. Sun suggested that I do is to find something that truly made me happy, something that I could find passion in.  And well, as I would not say that this is my passion, I did however REALLY enjoy every step of doing this project all by myself.

Here's the thing, we've been in our rental for quite some time now and since living here I honestly have never felt like this is my home. So since the start of 2016 I decided that I was going to start decorating this place so I enjoy being here more, no one else in my family seemed to care but it just never felt right to me.  I want to feel like this is my place to call "home" as well and I want to make it more welcoming and enjoyable for all of us (really just me, lol). It's not a great feeling to live somewhere that you have never settled into and by saying that we signed our 5th year lease so it's not like I just moved in here, lol!!!!  So no better time like now to embrace the fact that we just might be staying longer than anticipated.  

I started with redecorating the living room, I'll post photos later, and I absolutely love it!  Worked my way to the dining room and on to the downstairs powder room.  Now that the downstairs is pretty much finished, I'm working my way upstairs and the first place that I want to start is the Master bedroom!

Let me start by saying that I am no home improvement guru.  I love seeing transformations and I LOVE home improvement shows but I am limited with what I can do.  I do however have vision and I guess that's half of it! For the rest, I can just hire out for someone else to do it, haha!  

On to my nightstands...  First I spent a few days on Craigslist and other sites looking for the perfect set of nightstands.  Oh and by the way, if you are looking for a pair of your own, people call them all different names like nightstands, night stands, bed side tables, side tables, bed tables, night tables and of course tables, lol!  And trust me, I was getting so tired of seeing the same things for sale until I had decided to look up different names.  In fact I found these beauties on Craigslist as side tables for only $75 for the pair but because no one really called them that anymore they had been listed for over a month without anyone noticing.  These are true antiques and absolutely beautiful pieces.
With that being said though, they just didn't match my style and I've been a little obsessed with chalkboard paint transformations that I've seen others do so I thought why not give this a try!  It's suppose to be super simple and completely give a whole new look to a furniture style.  So I went over to Home Depot to pick my colors.  Not too many to chose from but I decided to go with grey because I wanted a lighter shade to accent our new bed.
Yesteryear is the lighter grey and Relic is the darker grey that I chose from DecoArt and you can even find them on Amazon for cheaper.

When I got these tables they were pretty oily so I washed them down with Dawn soap and warm water to remove the excess oil.  I am an extremely inpatient person so I let them sit for a bit after drying them off with a towel and when I felt that they were dry enough I started painting just to see if I liked the color or not.  No, I didn't even lay a drop cloth down yet.  So glad and completely shocked that I didn't get paint everywhere. 
I stopped here for the night just to see what it would look like in the morning.  Well being impatient does not pay off!  What went wrong?
Agh!!!  I was so bummed to see this!!!  So back to Home Depot I went to get some sand paper and advice.  Come to find out that there was probably so much oil that I should have washed these a few times with Dawn to make sure that I got all of it off.  Oh well, live and learn!  

So back home with the sandpaper I went.  This time I put an old sheet down so paint dripping didn't matter and I started to sand this down just to the surface of the wood.  I didn't want to go too much into the wood otherwise I would make it uneven and we don't want that!
Once the paint was on and I was happy with it, it was time to varnish it with Ultra Matte Varnish so it didn't give it any shine but that it would protect from water rings and such.
I decided to varnish the inside of the drawers, the table tops and the shelves.  The rest I left alone as I didn't think that it needed it.
While the varnish was drying, I decided to spray paint the handles.  I looked everywhere online and at Home Depot for the correct size handles but because these are antiques, I honestly couldn't find hardly any that were the right size BUT also I couldn't find ones that I liked as much as the originals.  SO I decided to soak them in a lot of hot water and Dawn liquid soap to try to get the years and years of oil and guck off of them.  I scrubbed with a brush and after a while it started peeling off.  Once I got them cleaned, I spray painted them with Rust-Oleum Auto Primer.  I know, you're probably thinking, what???  Well, I couldn't find the right color in a matte so I asked the gentleman who worked at Home Depot if this would work and he said "Yep, it sure will!" and so that's what I went with!  I used an old towel because I didn't want excess paint drips on my hardware.  This way it would soak up any excess around them.
I honestly couldn't wait to get the hardware on.  The handles ended up being a little darker than what I has wanted but I think all in all I was pretty pleased with them.
Mind you, we are in a rental and when we moved in it was important to me that my kids rooms were painted even though I hated the color in our bedroom.  To this day, I still hate the color in our room and I really need to paint it.  I took a picture of my husbands side first but then decided that this table needs to be shown in all it's glory but here's Adam's side first...
And instead of trying to show you what this looks like in the master, I decided to pull it outside for all the natural light. So much fun to do by the way!
I'm not sure what I'll be doing next but honestly this project was super easy and very enjoyable.  I encourage anyone to do it, just play your favorite music and start painting, you never know what kind of masterpiece you can create!

xoxo,
CJ


PS - If you are interested in any of the products that I've used for this project, I have listed them here for you :)

    









2 comments:

  1. Nice Job friend. They look fresh and beautiful and kept the antique beauty of them. Also, loved reading into the happiness vibe in this blog. <3 Faith

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    1. Thank you so much Faith! These were super fun for me and it really did help to have something to do other than work. xoxo

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