50 Shades of Spray

Just a quick peak in my daughter's bedroom so you can see how much fun spray paint can be! 

It all started with old frames gathered from thrift shops.  I popped out the glass and coated them in some lovely shades of Liquitex, a quick and easy project for sure!  

 There once was an old cubby box that nobody loved.  It came home and received a loving coat of teal spray, finished with a little sanding to rough it up and a coat of high gloss black on the legs.  Lonely cubby got a new life and L got a new bookshelf.

This ceramic owl was a find from our original "hunt" in Humboldt.  I'm pretty sure it was brown and white when it came home, it's shiny purple now! 

 So easy, so fun! 

~A~

China Cabinet meets Media Stand

I am going to take you back a bit. Back to one of my very first ReNew projects. Back when I didn't even really know it was a Renewal.

My media stand. I had been looking for something for awhile to fill the space. Something that wasn't your usual cookie cutter, particle board, honey oak media stand. We toyed with the ideas of built-ins, but they were going to be fairly costly.

I finally settled for an old two piece china cabinet on Kijiji. The kind that was an estate inheritance from your grandmother's house style of china cabinet. I fell in in love with the base. Great structure. The top ... Not so much. I went I check it out.

It was exactly as I had pictured. Still loved the base, it also had a matching mirror. The top was as hideous as I had expected with a curved, ornate top and dual glass doors. I asked if he would split the pieces up, and to my shock he agreed. Better yet he knocked the price down to $75 since I was only taking 2/3 of the package. I would still love to know what he did with that top?

I needed some color in my main room. I had an avocado green paint in mind. I gave it a light sand, painted it green and then distressed the edges. I removed the top drawer to free up a space for our media components. Swapped out the pulls. It was love! The mirror found a home in our mud room.

I tend to swap out furniture like the weather changes season, but this is one piece that has always felt like it was in the right place. I have yet to get bored with it even after almost 2 years, its still one of my favorites.

~T~

Campaign taste.

Less busy-ness. More accomplishment. 

That's my motto for 2013. Not a resolution. I don't make those, because I always break them anyway. But I do have a motto. 

There was lots of busy-ness (not just business) in 2012. Exhibit A: 

 

 
That's the number of photos on my iPhone right NOW. And I cleaned it out in August, so this is only about 4 1/2 months' worth. Busy-ness. 

And that busy-ness is what led me to deleting a photo of a dresser that I took back in August. It was a 'before' picture of a campaign-style dresser that I picked up for a mere $40. 

Add campaign furniture to the list of things that make me swoon. Milk glass, cloches, chalk anything, quatrefoil, and campaign furniture. Swoony-swoon-swoon. 

I enlisted Google to hunt down a 'before' picture that would show you just what I was working with. This is almost identical to the dresser I bought:

Not my dresser, not my picture. {My picture was cuter, because I had my daughter stand next to the dresser when I took it. And she makes everything cuter. Trust me.

I took my time with this one, carefully removed all the tarnished brass hardware, taped off all necessary areas, primed and sanded and painted and sanded and painted and sanded and painted some more. I'm usually a bit of a perfectionist, but I really brought out the big guns for this project.

I went with a high gloss grey, and used spray paint because I wanted a perfectly smooth finish. 

I painted the hardware, too. Grabbed a liquid gold paint from Michael's and slapped it on. Perfectly. Carefully.

Of course, AFTER I got this dresser all done, I (unintentionally) found tutorials on removing the tarnish from brass hardware, and the best gold paints to mimic brass. No matter. I like it the way it is. It's perfect just my style.

 

Ahhhh. Accomplishment.