A Lovely Gift

Each year when my birthday rolls around, my husband is somewhat distraught about what to give me.  (Just for the record, he always manages to pull off something very nice.)  This year, he managed to really hit the brownie points lottery – he made me a console table for my living room.  This item has been on my “would like to have this one day when you have the time to make it” list that sits in a drawer in the kitchen.  I have an oddly shaped living room due to a stone corner area, and that side of the living room looks rather odd.  I wanted a table to fit in that small space under my gallery wall (which is still unfinished).  You know, the kind of table that I can decorate and store a few little odds and ends out of sight. 

Since he was going to be on the other side of the country during my birthday, he got to work early and finished it before he left!  I got to paint it and glaze it (my favorite part) after he put it all together.  Seriously – how awesome is that?  He gets the “Best Husband Award” again.  I guess that makes it thirteen years running now. :)

Here he is priming the drawer fronts in the garage.

The table is ready to paint… My favorite part.

The table top is aspen coated with a golden oak stain.

The table is painted in Valspar Nightfall green (Winter 2012 collection) and glazed in Martha Stewart Black Coffee.  I absolutely love this table!  I put the drawer pulls on myself – pretty scary to think of messing up my beautiful table while trying to drill a hole in the drawer front!  Eeeeep!  However, it turned out beautifully and fits perfectly in that space between the doorway and the hearth area. 

It was definitely a happy birthday to me moment!  Thank you, Paul, for such a wonderful gift!  I love you!

What is your favorite birthday gift?

My “New” Hutch

For several years, I have had this hand-me-down hutch.  Not really happy with it, I was unsure of how to improve it to meet my décor standards.  I thought about getting rid of the hutch, just because it was so blah.  Brown and blah.  I even toyed with the idea of having my wonderful hubby make me another one more suited to my taste.  However, that seemed like a waste of time and money when I already had a hutch.  (Sometimes being a good steward is not all that fun. )

I decided that I would just paint it.  But what color?  I already had a lot of red due to the benches we made and painted, and I wanted something a little different  that would add some zing to the room.  Turquoise came to mind, but that is a huge step that I wasn’t sure I could make.  It would really zing, perhaps a bit too much.  I discarded the idea and thought black – nah, too dark and boring.  I kept coming back to turquoise.  I also wanted an aged look, but was trying to find out how to replicate that look.  I searched the internet, found some awesome DIY refinished pieces, and watched a few tutorials. 

Seized with the desire to strike while the iron was hot, so to speak, I ran to Lowes and picked out paint.  Yes, I did end up going with a turquoise blue.  The weather was gorgeous, so I headed out to paint just as soon as I got back.  I also bought spray paint to redo the hardware.  I liked the drawer pulls and little knobs, but they were yucky, and the hinges had been painted brown by a previous owner.

I had to get creative when I painted the hardware screws and dangly drawer pulls.  I was trying to figure out how to  paint all sides of the drawer pulls without having them rest on another painted part.  Enter the common wooden toothpick.  I wedged a toothpick into the swiveling part until it stood upright, not touching any other part of the drawer pull.  Voila!  It worked!  Fueled by this small success, I turned to the screws.  I poked them  into a piece of cardboard so that they all stood upright.  Again, success!  I could now spray paint all the surfaces without having to touch them and flip things around!

Maybe those of you who do this kind of thing all the time are laughing at me, but it was fun to figure out. :)

I looked all over for the finishing glaze to add the antique look to my newly painted hutch, but no one seemed to know what I was talking about.  Back to the internet I went, and read carefully the blogs that I had found those awesome pieces with the same finish.  I found out some brand names, and learned that I would have to mix the glaze with whatever color of paint I wanted the glaze to be.  This was going to be more work than I had anticipated.  The Home Depot was the only store in our area that actually had glaze, so I went there.  While I was looking at quart cans of clear (add-your-own-color) glaze, my eye fell on a display of Martha Stewart special painting finishes.  There were several different varieties of pre-colored glaze.  They were much smaller cans, and the price was happily less.  I decided to get the small jar and experiment.  I f I didn’t like it, I could always paint over it again.  This is what I wound up buying.

I highly recommend this product (Black Coffee is the name).  It is latex, so it dries faster and cleans up easier than the clear glaze, which is oil-based.  This little jar was more than plenty for my whole hutch.  In fact, I used over half a quart of paint to repaint the hutch, and I may have used two or three tablespoons of glaze to finish it.  A little of this stuff goes a long way!  Glazing is one of the most fun things I have ever done.  I told my husband that I have a new favorite thing to do! :)

Basically, you apply the glaze with a sponge brush or regular brush, if it is very detailed, and let it sit for 30-60 seconds.  Wipe off the glaze with a damp cloth, allowing as much or as little of the glaze to remain in the cracks and crevices of the piece.  This is where it gets a little messy, since the glaze gets all over your hands.  I had to keep changing the water in my bowl because it was paint-y after a few dips with the cloth.

The whole project took one afternoon, and I am so thrilled with the results!  I have moved the hutch into my laundry/craft room, where I will store some of the items that now reside in cardboard boxes.  I am thinking I will be able to keep quite a bit of fabric and craft items in the bottom cupboard.  Here is what it looks like now!

 

This is not the best picture because the sun was blazing in the windows.  You can still get a good idea of the way it looks now.  As you will notice, I left the back of the hutch brown, just for a bit of contrast.  It was not painted very heavily, and the wood grain shows through, giving it a unique look. 

The best part about glazing is that it does not have to be perfect.  If it is a little darker or thicker in some places, it just adds to the antique look.  I will definitely be using this technique again in the future!

Do you have a piece of furniture that you want to change?  Have you ever tried glazing?

Now We’re Cookin’!

Sometimes the toys that we have are much loved and often used.  Others are played with occasionally and ignored the majority of the time.  (These I try to eliminate as quickly as possible.)  I think the most popular toys we have owned are the play kitchen items.  My childhood kitchen items have been passed down to my children, and along the way we have added more food items, dishes, and miscellaneous junque. All of the kids have loved playing kitchen since they were tiny.  They frequently bring down new dishes for us to “eat.”

Thus, when my old tin stove crumbled into disrepair, it was a hard blow for the girls especially. The decal stickers had already begun to come off, the plastic window in the oven door popped out and was stepped on, the knobs fell off, and in general, it looked pretty ratty.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was the oven door hinge that broke, causing it to hang open perpetually. 

My husband had pity on the girls who could now only “cook” on the stovetop.  He found a plan for a little stove and, out of scrap lumber leftover from other projects, he made them a new one.  Alright, everybody say, “Awwww!”

I don’t know that any father has gotten so much pleasure out of making and giving a wooden stove to his girls as my husband did.  The girls were thrilled!  The little knobs turn and the oven door opens and closes with a magnetic latch.  Now we can once again have all the delicious baked plastic food that we can eat!

Here they are in their PJs, exulting over their new appliance!  Random thought: Did anyone else notice that Esther looks like a giant pink frog in this photo?  :) 

On the Shelf

I am ashamed to say that my closet is not the most organized area of my house.  At least, not usually.  My amazing and wonderful husband has helped my organizational efforts by offering to build a shoe shelf for me!  Yay!  The difference it makes is HUGE!  I am forever indebted to him for this thoughtful piece of furniture!

Okay – here it is, my seriously, shamefully, messy closet. {blush}

Some of my shoes were in boxes, some just kicked into the corner, but it was always a grief of mind to find a pair in a hurry.  This was a painful lack of organization…

Enter the shoe shelf…

While it is not extremely fancy, it is intensely practical and functional.  I love it!  You will notice it is my favorite shade of red, too.  Love this color!  (Spanish Tile 1010-5 from Lowes/Valspar paint)  Within ten minutes of this beauty entering my life and closet, the disorder and chaos of my closet was gone!  Voila!

The good news is that all my shoes fit on the shelf… for now.  :)

It’s A Match!

A few weeks ago, I posted pictures of the bed that Paul and I made.  Yes, I still love it, and we are both amazed at what we accomplished.  Sigh.  It was so fun!  The girls both needed a sturdy bed.  Abigail was sleeping on the one that I had as a kid, and it had been a hand-me down when I received it.  Who knows how old it really is.  It was in relatively good shape, though, except the slats kept falling out.  That was a little inconvenient.  Esther’s bed was another story altogether.  It was much newer, and was actually a trundle bed.  The construction was so poor that it had to be continually tightened to keep it from coming apart at the joints.  It squeaked dreadfully every time she moved, and to sit upon the bed was to take your life into your hands.

We decided that we would also make the girls matching twin beds, so this weekend we finally finished the last bed.  Their room looks so good!  Now we can tickle them to our hearts content at bedtime without worrying about the bed collapsing beneath us! :)

Maybe it is just me, but I love the pink and white – it looks so charming and girly!  Their room looks pretty good, as long as you don’t look under the new beds!  Time for a good cleaning…