Side Table Transformation: Cheater's Style

Woo to the Hoo!  We are having some sunshine today....finally.  The last few days have been muggy, cloudy, rainy, and just plain dreary.  Not motivating to paint furniture in that kind of weather.  But today, God gave us a beautiful day filled with sunshine.  I went on a run with my neighbor/friend this morning and have been busy catching up on some furniture pieces since then.

Today, I'm sharing with you a SUPER easy side table transformation.  For this one I cheated: spray paint!  Well, it's probably not really cheating, but compared to hand painting, it feels so easy that it must be cheating.  I actually don't hardly ever use spray paint, but every now and then I have a piece that I just feel like it will work well on.  This table was one of those.  So, with a can of spray paint (and a few other handy items), here's the transformation:

 I picked this piece up at the Thrift Store on base that I co-manage.  When people find out I work at a Thrift Store part time, they always think I must get amazing deals and find furniture all the time.  Well, I do find amazing deals and I do get some furniture there, but I don't find furniture every day.  It's definitely hit and miss.  But I do find great bargains every day, just not always furniture.  I am so blessed to get to work there because it falls in line with everything that I love doing. 

Back to the nightstand...picked it up for $4.50 (and it's solid wood!).  After lightly sanding and wiping down with a damp rag, I painted it using Rustoleum's "Aqua" spray paint in a satin finish.

 The key to spray paint is definitely multiple thin light coats.  As Sherry, over at Young House Love, would say: "if the hands a sprayin', the arms a swayin' ", and I most definitely agree.  This is by far the most important thing to know about spray paint...thin coats and keep a swayin'.

 This is what it looked like after three coats with ample dry time in between.  Following that I used my orbital sander with a 220 grit to give a pretty heavy distressed look.  I followed that with a coat of Minwax Dark paste wax.  The thing with spray paint is that, for me, it doesn't work quite as well with my wax products as some others.  If I'm giving it a distressed look, it's not a problem.  But if I'm going for a very polished, finished look, I definitely would not put wax over my spray paint, as it pulls off some of the paint color as shown on the rag on the picture below.

 After waxing it, here's what it looked like.  I'm telling you this project was easy-peasy.  It took me a total of MAYBE 30 minutes, not counting drying time, because I can do other things during that time.

 This piece is for sale at De'France right now.  Happy spray painting!

Old Rake; New Life

Okay, so you should know that I have a problem.  I can't pass up cheap or free rusty things from the side of the road or garage sales or thrift stores or flea markets or...nevermind, you get the idea.  So here lately, I've been accumulating more than I've been making.  This is a problem for a few reasons.  1. If I'm not making it; I'm not selling it.  2. My workshop (aka: my front porch that is thankfully mostly hidden by a big bush) is overflowing.  3.  The Husband keeps wondering when I'm going to use all this "junk" (aka: rusty goodness).

I got a few little projects knocked out this weekend with some of my treasures.  This one is definitely staying with me.  But I made a couple others to sell.  Here is my apron holder created from an old rake head.

 I'm am in love, love, love.  And here's this little gym in it's state of humble beginnings.  It was the rusty head of an old rake.

 I started with a couple coats of polyurethane to protect my family and my aprons from rust.

 Also, as a side note...here's a little tip that you may or may not know.  When you are painting, staining, sealing, etc., did you know that you can put your brush in a ziploc bag (without washing it) and store it in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it again?  Yeppers!  I do this all the time when I'm doing something with two coats.  After I finish the first coat, it just goes in a bag in the mini fridge in the garage until I'm ready for coat number two.  I'm not sure how long you could actually leave it in there and use again, but I've personally left it in there for over a month and then re-used it.  Just a random tidbit of info for ya!

 So, to get started, I used some old weathered grey-ish colored fence boards from my stash of free wood that I've accumulated from the side of the road.  I have no shame.  I cut four board, using the miter saw, to a size that looked good to me.  You could easily use a circular hand saw or even an old school straight saw.  I laid one out first with my rake on it to get an idea for the length.  Each of the board lengths vary slightly to give it a not-so-perfect look.  Some ends were already jagged and some are straight from being cut.  I just mixed them up a little.

 Next, I needed some bracing.  Here's the piece I used for that--another thin piece of wood so that the piece wouldn't stick too far off the wall when I was finished.

 I laid out the four fence boards to get an idea of how long the brace boards should be.  I would have more pics for you, but my camera is still mad at me and is eating them.  I take them, look to make sure they are there, put the card in my computer to download them, and...nada...they're gone.  Who knows!  Back to bracing.  Once I had the three braces cut, I used liquid nails (from Wal-Mart) to glue them to the back of the four fence boards.  I then screwed them (randomly) on to the boards with a mix of very short wood screws I had on hand.

 Once that was finished, flipped it over and waxed the front and sides with clear wax.  I used two screws to hold the rake in place.  One screw the rake is resting on and the other is going through a hold that already existed (a close up pic to show this = eaten by camera).

I put two saw tooth hangers on the back and here it is hanging on the wall in my laundry room because there is no other place to really hang it.  But the laundry room is next to the pantry, which is near the kitchen, so it works.  I had three crosses there that I've had since we got married (almost 5 years ago) so I was ready for something new.  Those crosses have traveled across the US with us wherever the Air Force sent us, but now this baby is mine to embrace any new travels with us.

 View from the back hallway that leads to the kitchen/dining/living room.

 Here it is displaying my aprons.  And I'd say it's doing a pretty good job of displaying them well.

 Camera phone pic; sorry for the quality.

 Did I mention I love it?  I do, I really, really do!  Oh, and just to give you the apron rundown...the blue one of the left is from Williams and Sonoma.  It was a gift from my mom for Valentine's one year.  I treasure it because it reminds me so much of her and the life she lived.  She was always in the kitchen cooking up something.  That was her favorite room in the house.  The next one is just a waist apron. Two years ago, I moved in with my parents for six months while my Mom was sick and during that time I worked on Friday nights at a local restaurant, Fish Tales (A-MAZING food).  We had to wear an apron so I picked this one up to wear on my Friday night shift.  The third one was a Christmas present last year (2010) from my Mom. Before she passed away, she got gifts, wrapped them up, labeled them and had them ready for us to open for the next few holidays.  So, even though she wasn't hear with me, opening a gift from her helped make the Christmas season more special.  The pink and black one on the right was purchased at a gift shop near home; also to wear at my job at Fish Tales. I love aprons.  I love being in the kitchen. I love to cook.  I love that my Mom taught me to be a good cook.  I love my new apron holder (in case you missed my love obsession with it earlier in the post).

 

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