Smashing Teacups

A few months ago after we moved into our house I had some money that I wanted to use to buy furniture and things for our house. I looked on Craigs List a lot and found a few things (like a china cabinet I'll discuss later)but I also found an antique bedroom set just a few miles away. I loved the set, it was in great condition but they wanted more than I could pay. So I went away sadly hoping I would find another great set like that.
About a week later I got a text from the lady saying she had sold everything but the vanity and she asked if I wanted it. I texted her back and said, yes! How much? She wrote me back and said, nothing! You can have it for free. You see, this piece held a lot of memory for her as it had belonged to her aunt who had been special to her. Her aunt also apparently smoked a lot of cigarettes and was not careful with where she laid them. So the top of this vanity had a lot of burn marks from when she just laid her cigarettes on the top. Crazy, huh? Not sure how she didn't burn her house down!
Apparently because of this no one wanted the vanity! I had expressed a lot of interest in re-doing it so she remembered that and wanted someone to have it who would fix it up again. I pretty much threw my car seats out of my car and flew down to her house to load it up. And then I got home scared to death on how to conquer this piece.
I bought a sander, some sand paper, and a dark stain (my current favorite: Dark Walnut) and let it sit there for a little while. In the mean time I kept reading my favorite blogs and kept hearing about the wonderful new product called Chalk Paint. All the experienced furniture bloggers were raving over it so I decided to just dive into that. I found out there was a distributor for this paint just up the road from me and I went to pick some up.
Karla was great. She was so helpful and encouraging that I signed up for her class and bought three cans of paint and two cans of wax.
And that weekend I dove into my first project!

I started off by sanding the veneer top which was in great shape besides the burn marks.
I used 80 grit, then 120, then 220 and it worked really well.

A closer look at some of the burn marks.

Filled them in with some stainable wood filler that did a great job of filling the holes but did not really accept the stain very well.

As you can see...

First coat of paint. (Old White)

Painted the original drawer pulls black. (Graphite)

Did some clear and then some dark wax with a little distressing but I didn't really like the look. I am not a fan of the dark wax with the white, it just looks dirty to me, but that is my taste. :)

No worries! Just painted on a little more Old White to cover up the dark wax, clear waxed it again and it was done!

Such a pretty sewing table!

And that was my first project! It was so fun and it was very intimidating but after I dove in and got to work it got easier. It really encouraged me to just dive into a project and not let it sit there and stare at me. Its like when you're a kid and at the top of a very high diving board, the longer you stand there and stare at it the higher and scarier it is. But once you jump off you realize just how much fun it is! And the sooner you jump in the better!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

A whole bunch of afters!

Monday, September 26, 2011

Before and after - the desk that started it all

First post!