Before and After: Herringbone Dresser

 

Hello, friends!  I hope you're having a good summer!  Ours has been, um, interesting.  It started off pretty good, no big plans, but a few weeks ago we were notified by our landlords that they don't want to continue renting out their house.  We were all set to stay put for another year, but suddenly all of our plans for a relaxing, lazy summer were scrapped and we had to start scurrying to find a new home to rent, plan and execute a yard sale and PACK!

 

So far things have worked out well, but right now I'm home by myself with the 4 kids while the Mr. is in Europe for 2 weeks on a business trip.  And we move two weeks from tomorrow!!  Gah!  LOTS to do, but for some reason I'm not worried.  I know it'll all be fine.  :) 

 

So before I disappear for another month or so to deal with this whole moving thing, I wanted to show you a project I did a few weeks ago that I was really happy with in the end.

 

My inspiration began with a little school chair that I've had sitting around for a while.  I collect these little chairs and my kids love to use them for watching TV and such. 

 

 

The color on the legs of this chair is such a nice grayish green and I thought it would look cute on a painted piece of furniture.  But I had to find a piece to paint!  Luck was with me on a yard sale trip when I came across this old oak dresser that needed some updating.

 

 

Instead of trying to color-match my chair's legs, I just picked the closest paint chip I could find to it and Valspar's Redstone Osgood Green was the winner.

 

 Another thing I've been wanting to try is to paint a herringbone pattern on the drawer fronts of a piece.  This was the ONE!  I carefully taped off my pattern and made sure that the drawers were lined up exactly so the pattern would be consistent when they were put back in the dresser.

After the paint was dry I distressed everything really well and decided to leave the knobs unpainted.

 The top got sanded down and restained with a darker color, and the body of the dresser got painted completely with the green.  The skinnier top drawer I left mostly white but used the green to bring out the carved stripes.

 

Someday I might give this piece some glaze, but for now I really REALLY like how it looks!  Isn't it snazzy?!  And I have to say, while I'm kind of over the whole chevron craze, the slight off-set design of a classic herringbone pattern still appeals to me!

 

I hope you'll keep tabs on my little blog, even though it'll probably be kind of quiet around here for a while.  Thanks for your patience and have a GREAT summer!!

Before and After: A Roadside Rescue (Antique Dresser)

It's been a little while since I've been able to share a good "Before and After" with you guys.  And let me tell you, this is a good one!  I had such a good time working on it and am super excited to share it!

 

Back in the fall, I was driving my son to school one day and got a little turned around.  We were new in town and I wasn't sure of the best way to go to get to the school.  As I was winding my way through a neighborhood, I spied a pile of furniture next to the curb.

 

Of course I had to slow down to get a look at what was being tossed out, and my heart practically leaped out of my chest when I spotted this beauty among the cast offs.

 

I quickly took my son to school and hurried back to get a closer look.  Upon closer inspection I found that both front legs were broken, pieces of trim were missing from the bottom drawer, the piece that extends between the front legs was broken (but had been somewhat repaired), and while it had a mirror stand, the mirror was missing.  Generally, it was in pretty sad shape.

 

In spite of all its flaws and needed repairs, I could not believe my luck!  I couldn't fit the whole thing into the back of my car all at once, so I decided to bring the drawers home first then go back and get the rest, all the while practically hyperventilating with excitement and anxiety that somebody would snag it while I was gone.  Luckily it was only a few blocks from my house.

 

Once safely in my garage, there it sat for a few months.  Finally, sick of the precious space it was hogging, my husband encouraged me to tackle it.

 

I repaired the things that needed it, then got to work on the fun stuff!

 

I started by sanding down the top and restaining it a nice medium tone.

 

The body and drawers got painted with a custom mixed bluish grey and I highlighted some of the details with crisp white.

 

A light distressing brought out its lovely details even more.

While I couldn't replace the missing trim pieces on the bottom drawer, I decided that filling in those gaps with white paint would help camouflage them a bit.  Unless you look closely, you don't really notice that it's just paint there.

 

Decorating the top was a fun little adventure, too!  I love shopping the house to see how I can pull things together.

I'm still trying to decide if it's really "done" at this point.  The top needs to be sealed somehow, and I'd intended to use a dark brown glaze on it but haven't brought myself to apply it.  I really like it the way it is, but I also like the effect that glaze has on a piece.  It gives it more depth.

What do you think?  Glaze or no glaze?

Maybe I'll live with it for a while and see if the fancy strikes to glaze it later.  Meanwhile, I LOVE my rescued antique dresser!

Before and After: Bookcase

Friday AT LAST!  I don't know about you, but for me this week has dragged.  Maybe it had something to do with my thinking that yesterday was Friday for half the day.  Don't you hate when that happens?? 

Anyway, I've been puttering around the house trying REALLY hard to get it put together.  Most of the boxes are now unpacked or put away somewhere, we all have bedrooms that, while not really decorated much, are functional.  The kitchen is working, as is the bathroom, living room and family room.  My problem areas that remain are the pantry/laundry/craft/mud room and the dining room.

I'll get there.  Eventually.  But my motivation to get things done has abandoned me.  Stinkin' motivation. 

There are plenty of things that I should do around here, but occasionally I feel the need to do something unnecessary instead.  When I can't handle the thought of tackling yet another pile of our crap and trying to figure out where it should go, I do something entirely different.  Like paint the walls of my daughter's room or make over her dresser or hang curtains in the living room.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment, provides visual proof that I did indeed DO SOMETHING that day, and gets me away from the tedious task of sorting and putting stuff away for just a little longer.

Here's one of those little unnecessary projects from a few weeks ago.

When we moved here to Michigan from California, I got rid of quite a bit of stuff, including a couple of bookcases.  So when we got here that left me with, you guessed it, no bookcases!  We already had a pretty big list of things we'd need to buy, so instead of looking for a new one I dragged this grubby but sturdy one out of the garage and attacked it with my paint brush.  (Not sure why this one came with us, but I'm glad it did!)

I rolled on two coats of white paint and primer and intentionally ignored the back.

Instead of paint I applied some pretty contact paper to the back sections.  Pretty, huh?

I'd purchased two rolls of this contact paper at Marshall's a while ago, and it seems like every time I go they have several cute patterns to choose from.  Next time you're in there check out the stationary aisle.  (I think that's where I found it.) 

Projects like this that can be completed in a day or less are so gratifying, wouldn't you agree?

Now I really have no excuse to continue avoiding another project that's been hanging over me-- putting away the kids' books.  Ugh.  But at least they'll have a cute place to go if the motivation ever strikes!  :)

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!

Before and After: Black Numeral Dresser

Holy smokes, people, I've been a painting fool lately!  Seriously, I thought I'd given myself carpel tunnel for about a week. Believe it or not I AM working on projects, despite the fact that I've been a little scarce around here.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but we're moving from California to Michigan this month.  We're about to say goodbye to our friends and family here, as well as all of our stuff.  It's going to travel to MI and sit in storage while we do a month-long road trip to see friends and family in Idaho, Utah and New Mexico. We'll get to Michigan around the end of June/beginning of July and live in corporate housing while we search for a house.  That's going to be a whole other ridiculously cuh-RAZY experience in itself, I'm sure.  Meanwhile, I've got movers coming in a week and a half and furniture in the garage that needs to get OUT and into the store to SELL-- pronto! 

So here we go.  This is my most recently completed project and one that I'm really happy with.
I vowed a while ago that I couldn't acquire anymore pathetic furniture to rehabilitate, seeing as how we're moving and all, and my garage already had quite the collection. And I did good!  I stayed away from thrift stores (at least the furniture section), I didn't go to a single yard sale, and I completely ignored Craigslist. It was TORTURE! Then one day I innocently wandered through the furniture aisle of a thrift store, thinking there's no way I could be tempted to buy anything with our move looming so close- until I spotted this.

It's no secret that I have a soft spot for long, low dressers. Perhaps you've noticed.  
There was the grayish blue french dresser...

...and the monochromatic striped one...

...and my favorite robin's egg blue rustic one...

...and the creamy white dresser with the big golden damask...

...and the super distressed blue one that I did for a fellow vendor at the store.

 This one was about as pathetic as they come, and it was priced reasonably and these things usually sell fairly quickly.  Obviously, I HAD to buy it.  I have to admit, I felt pretty sheepish when I admitted to my husband that I'd bought another big dresser. But I had a plan, and that plan came together beautifully on this piece! I started by removing those weird drawer pulls. I considered keeping them until I noticed one was missing, so they had to go.

The holes got filled in with wood filler and then sanded smooth.

The plan for this dresser was a lot like what I did to this numeral waterfall style dresser from a while back. But instead of staining the numbers after the paint was applied, I did the staining first this time. I decided where the numbers would be on each drawer, then stained that little section dark and let it dry.

While the stain dried I painted the body of the dresser with some black DIY chalk paint.

Using an exacto knife and contact paper, I cut numbers in a style that I liked and carefully applied them in the stained sections, being sure to rub the edges really well to prevent seepage.

Then it was time to paint the drawers. The absolute BEST part is peeling up the contact paper and seeing those crisp, warm wood numbers underneath the paint! I distressed everything a bit, then drilled some new holes for rope drawer pulls and wiped the whole thing down with satin polyurethane.

The insides of the drawers are a little funky, some covered with a bright yellow lining and some with a black and white damask.

Wouldn't this be cool in a boy's room? Or as a sideboard in a bachelor pad? Oooh, or even as an entertainment center!

I'm telling ya, watch out for this style of dresser. They can do so much more than store your clothes!