Paint and Glaze Nightstand Makeover

Happy Monday, everyone! This is a very short post on two nightstands I painted last week..

Hubby found these for a reasonable price at a garage sale he went past a few weeks ago. (he knows my heart :) )

As you can see, they are in very good shape, they just need some paint in my opinion.:)

I gave them a coat of white Do It Best brand paint in satin. I applied this with my sprayer.

After that was nice and dry, I glazed them. I used Valspar’s antiquing wax.

I used a bristle brush to brush it onto the stand, one section at a time, and rubbed it off with a rag. Since these stands have a lot of extra moldings, it gave the wax a place to settle in, adding character. I also applied the antiquing wax to the tops and didn’t wipe it off. It gave them a nice dark color and still allowed the grain of the wood to show through..

Little miss Pebbles always knows when to show her sweet self, even if it’s in a photo bomb form. :)

I painted both stands the same so they would make a nice match for a bedroom or living room. They will be available in the up coming Holiday Farmhouse Show by Walnut Creek Vintage Fair.

I’ve also been working some on scrolls, which I plan to have at the fair, weather permitting.

I hope you all have a great week! Thanks for visiting my blog!

-Mary

IKEA Dining Set Makeover

Garage saling is my favorite and most productive method of snagging furniture to repurpose. There’s no better feeling in the bargain hunting world than spotting a piece as you walk up to a garage sale that you know has lots of potential and then seeing an awesome price on it!

Hubby enjoys this as well and he’s a fun partner to go with to spend a day searching for bargains. A month or so ago we spent a few days down in Columbus doing just that. Unfortunately the truck wasn’t available at the time so we resorted to our SUV. Let me just say it was filled to the brim. If it wasn’t for hubby’s strategic stacking I would never have gotten this amount home. 

                 

As you can see in the above right picture you see a glimpse of today’s feature, all squeezed in!

Here are a few before pictures..

      

Judging by how they look, I would say someone painted the IKEA set black and later used the pieces as a surface to lay something down that was being painted white. A fairly messy set, but that’s what made it cheap! :)

After a bit of sanding, cleaning, and painting, the set didn’t look like the same furniture! I used my usual technique of air spraying with my trusty sprayer. I always water the paint down to run more smoothly through the sprayer. The paint is also my usual, Do It Best, from Ormes hardware. I got a satin base and my favorite color, Spectral.

After the paint was dry, I distressed the edges, bringing some of that black out. I also added numbers to the backs for added character.

Now, for the end result..

This set will be available at the up coming Farmhouse Fair on Oct. 6th. Mark your calendars, you all..It will be fun! :)

Here is a quick preview of some of the projects I will be working on in the next few weeks..

Hope to see you all there! Thanks for visiting my blog and have a great day!

-Mary

Rustic/Western Farmhouse Decor

Growing up my life revolved around horses. I still love them but things change once you have a family. Priorities change. I still have dreams of owning a horse someday, but for now there’s simply too much else going on.

I am still attracted to western /rustic decor, but I haven’t incorporated too much of it into our home until just recently I added a small touch here and there. Growing up, my room was always filled with horse posters, Indian decor and even an old saddle. I must say, I went fairly extreme, but that was what floated my boat at the time.

I will share a few tips on adding a touch of rustic decor to the farmhouse look. One of the reasons I like this type of decor is that it’s easy to DIY.

Here I added wheels to the base of a stump to make it portable. The stump is very weathered and dried out. I applied a coat of polycrylic to it to give it a smooth finish. It will serve as a sturdy end table.

I love these old barn pulleys and put this one to use as a light holder.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post called The Last Ride that talks a little about my first horse I owned. His name was Flint. He was a special little horse that I will never forget. I decided to create a little memory plaque of him and display it in our entryway area.

For this plaque I scanned a picture of Flint and printed it out in reverse onto parchment paper. Since the picture is larger than my printer can print, I did this in two sections. I then rubbed it off onto a piece of wood, getting a distressed black and white look. I added the quote “some of my best friends never say a word to me” using the same method. (so true) :)

I thought what would be more fitting than a few cactuses on the shelf with Flint?

The cactuses in the pitcher come from my mom’s granite bucket of cactuses..

While I was at her house getting these prickly little plants, I couldn’t resist getting a few snapshots of her beautiful gardens..

Back inside to the entryway..

The shelf is a simply a piece of old barn wood from the very stall that was Flint’s..

I used my old boots as a flower holder..

If you like the shiplap in the background you can read all about it here. It’s just one of the many touches I’ve been adding here and there to achieve the rustic style.

For other inspiring ideas check out King Ranch Saddle Shop. They carry a variety of leather goods, ranging from home decor accessories and furniture to cowgirl boots which you can find here.

I hope you enjoyed this post, even though it is a bit different from my usual ones!

Thanks for visiting!

-Mary

Faux Shiplap

Where has this summer gone? Seriously, it seems like only yesterday that school let out! What a great summer we have had! The weather was perfect and we were able to do a lot of outdoorsy things. Lawns never turned brown with all the nice rain we had. I always love summer but it seems like this summer was exceptionally beautiful.

I almost feel like I should apologize for not writing any blog posts since the vintage fair in June! Some of you have been asking whether I’m ok that I haven’t posted. I am fine. :) We have had so many changes in the past few months that have kept me very busy. Hubby started his own business of hauling furniture and I started a part time job of secretary work, that I can do at home on my own time, which is nice. I also do hubby’s paperwork so I’m at the computer a lot! There’s always something to do with my Etsy shop and there’s also always a piece of furniture that needs a new look. But most importantly, I have three guys that are pretty important to me that I want to do my best to take care of. :)

For all you faithful Vintage fair fans, check out the Holiday Farmhouse Show by Vintage Fair that is coming up in October! I’m so excited for it! I am planning on having a small booth there and I’m sure there will be many vintagey, farmhouse vendors again. Hope to see you all there! Mark your calendars for October 6th from 10 to 8..

Now, I gotta say I am about bursting to share my latest project with you! For a while now, I’ve had this uncontrollable yearning for some shiplap in our home. I began eyeing some walls and weighing the pros and cons. I knew I couldn’t spend a ton of money so I began to toss some ideas around in my head. I remembered the plank door I did a year or so ago, where I used strips of underlayment to get the plank look. Why wouldn’t that work on a wall also?

So, I went to a local lumberyard and ordered four 4’x8’ pieces of Luon underlayment, 3/16” thick. They had such a good rate to cut it into 5” strips for me so I just got them to do it. Each piece cost around $14 so I was able to get everything for under $100!

The pieces were pretty rough, so I ended up spending a lot of time sanding the edges and the one side.

After the pieces were sanded nicely, I gave them a coat of Zinser 123 white primer. I used my sprayer to apply but it could have been brushed or rolled on too.

After these steps were completed, it was ready to install.

The walls I chose were by the fireplace mantle, entryway and another wall that I want to convert to a office space eventually.

The wall above the mantle is of course all covered in screw holes so I thought what better way to take care of that than cover it up?

I found and marked the studs in the walls, so I would know where to place the nails.

I chose not to glue the strips down, but it could be done. I thought if someone would ever want to remove the “shiplap” (heaven forbid), the walls wouldn’t be ruined with glue. (When I took the picture I still wasn’t sure whether I would use glue or not.)

Now, the fun part..

I used popsicle sticks to wedge between the pieces for the spaces..

Once in a while I would use the level, just to make sure everything was nice and even. I started at the top and made sure that first piece was level, since most houses’ walls aren’t perfectly level. If I had to cut a piece, I used the cut-off for the next row, and so on.. That way none of the seams matched up.

After all the walls were covered, I puttied only the nail holes that seemed out of place. I didn’t fill the holes that were in the studs, since I wanted a natural shiplap look. Once in a while I had to pin in other areas that didn’t go into the stud, so I puttied those.

I applied two coats of satin paint, by Do It Best. I used my favorite color right now, Spectral.

So here is the before and then the after..

I chose to keep the trim along the bottom, but I think it would look great with boards all the way to the bottom and maybe just a quarter round to trim it. I also placed trim on the corners of the walls to give it a finished look.

I can’t wait to decorate the mantle with the new look!

I got my son, who has some electrical experience, to redo the light switch and outlet. They had to be brought out level with the shiplap.

I also started working on the entryway wall, which I will share with you soon!

So, now our house has once again made another turn towards becoming a farmhouse, which suits me just fine! :)

This was a very easy, not too expensive project and I would encourage any of you who love the fixer upper look of shiplap to go for it! :)

Thanks for visiting! And, hopefully it won’t go so long again until I post!

-Mary