Nightstand Makeover

I got my nightstand from my mother, who had used it for years before she gave it to me, and before that, it was a table in our living room while I was a baby.  This table is easily 30+ years old, and never been touched up.  It's been used and loved and abused nonstop the entire time.

Finally, it was time to fix it.  Both for the purpose of my bedroom makeover -- which is going to be a project long in the making, cuz we're poor folk, and I gotta work with what I got -- and just plain making it look better, I busted out the primer and the paint and went to work.

Here, we have the before... and I didn't realize how dirty it was until I was editing these pictures.  I washed the whole thing before painting with Oxyclean and water.

Once I got it into my craft room/office, I realized that the stains were even worse than I had thought.

 I did like the handle on the front, it would just need a new color once the whole table was repainted.  Fortunately, I had my handy-dandy Oil Rubbed Bronze by Krylon handy to paint it later.  (It seems to be the color of choice among many craft bloggers.)

So I did a coat of primer and two coats of white paint.  The handle got two coats of the ORB as well, and we have the finished product!

I got it in place in my room, and the various decor onto it, and I realized that the lamp definitely needs touching up.  I think I'm going to spray the body with the ORB as well, but I'm not really sure what to do with the shade.  I like the shade, but it'll definitely need to be white.  Perhaps with a red trim, to tie it into the red/white/black theme I have slowly being put together in the room.

While going through the photos in my camera, I did find a few that hinted that my youngest (he's 22 months old) might have gotten his his hands on my camera... perhaps.

I linked up!!

The pantry project – Finished for now

Finally, I have the pantry done.  Altogether, it took me about a week-ish to do.

The only thing left is to get new handles, but I have yet to find handles for it that:
A.) Fit the current holes in the doors.
B.) Are what I’m looking for.

But for now, the rest of the pantry is DONE, and I can finally get it out of my craft room!  Yay!  (My counters have been overloaded in pantry innards for the whole time I’ve been working on this.)  If you missed it, I put up a post yesterday detailing most of the work I did in this project.

Again, the handles suck… but I don’t have any other handles for it right now.



We have the faux antique hinges... the balsa wood painted black, and then spray painted with Krylon's Oil Rubbed Bronze, and then a very light dusting of Sparkling Canyon.



The scratching on the hinges could probably have been avoided with patience, and I'll probably go back and fix them later.

And finally, the finished product fully opened.



And here it is, in its place, in use.  Doesn’t it look awesome???  I couldn’t be happier.  (Isn’t it amazing the difference that a different room/light can make on something?  Look how much brighter it all looks in the kitchen than it did in my craft room!  You can see the difference in person as well as in the picture!)



I know, compared to so many of the craft projects that I’ve seen SO many other crafters take on, this is kinda sad, but that’s okay!  It’s my first big project, and I’m proud of myself!!  (I’m also sort of wondering if perhaps finding some poly and putting a coat of that over the paint might project the paint from scratching a bit more?)

Total costs for the project:
Caraway Seed paint by Kilz, quart sized - $5 at Walmart (clearance)
Balsa wood - $1.99 at Michaels
Book for the decoupage - $.25 at library bookstore
Total:   $6.24

Everything else, I already had on hand.

I hope you all like it!!


I've linked to:




>

Further Into the Pantry Project

(BEWARE: This is a very picture-heavy post!)

For those of you who may recall (because I post SO OFTEN, how could you possibly remember what it is that I posted a whole two posts ago???), I decided to take on the redesigning of my pantry.  I got tired of the OMG IT'S SO WHITE, and felt I needed to repaint it.  Most of my house is all renter's white, and until I own a home, I can't just repaint the walls to fix that, so for now, I paint what is mine to mix things up.

A refresher on what the pantry USED to look like:

Picture it with boring flat white doors and handles, because I forgot to take a picture before I removed the doors.  Whoops.

My first really big project: Tackling my pantry

I have a pantry.  We bought it when we moved into an apartment that had NO storage space.  Just a simple white particle board, two door, four shelf cabinet.

And I’m tired of the white.  It’s been white for years, it’s boring.  So I decided to change it.  I’m inspired by so many of the blogging ladies, I’m changing it up!  I decided on KILZ color Caraway Seed, a sort of dark taupe.  It’s a really long process, because the paint takes a while to dry, so this will definitely be a multi-day project.  But I do have some photos to share of the process thus far!!

Here’s my pantry Before.  Picture this with white doors – I forgot to take a picture before I removed the doors – with white plastic handles – which I might very well replace.

Here’s the fronts of the doors painted with two coats.  That’s the color, and I LOVE it!!  I painted them last night and let them dry overnight.

My snack, because everybody needs fuel for a quasi-long-term project, yes?  Yay for Costco!  (This post not sponsored by Snickers… unless they want to sponsor me!) 

Lifted the doors to paint a coat on the backside, and the bottoms of the shelves have one coat as well.  Yay!

My goal is to have this done by the end of next weekend.  I have a girlfriend coming over on Tuesday, and I’m hoping to do a big chunk of the project that day, we’ll see!

Trial and Error - Filing Cabinet-style

Going through and reading so many of the different crafting blogs out there, I'm struck by... jealousy?  Envy?  I don't know...

These ladies -- so many incredibly talented women! -- completely change the look and feel of their homes with a little bit of trim, a coat of paint, and more!  I'm limited by the changes I can do by the fact that we rent, though someday, I would love to own a home.  For now, though, I can only change what I have in my home.

My current project is a filing cabinet.  It's a black metal filing cabinet that I've hauled around for a few years, but never dressed up in any way, just having it around simply for its function.

I don't remember who wrote it, or if it was tweeted or posted on Facebook, but somebody yesterday said something about livening up a dull filing cabinet with some paint and/or wallpaper.  It inspired me!

So today, I took apart my filing cabinet -- it isn't fancy, just a $30 cabinet from Walmart -- and emptied it out.  Two coats of primer and one coat of satin white interior house paint later, and I have it here in my craft room, resting on flattened cardboard boxes, drying.  I've painted the handles a soft spring green, and I have a wallpaper boarder that I'm going to somehow incorporate onto it.

But now I'm concerned.  Through the priming/painting process, I've noticed that it's nicked/scratched easily, exposing the black metal underneath.  I can't help but wonder if I should have perhaps sanded first?

I put a layer of Mod Podge over it, hoping to make it stronger, but I really don't think that has made any difference, and I'm too afraid to try it to find out.

Am I right?  Should I have sanded first?  I don't know... I guess I'll just have to find out.  Trial and error?  Fortunately, it doesn't take too much paint and primer to do this.  Just all of one afternoon.