Desk Redo Times 2

Sometimes you just have to change things up.  I'm like that a lot with our house, especially with bold colors.  I loved this coral paint choice a few years back but now I'm over it and wanted something more subtle.  Plus, I really just wanted to paint something...its kind of a habit of mine, and I'm counting that as a good habit.  Painting a little piece of furniture like this is such a simple and easy (and cheap) way to update spaces in your home.  Its a new year and time for some new paint.  Navy it is.

Do some colors just kind of make you feel anxious or tense?  I'm probably just weird like that.  I really do like coral, orange and pink but there is something also about those colors that make me tense up if I'm around them for too long.  Please tell me if you share the same color aversion as me.  If you know me well you know I like blue of all varieties, its my fav. So when I wanted something more soothing to my soul I had to go with a color that made me calm.  Blue is it for me.

I just felt so much better immediately when it was all painted.  I love it.  I just used a quart of navy paint , a small foam roller and a little brush to do the job.  Probably took about an hour and a half to do two coats total.  I also learned its really hard to capture the true hue of some colors in photos.  This navy is really darker and moodier in person.  But you get the drift.

Random painting tip, while you are waiting between coats use a plastic baggie or plastic wrap to keep your brushes covered and from drying out.  This saves you mucho time and headache.  When we painted our house exterior we did this - everyday for weeks.  We only washed our brushes out in the end after two weeks of painting and wrapping them up at night.  It totally worked like a charm.  Some people may be picky about brush washing, I am not one of those.  I am just picky about paint colors.

I love how the hot pink paper lined drawer looks with the new navy hue.  Probably even better than before.

So to up the game even more for this little desk I changed up the drawer pulls.  I have had these glass pulls forever and I can't even remember where I got them from.  They were being used on Silas' dresser but we have been updating his room as of late and these were no longer in use - so these were perfect for this project.

Oh, and this drawer has stayed nice and organized.  

Now that this little desk has a new look its time for a chalkboard update.  The teal isn't going to cut it anymore.

We have been up to a lot around the house and I can't wait to share more of the projects we have been doing lately.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!  

Thrifted Luggage Stand Redo & Thoughts on Comparison

So a few weekends ago, my friend Erin and I went on a little thrift shop hunt to find some fun things.  It was not the most successful shopping trip but she came away with an old chair she is going to redo and I came away with an old ugly luggage stand.  It was pretty bad and needed some major tlc.  Here's what I did....

First I had to take off all of the old fabric straps.  It was fairly easy - they were just stapled on so it was just a matter of sitting down and slowly popping them off.

Next I decided on a color to paint the stand - I looove this glossy gray spray paint - Rustoleum Winter Gray.  Gray is one of my favorite colors for the house, its just soothing and relaxing to me.   So it received a couple of light coats of spray paint, and it was looking much, much better.

Then I debated on what I wanted to do with the straps.  I thought about new ribbon or going to the fabric store to find something to replace it with...but then I was in Target (always the beginning of a good score story) and I found these.....

I fell in love with the colors and immediately thought of using these for the straps for my luggage stand.  I'm all about using pops of coralish/pinky/orange in our house right now.  Its just too happy, love it.

So I decided to just recover the old straps with my new"fabric".  I simply used the old straps as a guide to cut my new covers and used a hot glue gun to secure the new fabric over the old - just making sure I kept everything tight.

Finally I just needed to break out the staple gun and staple my new straps on.

So much better right?  I like the fact that the luggage rack can be used in different ways, like as a side table or a play table for Silas.  Also, it can just fold up and store away when its not in use - so good for a small house - double bonus!

Something I have been thinking about this week is comparisons.  Comparing an ugly luggage rack to its new redo is one thing...but we take comparisons to a dangerous level lots of times.  We compare all sorts of things all of the time - we compare ourselves to others, and even worse- we compare our kids to other kids too.  Yuck.  I'm guilty of all of those things - as much as I wish I didn't have to admit.  As a blogger its easy to start comparing your blog to other blogs, your projects to others, your stats to others...as a teacher you might compare your successes with other teachers or the behavior of your class to other classes, businesses will compare their clients, numbers, ratings to others...teenagers will compare their cars, their clothes, their hair, the way they look (and adults do this too, lets be honest).  The list can go on.  We have this desire to be better, be on top, be number one - its dangerous.
Comparing also leads to envy and jealousy - which I think are even worse.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. Proverbs 14:30

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 1 Peter 2:1

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. James 3:16

Jesus came and turned the world upside down - turned our thinking upside down.  Instead of spending our time comparing ourselves, our acts and our deeds to others - which leads to envy and jealousy - we should be striving to live a life serving those people. We should be humbly emptying ourselves, shedding our pride and instead taking up our cross and living for the one and only thing that matters - Jesus.  Not our own ambitions, not striving for ultimate worldly sucessess or temporary things - but focussing on things eternal and striving for our purpose - which is to love God and love others.  We should live as a servant, longing to be like our Savior instead of the person next door.  Even rejoicing in being a servant and counting it as a blessing to be last.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Philippians 2:3

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 1 Peter 2:21

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Mark 8:34

When you find Jesus, you find peace in life.  You don't have to compare yourself to others anymore - Jesus is all you need.  He took your place on the cross and covers over all of your sins (even all of the envy and jealousy) - making you white as snow and perfect in His sight.  Our identity is now in Him - so no more comparing.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27

I need these verses and words often.  My prayer for you today is that you can find true peace and life in Jesus and that the comparing would stop.  All you need is Him.

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Easy Herringbone Painted Table

I have a fun project to share with you today!  It involves taking something old and dingy and changing it into something new and bright. 

I had this old table that I just couldn't get rid of.  I received it along with several other things from my grandma when she was moving and getting rid of things that she didn't want.  Even though I took this table I have never really liked it.  I never know where to put it and I have not really had a vision for what I wanted it to look like so it usually gets shoved in a corner and hidden away.   I tried to sell this thing, give it away, craigslist - you name it - but nobody wanted it...poor side table.  From far away I guess it doesn't look too bad, but when you look closer you can see that it was gross - scuffed, banged up and flaking...it needed some TLC.

I know this might look complicated, but I promise it was easy and pretty quick.  I have been all about a chevron pattern lately and I love the little tweak on a traditional chevron pattern in the form of herringbone -so that was my inspiration for this little table.  I decided if I couldn't get rid of it then I would embrace it and try to bring back some life into it (and actually enjoy it being in my house).  I have seen lots of herringbone stencil tutorials (or just stencil tutorials in general) and it always seems pretty tedious and time consuming.  This really totally wasn't at all - I promise, I quite enjoyed this project. So here's is little journey and some steps for creating and painting your own herringbone pattern for your furniture.

First thing I had to do was to paint the table white. I painted two light coats of primer and then two coats of white - I used spray paint for all of that.  Then I decided to paint the legs yellow - I used a leftover yellow paint from out laundry room project.  I totally forgot to take pictures of all of those steps but you can imagine it, I have faith in you.

Ok up next is a little tutorial on how to make an easy herringbone pattern.  I didn't pre-measure anything.  I just eyeballed it and adjusted my tape until I liked the way it looked.  Once its all painted its really hard to tell any slight variations in the pattern so it didn't bother me to not measure.  

PS - I used 1" painters tape.

Make sure you have a handy helper like I did - very important, especially if you like to clean up little pieces of tape from all over your kitchen.  

Oh, also make sure you take a minute to press down on all of your tape to esure you have a nice clean paint line.

Here's the sealer I used.  I have never used this kind but its what I already owned so I went for it.  I was so afraid of it yellowing after it dried but it totally didn't.  Just make sure you use light coats.

Best part about this project - it was totally free.  I used supplies I already had on hand that was purchased for previous projects and left over!  I.love.this.table.

Seriously, this was easy.  Now I'm kind of ready to tackle a herringbone wall somewhere....hmmm, I'll keep you posted.

Hope you guys had a wonderful weekend!!!

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How-To Paint Laminate Furniture: Part One

This is a project I've been wanting to do for a while - Painting laminate.  Many will tell you it cannot and should not be done but I beg to differ.  Painting laminate is really not that difficult, I think after painting knotty pine and fake paneling this project seemed like a breeze.  We all have something laminate sitting around in our house,  something totally useful but totally ugly.  We happen to have a laminate bookcase in our guest bedroom that we just weren't feeling anymore but also we were not ready to get rid of it (since that meant purchasing another bookcase).  So, I set off to paint it.  

First thing I did was remove the shelves so prep and painting would be easier.

I also subbed out a little of this work too, Mya was here to help again.  She sanded down the shelves for me and I did the rest of the bookshelf.  We just used a low-grade sanding block.  We didn't really sand too hard, just a little to rough up the finish a bit.

When choosing a primer I think I went out on a limb a bit.  I've read that when painting laminate you need an oil based primer specifically designed for laminate.  However, when shopping around (for a future project) I came across this Zinsser primer and sealer- it's water based, low-odor, formulated for many non-stickable surfaces and claims there is no need for sanding (Obviously we did sand just to be on the safe side).  Also, it cost significantly less than the other similar products I looked at - less than $10 for the quart.  I thought I could try this first and if it didn't work I would just find one that did.  

To my surprise though, it worked!  And, It worked well.  This primer stuck like glue to the laminate and made for a totally paintable surface.  It also dried super duper fast - in less than 30 minutes.  I painted two thin coats of primer in less than an hour.

You can see how well the primer turned out (minus a few scrapes I did after replacing the shelves, easily touched up) - I was thrilled at this point.  The only next step was to paint.  At this point, you can choose any paint you like to use.  I like Olympic Zero VOC and I chose to paint the bookcase white - I just used off the shelf white paint and we already have plenty of this from painting all of our trim, so I didn't have to get anymore - yay! for cheap yet awesome transformations.

I actually have another step to this project - the back of the bookshelf.  This one happens to have a cardboard back so I really didn't want to paint that part.  I didn't spend a dime on what I used,  in total I just bought the primer - less than $10 and I actually bought that for a different project, so you could almost say I didn't spend anything at all to redo this bookcase.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to see what I used and also see the finish product.  

Have a Great Wednesday! 

Spice it Up - A Desk Redo

I shared yesterday that we had a lot of paint projects brewing over here in la casa.  One of those projects happens to be a sweet little secretary desk that was given to me by Justin's Aunt right after we moved in.  Justin's mom, sister and aunt are like the superior masters of finding hidden jewels at yard sales and thrift stores.  So no surprise I was gifted a little jewel by them, this little desk.  I knew I wanted to paint it but wasn't sure right at first what color exactly.  I could go with a standard white - always chic and fresh.  But, I just wasn't feeling it and I wanted to add a little spice to this little corner of my kitchen.  Here's the little desk before anything has been done to it.  This desk had definitely seen better days but it was still really sturdy and working properly so it really just needed a face lift.

First thing I did was to remove the drawer for easier painting and remove the knobs.  I decided to replace them with something else I already had on hand.  I also washed down the desk with a little warm soapy water and then this little baby was ready for some spice.

So spice it up I did.  I hate priming things and will honestly skip that process whenever possible.  And it was no different in this scenario.  I decided that I would just go straight to paint and it worked out, I did however apply 3 coats of paint but it was really easy and quite quick.  I used a little foam trim roller for most of the painting and It worked like a charm.  I think I will always use a foam roller for furniture painting from now on.  I also have another tip to share.  If you buy paintbrushes at the dollar store in a pack of three - you get what you pay for.  Awful.  I'm sure most of you are thinking "duh" but I have always wanted to test those dollar paintbrushes.  Luckily for this project I was just needing a paintbrush for a few corners I couldn't reach with the roller.

You can see the first coat wasn't that great and I started to fear it was going to take a lot more than 3 coats but thankfully after the second It was covering really well.

So here it is now, in all of it's coralish, rusty, pinky-orange glory.  I have to say I absolutely love it.  I wish I had a picture of the knobs before I spray painted them white, but take my word for it, they are way more cute now.  I love the color contrast between the wall and the desk and we can't help but walk by it and smile a little.  Everyone needs a little bright color in their home somewhere.  It has definitely cheered this little corner right up.

(Ignore the random items sitting on top, I'm still working on that.)

So there you have it, our little desk redo.  Oh, and it only cost me $9.44 for the paint!  So under $10 and this desk is looking good.

Check back soon for some more paint projects we have been working on!

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