Bedroom refresh...



It's been a few years since I first brought home a pair of CL dressers for our master bedroom. I painted the honey oak dressers and updated their 80's look then with new paint and added hardware, but now it was time to refresh them once again.

The dressers were great: so functional and  they fit the space perfectly, so they really just needed a  little tweaking. We recently repainted our bedroom walls in a light warm gray, and so I repainted the dressers a darker gray and repainted the ceramic lamps (which I had never done before, yikes!) a bright sunflower yellow to go with our new black, white and yellow bedding.

Repainting the dressers: piece o' cake. I just mixed up the shade of gray that I wanted from some black and white paint I already had. And I let the dressers dry for a week before I set anything back on top of them.

The lamps...that's another story. I did plenty of research on websites and blogs about painting ceramic lamps and settled on spray painting them with Krylon Fusion, "the only spray paint out there that adheres to slick surfaces problem-free", according to a magazine that rhymes with "Real Pimple". I ended up needing 3 cans of this paint just to cover up the light green paint underneath to get the yellow color I desired. In retrospect, I should have sprayed them first with a primer (even though the can said I wouldn't need to). I wanted a super glossy finish too, but even with glossy spray paint and a top coat of glossy acrylic clearcoat, I didn't get the super shiny finish I wanted. Ok, so they still came out ok (no drips!)

What I learned from this project:

1. No matter what the can says: USE PRIMER FIRST!!

2. Spray paint goes everywhere, so protect every surface unless you want your car in the garage (which you were too lazy to move) to have a light dusting of sunflower yellow!

3. Buy more cans of spray paint than you think you will need. You can always return any extra later. Nothing annoys me more than having to go back to the store in the middle of the project.

4. Nothing except for having a sunflower yellow car.

Dropleaf table...

For my new craft room I needed a work table, but preferably one that wouldn't fill up the whole room in case I needed some floor space (you know, to practice my Dancin' with Stars routine). I was lucky enough to have a small, but functional gateleg table that belonged to my mom. It was my grandmother's kitchen table first, then was passed down to my mom where she used it as a spare table in her family room. She had repainted it years ago during the "great antiquing craze",  and now I would repaint it again. Here's a "before" shot while I was already in the midst of another craft project.  

                              

And here's my newly painted high gloss orange table with gray trim.

What I learned from this project:

1. I'm not really into antiques, but it's fun having a piece of furniture that has some family history.

2. Paint color unites items no matter what the style.

3. What this table lacks in size is offset by its portability - it's easy to move aside when I need some floor space (you know, for that killer Paso Doble).

A room of one's own...

     I had craft and art supplies scattered in various places, and since moving into this house I haven't had a decent place to work on projects where they wouldn't take over the kitchen counter or the bed in our guestroom. So when we remodeled our basement I lobbied for a dedicated workroom. It could be converted to another bedroom if needed, but for now...it would be all mine!
     I was determined to just repurpose furnishings that I already had, no need to buy much that was new. But I did want this space to look cohesive and colorful, so I fully expected to do some repainting. (yay!!) 
    Here's a picture of the room with all my furnishings waiting to be transformed.



Painting opportunities - a work in progress!

 My dresser from childhood (which has lived through flower power decals, black lacquer, and terra cotta finishes) got a wakeup call with apple green high gloss paint and gray ceramic knobs scored at a huge discount from my favorite bargain haunt, Ross. Now it houses art supplies, stencils, craft paint, etc.





                                               



I repainted two of my alley-find chairs white and scooted one under the table that I revamped from a $15 CL purchase from several years ago (from my old breakfast nook). This time I repurposed it as a sewing table painted traffic cone orange.
Above the table I covered a foamcore board with old maps and hung clipboards I painted with magnetic paint. The boxes below are also covered with maps (empty copy paper boxes where I now store fabric scraps).
The other chair went under my repainted garage sale file cabinets topped with a piece of a cast off door from someone else's remodeling project.
The shelves above it are inexpensive IKEA shelves (one of my few new purchases in this room).

An old gateleg table that was my mom's (now painted the same traffic cone orange) functions as my main worktable in the center of the room.

 Rounding out the furniture is the armoire that was one of my very first CL purchases. Check out my post A bedroom with no closet to see its first incarnation. Now I'm using it as a wrapping paper/spray paint supply closet.

What I learned from this project:

1. IKEA has some great fabric by the yard at bargain prices - I made the curtains for this room and the fabric was only $7.99 yd.
2. The large grommet kits for the curtains (purchased at Michaels) were super easy to use.
3. Primer is your friend. Use it.
4. 1 qt. apple green paint + 1 qt. orange paint = a roomful of happy

Goodwill hunting...

Every so often I pop into my local Goodwill to check out their latest treasures. Recently, I snagged a brand new red metal toolbox for $7.99 for the purpose of storing some art supplies.

 First I spray painted it turquoise, but then I changed my color scheme and instead Mod Podged a local city map all over it (with my house location on the lid).

My newly covered toolbox works great with the whole "map motif" I have going in my craft room.

What I learned from this project:
1. How did I not know about Mod Podge until now? It's my new favorite thing.
2. Maps are usually a nice substantial weight for projects like this - some paper is too flimsy and could tear easily.
3. Maps can also be a little trickier to work with since the paper is thicker.
4. Oh, just use whatever paper you like - you'll figure it out and make it work.

Evolution of a dresser...

 A small dresser that I bought years ago at a garage sale for only $10 has proven to be quite the workhorse. It was just an inexpensive piece of furniture (but at least it was solid wood). When I bought it, it was pale blue (not the color I wanted), so I repainted it white and used it in a sewing room to store random stuff. But that was in the days before I understood the value of priming first and so a lot of the paint chipped off quickly (rookie mistake).

Just as well, since a few years later I sanded off all the paint that was still clinging to it, and painted it with a kind of rustic Scandinavian country design (good lord, what tortured decorating phase was I going through then?) 


Then I experimented with vertical stripes...     

not my best effort, so that got painted over

quickly. No photos remain of that disaster.

Next up, I went through my shabby chic period and painted it green with some distressed stenciling on the top surface.

When I moved to my current house, the little

dresser was banished to the basement for a

couple of years and stuffed with office supplies.


Most recently I went back to basics and painted it satin black and added some ceramic knobs that I found at Pier One. But the knobs were the wrong color, so I bought some cheap nail polish in the blue color I wanted and just gave them a manicure! It now serves as a handy bedside table in my guestroom.
               

What I learned from this (these) projects:

1. Painting stripes on a dresser isn't hard...painting them well, is.

2. Nail polish is an easier alternative to paint on small ceramic knobs since it's thicker (covers better) and dries so quickly.

3. I was about to post this dresser back on CL when I thought...why get rid of something so versatile? This is the fourth room I've used it in. Who know where I'll use it again?

The writing's on the wall...

Big...blank...wall...in our newly remodeled basement.
How to fill it? A word or two, in big letters, rescued from signs from businesses gone by the wayside?
Sure, why not?
The local HOOTERS had closed and soon after we saw the sign posted on CL for sale for $2000 (no lie).
Ok, that was not an option...but somewhere, here in town, there's a frat house with some new wall art and some pledges eating only mac and cheese for a few weeks to pay for it. Enjoy, boys.



This time Craigslist didn't really come through, but eBay did. After we decided on our words, my husband got bidding. Metal letters, plastic, foam: it didn't matter. About $150 later, we had accumulated all the letters we needed. Then we repainted each of them with paint I already had.






What I learned from this project:                     
1. There are a ton of letters out there reasonably priced for a fun project like this.
2. Once we started looking for letters I couldn't stop lusting after signs all over town.
3. The "e" kept falling off the metal square we glued it to, so we switched to screwing it onto a piece of plywood.
4. The HOOTERS sign would have been too big for our wall anyway.

Nothing...but the kitchen sink

The first major project we undertook after we moved in was redoing the kitchen. The cabinets were dated and in poor condition and the countertop was turquoise ceramic tile...that's right, turquoise. No change in layout was planned, just replacing the cabinets, countertop, sink and faucet. The appliances were only a few years old, so they could stay. We wanted this project completed soon after we moved in so that it would cause the least amount of disruption.
That meant we really didn't have the luxury of time to look for Craigslist bargains for the big items, but we did find our white porcelain sink on CL. We found a brand new, never used Eljer sink for $65 that retailed for between $400 - 600. The price we paid was actually far less than a dollar a pound. (This sucker weighed over 100 lbs!) The same seller also had a brand new bathroom faucet for $25 that we snapped up to update the guestroom bath.

What I learned from this project:
1. It may not be sexy, but the sink was a super bargain.
2. There is no good reason ever for a  kitchen countertop to be turquoise.

Basement bath...

There came a time when we looked at our sorry excuse for a "finished" basement, and realized it was time to pull the trigger on a major overhaul. The layout wasted space and wasn't configured in a way that met our needs, so we hired a contractor to remodel it. Nothing fancy: no tricked out party rooms with water features or wine cellar. Just a TV room with some office space, a code conforming bedroom, a bathroom, and a storage room.
The contractor ripped everything out including the studs and we sold all the salvageable stuff. The old bathroom vanity, mirror, and beige toilet, the old gas fireplace insert, a couple of doors, and even the drop ceiling were posted to Craigslist and scooped up by several people.
There were a few other things that we couldn't sell, so we donated those items to the Habitat Restore.

For our new reconfigured bathroom, we were able to score these on Craigslist: a brand new white Toto toilet ($50), enough gray porcelain floor tile for this bath and a later project ($11), and the new IKEA vanity ($230).

What I learned from this project:

1. Gray and yellow is my new favorite color combo.

2. Contractors are very skeptical of homeowners making purchases on their own.

3. I respect their views...to a point.