Black Beauty

Much to my dear husband’s delight, our dining room has a table in it again…although not for long!

I refinished this set for a client who had picked up this set for a song from a neighbor at a garage sale.  You can see that the finish on the top was pretty worn (it looked worse up close).  She had hopes of refurbishing it herself, but only got as far as replacing three of the seat covers (red instead of white) before losing interest!  I was happy to step in and help!

After removing the original finish, the top got several new coats of stain in a mix of Minwax Dark Walnut and Early American.

The chairs and the apron were painted in a DIY black chalk paint, and I distressed with a wet sponge to let some of the original finish show through.  I sealed the top with Minwax Wipe-on Polyurethane followed by a coat of DIY dark wax, and the painted parts were sealed with General Finishes High Performance TopCoat (satin finish) and DIY dark wax.

I recovered the chairs in this pretty dark fabric she brought me.  She has little ones, so DARK fabric was a must!

This set is HUGE!  The chairs are very generously sized and nicely padded, so it’s a very comfortable table to sit at.  There are two extra leaves for this table as well, so it’s perfect for large gatherings. 

I really love how it turned out…my dining room is moving up on my priority list of rooms to finish!

Linking up here:

My Repurposed Life	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Miss Mustard Seed
Friday Remodelaholic	Coastal Charm
The Scoop!

Vintage Aqua Bedroom

I have the hardest time gearing up to show projects that I complete within my own home.  I don’t have a really good reason for that…except that I never feel the pictures really capture the feeling of the place I call “home.”

And that may be the only explanation you get for why I am showing my daughter’s mostly-completed room makeover a mere 5 months after it was completed!

Here it is today….

 

And here’s what we started with!

OK, so the pictures above are already a bit of a work-in-progress 

But her room really was almost always that messy! (sorry, dear)

Everything in the room was boring beige, and that was a hard thing for my dear daughter to bear…especially considering that this is what her room looked like in our previous home!

Bright, huh?  She picked out that IKEA-look-alike furniture all by herself.  I never was that crazy about it, but hey, it was cheap.

She was dying to do something with her room in our new home, but she kept pitching ideas to me that included words like “red & yellow,” “retro,” and “bubble chair.”

Ugh.

When she finally adjusted her vision to something that included “vintage,” “aqua,” and “white,” then she found I moved a lot faster.  My children eventually learn that I get a lot more motivated to work on their projects if they’re what I want to do anyway!

If we’re all very lucky, I’ll come back and revisit the individual projects that went in to her room.  But for today…just pretty pictures…with the understanding that there are still a few things to do in here…like get more pictures up on the walls!

 

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack

Spring is coming!

...And that means it's time to get back to my garage!

My husband left town for about four days this week, leaving his side of the garage empty.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

So I filled it up for him.

I am tickled to be back to looking for my furniture bargains! I really didn't know how much I missed it!

In celebration...here's my first furniture project of 2011

What about the cabinet-at-the-top-of-the-stairs, you ask? Didn't count. It was for me, and I worked on it INSIDE the house!

I picked up this little coffee table at Deseret Industries this week. It didn't look too good, which explains why I got it for $10.

I have a friend who was looking for a bench for Touch of Class Photography, so I snatched it up (he does amazing work if you happen to need a photographer in northern Utah).

But this is a coffee table, not a bench. Meh. No biggee. This particular table has iron legs (see?), which seem rather bench-ish, and it's higher than a normal coffee table. And it was $10. It'll work.


The top was good solid oak under the horrible finish.


I applied two coats of Minwax Antique Walnut Stain, and two coats of hand-rubbed polyurethane.


Still looks like a coffee table to YOU? Well, probably, since it's in the middle of my living room!

I guess I should have let my children sit on it after all...

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Gathering table

I am still on my quest to get enough of my garage cleared out for my husband to park in the garage before the frost hits! And I may just make it! :-)

I finished one of my more ambitious projects to date. Although I have finished two tables (here and here), and even eight chairs for one of those tables (here and here), I didn't tackle them all at once. This time, however, I found a bargain I couldn't resist, in the shape of an oak pedestal table (with leaf!) and six pressed-back chairs. They've been sitting in my garage for about a month now.

Yes, I already had started sanding when I remembered to take a picture! But not too much.

I love love love these chairs!

And I am still in love with the walnut top/creamy bottom combination. Sorry. I promise my next project will be something different than that (coming soon!).

I used Minwax Dark Walnut stain again. It is gorgeous on oak!

I know I put at least two coats of stain on. It could have been three! Then I gave it three coats of polyurethane.

Next I tackled the base of the table. I used a brush and gave it a coat of Zinser 1-2-3 primer. I am liking this brand better than Kilz, I think. Then I chose NOT to use Rustoleum Heirloom White spray paint for this project. It would have taken a LOT of spray paint. Instead, I invested in a gallon of Sherwin Williams Creamy and brushed and sprayed it on.

Here's what the leaf looked like with the apron painted. You can't see any of the pretty pressed pattern, and you know what that means....

Time to do some glazing!

I chose not to use stain as my glazing medium this time, but instead I used diluted burnt umber craft paint. The color is a great match, but more importantly, I had more control than I do with stain. (You can wipe stain off to a certain extent, but not as easily as paint.) I brushed the diluted paint on liberally, waited a few minutes, and then wiped with a damp rag to remove the excess. In the picture above, the left leg has been glazed, while the right leg has not.


The difference really shows in the chairs. Above, the left chair is un-glazed, compared to the right glazed chair. I had to use the brush to get all those little crevices saturated with color, and then wipe off the flat surfaces. Certainly glazing of any kind does darken the overall color of the chair, but not nearly as much as stain would have--in fact I don't think I would have been able to get the contrast I wanted with stain in this instance.

Doesn't the table apron look better now?

Lastly I distressed the chairs and the table base. I didn't really do anything to the pressed pattern; it stood out well with just the glazing. But all the spindles and corners and curves got worked over. It just seems more practical to me to distress a piece--and that's probably because I am the mother of six! Things are going to get distressed whether I like it or not...so it's just less traumatic if it looks like it's on purpose!

So here are some "after" shots...

Four chairs with no leaf...

A shot of some great legs....

And six chairs with the leaf inserted.

I was so tempted to bring it in my house to see how it would look. But my 13-year-old and 11-year-old house slaves groaned at the prospect, and I caved to unpopular demand!

I have been searching and searching and searching the classifieds for a table of my own to do this with. I have seen a couple that would be perfect (for example, a HUGE Pottery Barn table that was sold for seventy-five dollars), but I have been too late each time!

So...if anyone comes across a likely prospect in the Salt Lake area, let me know! I need something that can easily accomodate eight people (about 78"), with leaves that can handle up to twelve (96" or more). I dream of chunky turned legs and a plank-style top. Cross your fingers for me!