Several "before" and "afters"

Okay, folks, moving day is the day after tomorrow, so I'm afraid I'm just going to have to dump a bunch of photos on here and call it a blog post. After that I'm going to be MIA for a while. Probably a long while. If I were more on top of things I'd have written a bunch of posts ahead of time and set them to auto-post during my absence, but I think we all know that that was pretty unlikely to happen. And I have to warn you that these are not the most dazzling makeover projects, either. But I did document them (sort of) so I feel compelled to share. First is my husband's nightstand. I decided I'd like to get new ones when we move so I wanted to try redoing this one to sell. It wasn't awful, but I was kind of over the dark brown/painted detail combo.

The top had some water damage so I needed to sand that down before painting.

I painted it a creamy white color, distressed just a bit and added some vintage sheet music to the top and drawer front.

A clear, vintage glass pull adds a little sparkle to it.

Unfortunately I didn't take a "before" photo of this vintage phone stand, but it wasn't much different except it had a shabby looking cherry wood finish on it.  I painted it the same color as my plank-topped sewing table to make it a little more fun. 

These antique chairs were from an ice cream shop in downtown Modesto.  The chairs themselves were in pretty good shape, but they needed an update.

I spray painted them in Heirloom White then got to work on the seat cushions.  A couple of them were missing their seats, so after cutting new plywood circles I recovered them all with simple but sturdy drop cloth fabric. 

Still too plain, though.  They need numbers!  Numbers are always cool, right?  Again using contact paper I cut out the numbers in the style that I liked and rubbed them onto the fabric.  (I did this step after upholstering the seats because I knew that trying to center each number perfectly on the seat and then attaching the fabric would be really tricky.)

Using a stencil brush I dabbed on some craft paint to fill in each number.

I was going for an imperfect look, so I didn't fill them in completely.

Why I didn't take a picture of all 5 I can't figure out.  But I think you can get an idea of what they ended up looking like.

Finally, I painted this little nightstand to match my daughter's dresser.  No distressing, no glazing, just a good paint job.  (Sorry, no "before" for this one either.)

Unfortunately the dresser sold without the nightstand (yes, I sold my girl's dresser- poor thing has had her clothes in laundry baskets for weeks).  But hopefully somebody likes the nightstand enough to buy it on its own!

Well, that pretty much does it.  I have a couple more projects that I'm finishing up now, but I don't know when I'll get a chance to share them.  In the meantime, wish us luck!  This is a BIG move and I'm more than a little nervous about it.  But I hear Ann Arbor is nice, however far away it may be from our loved ones.  I'll check back in as soon as I can.  Please don't give up on this little blog of mine!  I'll be back!