Disaster! and Other Less Melodramatic Stuff

Remember my crazy plan to do leopard print curtains for the living area?  Well, I finally got enough spare change scraped together to buy 21 more yards (after already buying 3 earlier as a tester) only to discover...

(cue dramatic music)
dun dun dun!

... it sold out!  After much hair pulling and internet searching, I finally found another source, but it was almost double the price, so with that I scrapped my plans for crazy leopard curtains and decided to go with the great blog standby - painter's dropcloth curtains!  I know, they're kind of the opposite spectrum from leopard print curtains, but I've waited a year to put curtains up and it was starting to drive me insane.  I'm not completely crazy about the color in comparison to my walls (which I'm not supposed to paint since I'm a renter).  I am thinking of painting them with a stencil, but I haven't decided quite yet.  I'm definitely still going for the wide black trim inspired by Dwellers without Decorators:

 

In other news, we're taking a trip to the beach this weekend.  It's going to be a very quick trip, but I'm hoping to get in at least a few hours of quality lounge/tanning time (just enough to banish the pasty white off my winter legs).  I might even bring a book.

Have a good weekend!

Vivian and Knox a.k.a. A Tale of Two Nightstands

The pair of nightstands I've been plugging away at were finally finished this weekend.  It was a long week - lots of sanding, wood filling, painting, and waiting for things to properly dry.  The good news is that I do like them a lot, although they didn't exactly turn out as I hoped.

Here's the before...

And the after...


Meet Vivian and Knox (get it?)

Remember my plan to try and keep the doors by turning them around?  Well, that didn't work because the doors were slightly beveled on the inside so they left a gap when I turned them around.  So I went with Plan B - leaving the bottom open.  I worried it would be too cavernous, but once I put some books in there, I think it looks good.



Sorry about the crooked shot, our good computer with the editing software is being worked on.

 I polished up the brass hardware with some Brasso. 


I think the color looks great, but I'm not super happy with the "gloss" finish.  I wanted them so shiny they looked wet, but using the flat paint process didn't give me that.  I've had more success using oil-based gloss paint, like this project.  I might decide to put some high gloss poly on them if they make it in the wipe-on version.  (They already have a coat of wipe-on satin finish poly underneath the spray gloss topcoat.)  However, the more likely scenario is that once they are done curing in the dining room, they will get moved into the bedroom, cluttered up, and I'll end up keeping them as-is.  And I'm okay with that - I'm ready to cross this project off the to-do list for good.

Cost (in nice round numbers):
$60 - nightstands (on Craigslist)
   7   - quart of primer
   5   - gallon of green paint (OOPS paint)
 10   - 2 cans of clear gloss lacquer spray paint
   6   - 2 1x3x8 whitewood lumber (for base)
 15   - brushes, rollers, and miscellany, some of which I had on hand (estimation)
$103

Not too shabby for one-of-a-kind, statement-making nightstands. 

See the other steps: inspiration, buying and adding new bases and prepping for paint.

$10 Chair

Saturday, I somehow managed to wrangle the family into a Goodwill visit.  Not sure how it happened since 3 out of 4 of us were obviously not that thrilled with the idea.  But their sacrifices (come one, it was like 20 minutes - stop your pouting already) were all worth it because I found this beauty:

$10! (in case you missed the title - okay, actually because I wanted to brag some more)

I think this chair could be used outside as long as it's covered since it's made out of teak and wicker.  I tried it on the front porch (which is an awkward size - too small for almost everything, but too large to not have something).  Unfortunately, it's too big for the space, so it has been moved inside. 

The stripes are cute for outside, but won't work in the living room.  However, that's fine because I have the perfect fabric for it.  I just don't have a lot of it and I would definitely want the pattern to match up.  So I'm not sure if I'll risk making the cushions myself (well, having my mom make them under my watching eyes) or hire them out.  Anyone have a ballpark figure for the price of recovering two cushions?

Nightstands, Part Deux

Sorry if you don't like spread-out blog posts where one project takes forever to reveal instead of the instant gratification of scrolling down to the bottom of the post for a big reveal.  I realize I've been a fairly bad blogger of late and I'm trying to get back into the swing of it all by blogging my nightstands project.  Only, being the impatient girl that I am, I started writing the posts as soon as I started working on the nightstands, so I'm basically writing tonight about what I did last night and today.  So, consider this a warning - no instant gratification here.  Instead, settle in and enjoy more details on prep work, because these things are taking a lot of prep work.

The look I'm going for on the nightstands is a high gloss emerald green.  The master bedroom is mostly neutral colored, so I want them to stand out like big emerald jewels - the furniture equivalent of Angelina Jolie's Oscar earrings.

Via

I'm following Honey & Fitz's guide to getting a high gloss finish.  She stresses the importance of the prep work, something I have the tendency to skimp on.  So I decided to take my time and try and get as flawless of a finish as I can achieve.  Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a lot of interesting photos since it's a lot of monotony, so I'll try to get through them quickly.

After building the new bases, I filled all of the dings and screw holes with wood filler.  I prefer the stuff in the tub and generally spread it on with my fingers.  Overfill it, because it might shrink as it dries.  Make sure you wait the appropriate time, then sand, fill some more, and then sand again.  I know it's ready when I can close my eyes and run my hand over the wood and not feel any imperfections.  You cannot use paint to fill in these imperfections, it will only exaggerate them, especially in a glossy finish, so get the wood filler right.

Sanding is a big theme of this project.  After every sanding step, I carefully vacuum, wipe with a dry cloth and then wipe with a wet cloth.  I'm a big fan of microfiber for this step.  I picked up this cleaning mitt at the Dollar Tree (for $1, yo) and have had the same results with it that I experienced with more expensive tack cloths in previous projects.

Once I felt everything was consistently smooth, I moved on to priming.  I bought this primer at Lowes for about $7 for a quart.  It's water-based and cleaned up nicely.  I used a 1-inch angled brush to get into crevices and corners, followed by a four-inch foam roller (the one specifically made for cabients).

Here's the cabinets after one coat of primer.  You do not need a solid look to the paint, just enough to help the paint stick.  This was enough for me, so I stopped after one coat and moved onto the fun part - the final color!  I'll save those pictures for later, but I'm super excited about how it's looking so far.

New Nightstands!

Remember back in January when I mentioned I was looking for a pair of nightstands for the master bedroom?  Well, I finally found a pair on Craigslist this past weekend.  Despite not looking for a particular style, the search took so long because I definitely had a final vision in my head.  It needed to have lots of storage - definitely a drawer and additional shelves or open storage space - and it needed to look good once I painted it emerald green, so I was leaning towards brass hardware.  Of course, if you've ever read this blog before, you're not going to be terribly surprised by the fact that I came home with a pair of campaign nightstands.

I paid $60 for the pair and couldn't wait to get them home and get working.  They're not as much real wood as I would prefer - mostly laminated MDF - so wood enthusiasts can calm down over the paint treatment.  And notice the horrible bun feet - they'll be on the midterm later.


Please disregard the mess in my garage - we also had a garage sale this weekend.

First, I removed the doors.  I hated the accordion fronts, which are unfortunately an integrated part of the door rather than being a piece I could easily cut out, so I planned on just getting rid or the doors completely.  The space behind the doors was fairly cavernous, so I wasn't sure if I was going to leave it open or perhaps add a shelf.

Next I removed the hardware.  When I'm working on a project, all the pieces get stored together until the end of the project.  You never know what you're going to need later on, so it's easier to keep it all together.  I use a highly sophisticated storage system - the ziploc bag.  Make sure you mark what project they are from.  If, like me, you tend to have a lot of "ongoing" projects, they all start to look similar after a while.  This was pretty labor intensive - I created quite a few gouges trying to pull off the brass corners.

Now onto the bun feet.  There's nothing wrong with bun feet, but their style doesn't belong on these nightstands.  The buns, however, disagreed.  I tried to unscrew them so I could save them for a future project, but whatever space-age glue the previous owner used to attach them was not budging.  I'm sure I could have found a saw that would have helped me remove them, but my plan from the beginning was to add a box frame on the bottom, so I decided to simply work around the ugly buns.

After this semi-setback, I made a nice discovery:  the door turned backwards looked mighty nice.

I immediately scratched the plan to keep the space open and decided to reattach the doors backwards.  Hopefully this works out, I'm blogging in real time over here.

To build the new bases, I picked up two 1x3x8s at Lowes for under $3 each.  I picked the whitewood since I was going to paint them anyway, but I tried to find the nicest, straightest boards they had, which took some searching. 

I made a simple box around the buns.  I don't have a Kreg jig (oh, how I want one), so I used cleats to help attach the boards, as well as countersunk screws. 

I like the new bases so much more than the ugly buns.  Don't you?

Unplanned Hiatus

Sorry I've been so MIA lately.  My job right now (which is basically me locked in room with 10 toddlers, by myself, for 11 hours a day) is completely draining me of the will to live, much less put together blog posts.  Hopefully change is in the works, so I can get back to thinking in complete sentences and not passing out at 9 pm like a fifth grader.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Week 1 in the Garden

Gardening is a skill I much admire and covet.  Every spring I have big dreams of turning my lackluster yard into a beautiful garden.  It has yet to happen, although this year I finally started a vegetable garden.  It's the first time I have tried to grow vegetables.  I'm excited, although I'm trying to keep it in check as my previous gardening experiences have almost all been complete disasters.  I even have trouble keeping houseplants alive.  So having a go at a real vegetable garden is pretty ballsy in my book.

This (mis)adventure started last week.  We had some spare lumber on hand that the boyfriend had picked up.  If you are interested for your own project, I used six 2x6s and two or three 2x2s.  The boards weren't all in the best condition (some warping and dings), so I didn't go to town making sure I had everything perfectly centered or squared.  I cut the 2x6s at 36" for the sides and 80" for the front and back.  Then I cut the 2x2s down to 8" and used them as my anchors.  I hammered the 2x2s into the ground in the corners and then used outdoor screws to attach the 2x6 boards.  I thought I would use a lot more 2x2s, but I just needed one in each corner for the boxes to be stable.  In the end, it looked like this:

Obviously, my raised beds are not really all that raised, and I'll tell you why.  Most places in Austin boast a thin layer of dirt before you hit rock, but we, surprisingly, seem to have very nice soil in our backyard.  And since I'm 88% sure that this entire project is going to turn out to be a disaster, I also didn't want to spend a huge chunk of money on bags of dirt.  Our backyard is completely fenced in and receives very few animal visitors, so in the end I thought a simple 6-inch wall would be protection enough (mostly from the lawn maintenance guys).

My son, who is very excited and active in this project, and I pulled up the grass and the boyfriend came in to help us mix up the native dirt with the some manure and Miracle Grow for vegetable gardens.  I bought mine at Wal-Mart, who seemed to have the best prices of the stores I checked. 

Next came the planting.  I tried to buy items that we eat a lot of, and in the end I bought way too many seeds and bulbs for my planter capacity.  I found this lovely plan online and used it as a rough guide to a family starter garden:

Here's what I planted in the first garden:

And in the second:

As you can tell, I bought plants for the peppers and tomato.  Everything else I'm attempting to grow from seeds.  Since I didn't get started on this entire project until last week, I sowed them straight into the ground instead of starting them inside in starter beds.  I'll probably change that next time, since it's much easier to correctly space plants and then you don't have to worry about thinning them.  But first we'll see if I make it through this season with any success.

I also bought more herbs that I'm going to grow in some containers.  I'll hopefully get that project started this weekend.  Any other newbie farmers out there?  Or old pros with some sage advice?