Exciting News

This just in.....I was featured on another blog called "Perfectly Imperfect"! She does these weekly post where she has other blogs post their furniture creations/redo's on her site and at the end of each week she picks her favorites. Well, on a whim I decided to post my "planter stand turned picture frame" onto her site and guess what......I was listed second in her favorites!!! As you can probably tell, I was pretty excited about it b/c I wasn't expecting that at all. Anywho, be sure to check it out on her blog at http://www.perfectlyimperfectblog.com/2011/08/all-things-furniture-9.html  Thank you Shaunna at Perfectly Imperfect, you really made my day! Love you all!
-Amy

Project Chalkboard

Alright, so I know it's been awhile since my last post. I've been very busy with work, but I did finally manage to get enough time to complete my chalkboard. You may remember, I bought this beautiful frame at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $1.

Well, after some work, I've managed to turn it into this.

Ok so here was the process:

First, I bought a piece of plywood and traced the shape that the board needed to be to fit in the frame.

I cut this out with an electric handsaw. This was my first time to use an electric saw and no injuries, woohoo!
Here is the backing once it fit into the frame.

Next, I sanded, and sanded.....and sanded some more, primed and then put several layers of chalkboard paint on my backing.

Now on the frame, I put paint stripper on all of it to take off the varnish and some of the stain/paint. This was very tedious work getting into all the nooks and crannies of the detailed woodwork. Once the varnish was all stripped off, I sanded the frame down.

Then I primed the frame and painted the first coat of paint on.

The next evening, I painted a second coat of paint over the frame in a different color. On the second coat, instead of coating the frame, I did a sort of dry brush/glaze so that the ivory from the first coat of paint showed through in all the crevices.

The paint colors I used were Ivory Tower from Loews and Nantucket Dune from Sherwin Williams. Thanks to my very generous boss, I got a whole box full of paint samples and pints for free!

God is good!

So here are some close ups of the wood work and paint color.

So there it is! Another project completed. Love you all!

-Amy

A past project

I thought I'd take some time to show you a project I've done in the past. I found a broken plant stand in a pile of trash out by the curb. It looked exactly like the picture below (sorry so blurry).

I brought it home and pondered what it could become. I decided that maybe it would just be better used as scrap wood for some other project but as I started pulling off slats of wood, I realized that this could be a great piece of wall art, and on further inspection for pictures as well. I was able to unhinge the table to make it fold flat. Then I pulled all the slats off of the center square and a few others around it. The squares that were now "slat-free" were going to hold pictures. I cleaned the wood and screwed what used to be the plant stand legs together so that my frame would stay together flat. I also had to saw off some of the extra length of the legs once it was flattened. Once my frame was finished, I brought it inside and realized I didn't have any pictures that fit in the open squares perfectly, so I cut some cardboard to the right size, covered each one with a different type of fabric, stuck some of my wedding pictures on top of the fabric, then staple gunned each cardboard piece to the back of the frame. After all that, this was the finished product:

I think it turned out pretty good. What do you think?

Also, on a side note, I have been talking about starting an Etsy shop for quite a while now, and I'm hoping this will actually happen some time in the near future. I may be putting various pieces that I restore on my blog on the etsy site and also some jewlery holders. Below is one that I've made and use myself:

Sorry the picture quality isn't great. The thing up in the top right corner is a feather hair piece. The backing that the earrings hang on is lace fabric. Each jewlery holder is different and I can custom make them to order (frame size, color, backing material etc.). If anyone is interested in one before I get the Etsy site up let me know, and I will announce when I do open an Etsy store. That's it for now. Love you all!

-Amy



For all you coffee lovers

Well I decided to begin a project today. I chose the smallest and what I hoped to be the easiest restoration of everything I had. You gotta start somewhere. I chose the spice rack. First, I scrubbed the spice rack with an old toothbrush, then wiped it down and sprayed it with lysol, maybe not the most professional way but hey, I'm new at this. Next I unscrewed the lazy susan on the bottom that allows it to rotate around. You don't even want to know what kind of things were living under there... Once clean I soaked the screw and the ball bearings in WD-40 to remove some rust and get it to spin more fluidly. While those were soaking, I wiped the wood down with "Feed-N-Wax" which is a type of liquid bees wax wood polish. The wood was so dry is soaked it all up and also sort of stained the wood a darker but still natural color. Then I used wood glue to reinforce some splits in the wood, clamped it together and let it dry. Once dry, I took the piece outside and sprayed 3 light coats of wood sealer on just to give it a little bit of shine and help protect the wood. Lastly, I rescrewed the turn table on the bottom and voila! But wait...somehow all this time thinking this would be my new spice rack I never actually thought to see if my spices would fit in this. And wouldn't you know that they don't fit. So now I'm thinking, "Great I just did all this work and now I don't have any idea what I can do with this." But then my eyes fall on my coffee maker, an excellent Keruig single pod coffee maker which I love. "Hmm... do you think..." I pick up a coffee pod and it perfectly fits in my so-called spice rack! Some things are just meant to be. I guess God new I would get more use out of a coffee pod holder than a spice rack :)

Below is the spice rack before and after. I know not really much of a change, but the wood really needed some TLC. I may paint this in the future but I kinda think this new wood stained color is growing on me.

Here's my bucket o' tools for this project.

And finally, my beautiful edition to the coffee corner... lovely.

It's only just begun...

 So..... I've been on several dumpster dive runs over the last few days (a.k.a. driving around and looking for anything of interest set out by the trash and throwing it in the back of my truck). And here is a break down of the things I've found and also some things I've collected in months past but have yet to "beautify".  Oh yeah, here's the best part: everything below was free unless said otherwise! gotta love that!

This is an old spice rack, it even spins around. I plan on restoring it.

Old screen door, needs quite a bit of work.

Stump with roots. Saw it on the side of the road and thought it would make for interesting rustic decor.

Chair frame. I plan on replacing the missing parts and putting a cushion on the seat.

Here's the pieces to the matching chair above. Not sure what I'm going to do with these yet.

This is one side of folding closet doors. Also not sure what the future of these will be.

Bought this at a garage sale for $5. I think i'll give it some new paint and vintage knobs.

This is a coffee table/game table that I bought at a garage sale for $5. The two outside drawers are actually game boards and the middle drawer is supposed to hold the game pieces. We have yet to see the game boards b/c they were screwed shut but don't worry, we'll get there. Really excited to restore this one.

Just a pile of scrap wood and a moving palate. I have great plans for the moving palate but you'll just have to wait and see :)

Bought this beauty at a garage sale for $1, no that's not a typo, $1! This is going to become a chalkboard. I haven't decided if I'm going to paint over the frame or not.

Found this medicine cabinet about a year ago. It's a little unstable and needs some work. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it as a medicine cabinet or take out the mirror and turn it into a decorative wall hutch or shadowbox.

This came from the dumpster at the apartment I used to live at. Yes, someone dared to put this in the dumpster. The nerve. I saved it and have been using it ever since. I plan on sanding it down and repainting it possibly a white-washed taupe or mustard yellow and spray painting the handles bronze. I know it sounds crazy but I think it could turn out great.

Just your typical door, but Sean and I plan on making a kitchen island and this is going to be our counter top.

This is a smaller version of those great big wire spools. I thought it was a great decor piece. It's in pretty bad shape so I'm not sure if I'll be able to use it but we shall see...

Another shipping palate. Could be a cool head board, or a magazine rack...the possibilities with these things are endless.

Thanks to Sean's hawk eyes we have this wonderful old window. Don't know what's going to happen to it yet but really it's great just as it is.

So there's the breakdown of my future projects. I will be working on them as I have time and energy and I'll keep you posted!