Hutch project

When Craig and I got married my friend Ann and her family gave us some money as a wedding present. Most of the monetary gifts we were given went towards things like apartment rent, food etc. lol but she is a dear friend and I wanted to buy something that would remind me of her. So I bought some white dishes. She is wonderful like the color white and she loves beautiful table settings. Pretty dishes remind me of her actually so I took some of my own and added it to her contribution and bought 12 place settings. That is a lot more than Craig and I needed lol and consequently they have been sitting in my closet in 4 big boxes since then. I have been waiting to buy a hutch to put them in, but hutches SO OVER PRICED! I don’t understand why they cost so much, but it has taken me 5 years to find one. Our neighbor had a garage sale one day however and when I went over to investigate I found this piece. The doors, shelves, trim etc. are all solid wood, it has its original glass shelves, hardware and glass door panels (which is rare in old hutches, that is why people often use chicken wire), had a display light inside and has had the same owner since he bought it brand new in the early 70’s. Downsides to the piece were that it smelled like cigarette smoke (can’t handle even a tiny bit of that smell) and the side panels are a compressed wood with veneer. He had it originally posted for around $150.00 I believe, it’s actually slipping my memory, but he had already come down a little but it was still more than I wanted to pay. I have a very strict budget that I am trying to operate on right now for house projects, but I had sold a text book online the day before (score!) for $53.00 so as I was walking away I thought I’d just take a shot and I said, “well it is a wonderful piece of furniture, and I could take it off of your hands for $50.00 if you wanted!” To my surprise he said sure and I sent husband over to fetch it. 

Thanks for "fetching" things for me Mr. Taylor :)

Okay, so now for the restoration. This piece looks really simple, but it was a fairly large project. To get rid of the smell I left it in the garage to air out and cleaned it really well with soap and water and then with vinegar. The vinegar worked MAGIC! Long after the vinegar smell wore off I still couldn’t smell any smoke at all, which made me really happy.

 Next, husband helped me disassemble the whole thing, and then we were ready for the fun part. 

 I couldn’t use regular paint on it because of the side panels so we bought a special primer that Rustoleum makes and I coated it with that first. It was horrible, thick, oil based stuff, the word “gloopy” comes to mind, and even after intense sanding you can still see the brush strokes on the sides if the lighting is right. I don’t recommend it for that reason HOWEVER, it did work really well. It adhered in a very big way, and if I were to inspect it now for the first time I would never guess that it wasn’t solid wood. So it did do its job, it was just a really messy one. As afore mentioned I sanded it really well next; it sanded almost like plaster or something, white dust everywhere! I also sanded down and painted the cupboard doors and trim, so basically everything but the back piece.

 After that was done we decided on a pretty flat grey color, and I added some plaster of paris to turn it into chalk paint. Homemade chalk paint, I DO recommend my only caution would be mix WELL and I spent a total of 8 hours in my garage in what someone told me later was 116 degree heat and it dried REALLY fast on me. I was kind of in a rush or I would have waited for cooler weather. But it worked!!! I moved it in doors after that though, because I didn't want the wax I was using to be affected. 

Next I used a clear wax and went over the entire piece, inside and out. After that I felt like there was just too much grey everywhere so I took some leftover white chalk paint that I had, and a cup of plain water and dipped my brush first in the water and next into the paint and brushed it on in small sections. I then took an old rag and smeered and smoothed the paint, leaving more in cracks and less on the forward surfaces. I actually ended up going back with a kids paint brush and put more white in the cracks that way. It was a lot of detail work, but was totally worth it. I LOVE the look it gave! I like this better than just using dark antiquing wax because it lightened and brightened my piece while still aging it a little, instead of just giving it a dirty old type of look. When that was dry I went over the piece a second time in the clear wax, this time only going over where I had put the white. I left the inside a solid grey, so I only waxed the outside on the second go round. After that I wanted it to be aged just a tiny bit more so I made up a batch of dark antiquing wax, which is just clear wax that I melted, added wood stain to, and then let cool. I took an old sock, filled it with some of the dark wax I had made (saved 20.00 by making my own by the way) and went over the piece very sparingly. Because I was not going to actually distress this piece with sand paper, I didn’t want it to look TOO old, and I didn’t want to ruin the light airy feminine feel that it has. LOVE the result! Okay, so the only thing left was to decide what to do with the back. This took a while as husband and I each had very different ideas, but we finally got a chance to do some fabric searching together and settled on this upholstery fabric design.

 I love it! I think it was the elegant touch that it needed! And there are no flowers on it which made husband happy. ;)

 To do this part I just laid the fabric out, ironed it very well, used a fabric adhesive to tightly stick it to the backing and then stapled it on with an upholstery staple gun. After that there was nothing left to do but assemble the whole thing back together. Husband stepped in to help with this part too, we make a good team. ;) 

All of this, and more has been sitting on my counter for over a week from this one project. lol 

The majority of the dishes will have to wait until the new house but I had a couple plates unpacked and I couldn't resist testing them out in there. Can't wait to see the rest!

What projects have you been working on, I would love to see?!

New Headboard

So the beds in our house have never had headboards. In fact up until last year they were just sitting on the floor. The reason for this is two fold. The first being that having a boxspring and mattress on the floor doesn't bother my husband one bit, and the other reason is that I really wanted something with character, something I want to see every morning and night for a good long while and everything I found was wayyy out of reach on the budget scale. I just haven't been able to justify the expense of spending several thousand dollars on bedroom furniture. SO, I finally decided I would just make one myself. I found a few links to headboards made from old doors like so https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=headboards+made+from+old+doors&term_meta%5B%5D=doors%7Cautocomplete%7C4&len=2&rs=ac and I actually think ours turned out prettier. The first step was to find the right door. I was able to find exactly what I was looking for at a Habitat For Humanity store that we have here in Twin. I have to say husband wasn't at all sold on this project at first but he went along with it and then as is usually the case with him he got really excited and we ended up doing most of it together which was fun. Here is the door we found. SUCH a great find! 

From here I just did some light sanding and then lots of scrubbing, it was pretty dirty.

But I guess I should add that before that husband made us a couple of saw horses. Also Grace makes that exact face he is making here, haha cracks me up!

So next we decided to fill the holes from the old door knobs. I noticed on pinterest that a lot of people didn't do that and just left it as part of the "character" of the headboard but it kind of bugged me and I decided I wanted them filled in. So for that we cut out just small circular pieces of wood and then filled them with saw dust and wood glue. Worked awesomely...is that a word? My original plan was to use saw dust and an epoxy, but husband suggested the wood glue and it worked really really well and was easier to deal with than the other would have been.

We had a couple of cute helpers flittering around for most of this. lol 

And now you know why most of the pictures are of husband...lol 

We filled the ends with the same thing, wood glue and saw dust

Next we added on the legs. I'm not going to go into details for this part, it was a lot of cutting and drilling and screwing in, but I feel like it's pretty self explanatory. 

Pretty cute for a messy hooligan that has misplaced her shoes and hairband heaven knows where. ;)

 This guy!

After the sawdust mixture had dried really well I sanded it flush with the door before we moved on to picking out trim

More sanding...

And more sanding...

Next we put on the trim. We made 5 different trips to Lowe's for picking out the trim and returned trim we didn't like 3 times. lol 

This is what i like to refer to as the ugly stage in the process. I was REALLY doubting if it was going to turn out at this point. We had put too much time into it to turn back but I was getting really nervous.

The trim I ended up deciding on. Husband bowed out after the 2nd return. lol

Working away past bedtime...poor Milla was a good sport that night. 

So the next part gets a little tricky. I was worried that the light wood would look differently than the dark wood once it was distressed, but I wasn't about to sand every tiny crevice on the whole thing. SO I decided to stain the lighter parts with a dark stain, and I am really glad I did. The brown shows through on the final product and the lighter would have looked pretty different as is evidenced when you look at the back of the bed. 

First coat of chalk paint!!!!

This is the other part of the process where I panicked. After only one coat the brown was still REALLY showing through.

The finished product!!!! 

So I got tired of taking pictures at this point but basically this is after another coat of white paint, some hand sanding to give it a distressed look and make the designs stand out, and two coats of wax that I just wiped on with a rag, easy peasy.

It is even prettier in person, I love the way it turned out.

Because it is going in the guest room in our new house and our guest room is currently in our basement, and we didn't want to haul it all the way down there, I just kind of draped the bedding that will be in there, over our own in these pictures. lol So this isn't quite what the guest room will look like, it will need accent pillows etc. but you get the idea! We love it!!!!

Not bad for 75.00, eh?!

Phew, that was a long post, sorry. Next up... the re-upholstering of two wing backed chairs...

This one's pretty self explanatory. lol 

Husband has a very deep love for girl scout cookies. Good thing I didn't really eat them... lol

"Selfies"

So Grace loves selfies. Anytime we're having down time, which for us quite often equals books or a show while snuggling in my bed together, she pulls out my phone gets into the camera and asks to take pictures of us. Then she tells me which faces I am supposed to make. lol There is really no rhyme or reason for this post, the whole thing just cracks me up. I wonder what her kids are going to find entertaining by the time she's grown up. Selfie videoes maybe?