Patio Furniture Redo

My outdoor patio furniture was on it's last legs and it was either time to invest in a new set or rehab what I had. Of course I decided to redo what I had! I felt like I had nothing to lose, because the furniture was in such bad shape, so I took some risks.

Before

First, I decided to stain the furniture with a black/ebony stain from Minwax. I haven't ever used a colored stain before, so I had no idea how it would look. One of the couches and the chair's cushions were faded and ripped in places. They were beyond repair! Patio cushions are very expensive to replace and I've found it difficult to find the right sizes. I was very lucky to find this great pattern that fit from Walmart for about $30, I needed five.

After: new stain and cushions

Up close of the beautiful black stain

 On the larger couch, I found the cushions to be intact and decided to paint them. They were a light beige, but had stains and discoloration. They needed to be thrown out. Unstead, I used a regular dark grey paint, mixed with water and fabric medium. I found a few tutorials online on how to paint fabric and it turned out beautiful. I painted at least three coats of paint, letting it dry in between. It looks pretty awful after the first coat, but it gets better with each layer.

First coat on left, dirty with midlew on right

After: painted patio cushions

Finally, I recovered all the pillows. Armed with a Joann's Fabric coupon, I picked an orange duck fabric for one side, and a black and white pattern of outdoor fabric for the other side. They look great against the black pattern of the cushions and the grey.

 

I also tried painting the pillows, but in the end only kept one. This is a silver metallic spray paint with black fleur-de-lis. I like how it turned out.

In the end, I only spend $160 on the cushions from Walmart ($32 x 5) and $15 for the Ebony Minwax stain. Pretty good for a whole new patio set!

Finished product!

Three Toned Dresser Redo

This project Mom and I got to do together, which is very rare! We painted it with love for my niece who was spending the summer with my family in California. My guest room doesn't have a dresser, which a long term guest needs. So after scouring a local Free Cycle site with no luck, I put a WANTED notice on Free Cycle and immediately someone offered up this simple dresser. 

Mom and I picked up these beautiful glass knobs at Cost Plus World Market and used paints I already had on-hand. 

My niece picked the colors and wanted to do three different colors. We removed the original wood knobs, cleaned and sanded down the entire dresser. We left the top natural (no stain!), just sealed it with Wipe On Poly. With the drawers removed, we painted the body a light grey. The drawer fronts got Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Aubusson Blue and the drawer trim is a bright white. I started adding Floetrol to all my paints a awhile, and found it leaves a smooth, more consistent finish.

The whole dresser was finished with Wipe On Poly after it had dried.

Total cost was just the knobs (since I had everything else in my crafting stash), which wasn't too bad and it turned out so perfect!

Dining Room Hutch Redo with Custom Red Chalk Paint

Isn't it amazing how in decorating we get one idea about one item we want to change that leads to something else and then....before we know it, we've changed everything.  Take for instance, this old pine table I saw across the street from a restaurant while having lunch with friends.  It was sitting on the sidewalk with several other vintage tables at this antique shop and of course I could not leave without dragging my friends across the street to get a closer look.  Long story short, I took Mike back, he loved it and we bought it after deciding to get rid of my lovely Asian style dinning room set with sideboard. But this meant that I had to have something to replace the sideboard which held all my good dishes and silver serving pieces.  We also picked up 4 kinda matching Windsor chairs for the pine table.

 In the meantime, we were emptying Mike's Mom's home in Carthage Missouri of the family furniture after she passed.  There was this old 1950s hutch that caught my eye and after deciding that yes, it could hold with modification all 4 sets of my plates, cups, bowls, and silverware.  I knew I had to put color to the old hutch though.  So this blog is about that undertaking, turning the old rough looking hutch into something that would give my dining room a kick in the pants!!

Hutch being unloaded of its wares prior to shipping to Tulsa

I'd never undertaken such a major project and without my own shop or place to work, it was necessary to take the deck and the kitchen dining area for different parts of the project.

First, like in all my furniture painting projects, I had to sand the top to always expose the beauty of the wood prior to painting the remainder of the hutch.  That's just something I always do with every piece I paint. Guess you would say it is my signature.  Amber typically does the same thing with her furniture painting as well.  The top would then later get 4 coats of satin MinWax varnish between all sandings.  Again, I used my handy orbital sander to get a great finish.  However, once the old varnish was off using the orbital sander, the other 3 sandings required a fine grit sandpaper which I did by hand, not using the sander....just gives a finer finish.

And the work has begun

All hinges and drawers and doors had to be removed and sanded separately.  I used low odor mineral spirits to clean off all of the old residue from the sanding process and then wiped it all clean with soft rags that wouldn't leave lint.  Below I've taken the project to the kitchen dining area where I used lots of drop cloths and when painting I put the legs up on short blocks of 2 X 4s.

Making your own Chalk Paint

There are a few already made Chalk Paints on the market; most all are quite expensive.  I make my own with the following recipe.  Mix 1/3 cup of Plaster of Paris and 1/3 Cup of cool water; stir until completely smooth.  Mix that with 1 cup of really good latex paint (Lowe's Valspar works great) and stir thoroughly.  This will make enough chalk-finish paint for one coat on a six-drawer dresser. I needed to use two coats of the red paint to get the depth of color I wanted. Chalk-finish paint should not be stored and reused.  If you have a smaller project, mix smaller amounts of plaster, paint, and water in the same proportions. 

I did not create a video for you to watch the process but there are many online that will tell you about the painting, the distressing of the wood to give it a worn look and finally the waxing of the entire project. They do not all use the same process however.  For the finish, you can either use a chalk paint wax or a wipe-on or brush-on poly for the finish. I used a chalk paint wax and a brush and then buffed off the wax by hand with a soft cloth (lint-free). This process gives a nice patina to the color of the finish paint.

Getting There....

This was not easy...getting in to all of the shelves and backboard

Sanding and painting shelves on top of the hutch probably took the most time and was one of the most difficult of the entire process.

Ready to Wax the Chalk Paint

The knobs to the red China cabinet I had purchased in 1993 (see picture below) were wooden. I replaced the wooden knobs with a beautiful find from Anthropology.  But they no longer carry the same beautiful red knobs. However a trip to Hobby Lobby here in Tulsa to sort through their dozens upon dozens of beautiful choices for drawer pulls, produced an almost identical pull.  YES!!!

The two drawers had no dividers so Mike and I made dividers to hold the silver ware and serving pieces.

One drawer completed

I enjoyed the distressing part and if you've not done this, just take torn pieces of a medium grit sand paper and hit the places where wear and tear might happen. That would be around edges, stand out decor and really...any other place that strikes your fancy to add to the charm of the piece.  You wax the furniture piece after you distress it so you still need to wipe down any paint you've loosened.

One door completed

The top two shelves of the upper part of the hutch had groves for the plates to be displayed, but the top of the lower part of the hutch itself had no grooves to place a third row of plates.  I found a long strip of natural grain molding that matched the maple top of the lower part of the hutch and glued it in place ... just enough so that I could stand up another row of plates.  That way, my entire set of my best serving pieces were on display.  More than one way to "skin a cat..." as my sweet Mother used to say!

Hutch in place prior to bottom plates were on display so that you can see both the newly completed red hutch along with red China cabinet I've had since about 1993.

And there you go!  Really glad to finish this project

I am so glad that I chose this project.  It was fun, tested my patience and I learned so much.  I've got a really great old chair that will sit at the end of the pine table.  It is going to get a coat of matching red chalk paint soon.  But that is another day.  When that is done, there will be a post for the pine table, the Windsor chairs and the funky cushions that puts the icing on the cake.

Aluminum Kitchen Stool Rehab

Here is a super simple, but really stylish update for the kitchen: Aluminum Stools, done with spray paint. Originally the kitchen stools looked like this. We purchased them 19 years ago, so I have certainly gotten my use out of them.  

4+ years ago they needed a little sprucing up, natural wood tops had yellowed and the paint was chipped. After a good cleaning, I repainted the whole stool white. I printed off a Fleur de Lis from some online clipart, traced around it and painted it in with a pretty blue. I loved them like this!

But I was ready to try something new and had been admiring the new aluminum and metal stools I've seen around and wanted to copy the affect. I thought about buying new stools, but I already have two perfectly good ones, so why not paint them!

 I started by cleaning and sanding the stools and used a spray paint (Krylon Metallic Matte Aluminum) I already had. I always use a Spray Grip when I spray paint, and I LOVE mine! I started on the bottom and always make sure to shake my spray paint cans really well. I spray back and forth in a line, starting and finishing off my piece. I stop a few times in the middle to shake my can again.

Once the bottoms and insides were complete, I flipped the stools over and worked on the top and edges. Since I had painted these before, I knew where all the wear would show on them. After two good coats of the Aluminum paint,  I did a coat of clear finish and a 2nd clear finish coat just on just the heavy use areas (seat top and edges, spindles)

And here they are, the beautiful finished product! These get very high use in my household, so I hope they hold up well. They have definitely inspired me to find a few more metallic paint projects, what about you?!

Star Wars Bedroom

When it was time for my 9 year old son to get a "bigger boy" room of his own, I immediately knew we should go for a classic Star Wars theme! We had a great collection of the 70s and 80s Star Wars toys we had collected over the years, but he wasn't interested in really playing with them any more.

I'm a huge Star Wars fan myself, and I really enjoy sharing this interest with my boys. I wanted the room to by playful, but not childish. The room was a pale green, and I was not able paint it - so we had to work with that. My son fell in love with this orange comforter one day at Target, so our colors were picked! I was lucky to find the two saucer chairs at the local Good Will and the Chevron Rug at Walmart, which made the room super low budget.

Make Your Own Art

I love the idea of creating your own art and was looking for ways to make that happen in our Star Wars Bedroom. We did that in three different ways: Frame portraits of my son dressed up as Star Wars characters and two different toy displays: the character terrariums and the vehicle strip.

Displayed Toys: 

Character Terrariums

We decided to depict our favorite scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy in terrariums. We started by laying out all our characters to see who we had and what resources we could use. We used different mediums for each terrarium, and completely just used what we had on-hand. Like epsoms salts for the snow on Hoth, sand for Tatooine, lichen for the Dagoba swamp and black painted rocks and glitter for Death Star. I was SO happy to use an old pickle and candle jar for two of the terrariums (that totally justified my jar collection), but we needed a few bigger jars too that I ended up buying at Target. My son helped was completely involved in the creation of the terrariums and it was a great lesson in construction and physics... plus we had a good laugh. 

This idea was inspired by the book World of Geek Craft.

A Rebel boarding ATAT Walker on Hoth -  R2D2 and C3PO lost on Tatooine

"Luke, I am your father..." - Yoda teaches Luke how to use the force

Displayed Toys: 

Vehicle Strip

I had a great collection of Star Wars vehicles and envisioned a way to display them, where he could also pull them off and play. But they are all large toys, so they need to be store up the wall. We cut a 2"x4" to be about 6' long and paint it orange. We picked the coolest looking vehicles from the collect and used screws to hold them in place, but didn't ruin the toy and made it way to remove. The display is a nice use of vertical space in the room, don't you think?

Posters

The funnest part of the project was our "Photo Shoot". My son dressed up in his best (and only) suit and borrowed a variety of Dad's ties. Super cute, right? Well then we topped it off with our collection of Star Wars masks... and the result was awesome-ness! We chose the ties and different knots to go with the character, of course Darth Vader needed a red power tie with a Windsor Knot.

I had them printed at Walgreens, with a kind of Andy Warhol effect, in large poster sizes and used a Retail Me Not coupon to bring the price down to about $14 each. I picked up simple poster frames at Target and Walmart to finish them off.

Purchased Art

We had one more wall to fill and I found these great vintage pop art prints on Etsy for only $40 for all three. They incorporated the orange and green colors for the room and were a nice addition. The dresser is a $20 garage sale redo that I refinished with a neutral grey, that will fit in any room.

I could not be happier with how the room turned out and I hope it will last him for many years.

Get the look: