Operation Home

You guys. I painted furniture. And I’m here to admit. It felt good. Reeealllyyyyy. Good.

Ever since we moved into our house, we’ve been mainly focused on larger projects. Taking care of major surfaces. Correcting wrongs that needed to be righted. Floors. Walls. Windows. Front doors. Pool resurfacing. Rotted wall fixing. Roof repair. Basically, trying to set the stage so that we CAN decorate and do it right. I mean, sure, some decor has crept in there, but it just hasn’t been the main focus yet in the way it was with our last house. A new construction with no major issues… Thus, decor was really the ONLY focus then. I feel like we’re getting slowly there, though. Slowly. And happily. 🙂

But… BUT… I painted furniture, y’all.

I feel like it’s been forever since I did that.

And it didn’t disappoint.

Ya see, I hit up a local antique mall last weekend and found this beaut of a nightstand…

I’m sorry about this picture. Somehow in my excitement to make over this badboy, this was the ONLY sad ‘before’ pic that I took. Oopsie. As you can see, I thought he would work well in the guest room to replace his dumpier predecessor. His leggy profile made the space feel lighter which was totally my goal.

I have to say that I was so excited when I found him. The antique mall that I purchased him from tends to be a bit of a pricier one, but I thought I’d check it out anyways since it was close to home. So, when I stumbled upon this little guy and a glance at his price tag revealed that he was only $29 (!!!), I pretty much sprinted to the cashier. He was in need of some love, but sturdy. A perfect find for me.

Now, when it comes to wood, many of you may know that I’m usually a purist. Especially with antique furniture. I like keeping wood-toned things wood to be true to the piece. That is, unless the finish is damaged beyond repair or super ugly. And in this case, the finish was uber fugly. For real. I’m sorry. It just was. The lines of the nightstand were retro. The finish… dated. It’s hard to tell from my blurry before picture, but it was a red mahogany tone. But not good mahogany. Fake, bright red mahogany. And really, really glossy. But, damaged in spots also. Some scratches and chips. Wrinkling in the finish. The whole chebang. And it clashed with… well, pretty much every other wood tone I have in the house.

So, I decided to paint it. (Gasp! I KNOW!!!)

I gave it a light sanding with a fine grade sanding block, then wiped it down with some liquid deglosser to ensure a nice dull surface that would better accept paint…

I wiped it down with tack cloth (which decided to photobomb in the right-hand corner). You’re welcome for that. 😉

Then, I gave it two thin and even coats of Valspar’s paint+primer semi-gloss in Ebony Field (leftover from when I painted the back door in our last house).

I sanded lightly with an extra fine sanding block between coats and wiped it down again with my BFF, tack cloth. And then I let it cure for a few days before moving it.

Now, let’s move on to the brass accents and hardware. I sort of worked on them throughout the process, so you’ll see some pics from before and after painting the table. The knobs weren’t in the greatest shape…

That wasn’t just tarnish. The brass coating seemed to have worn away with time. Because of this, I doubted that I could rejuvenate them as is. I wanted them to sort-of match the leg accents, although I knew it wouldn’t likely be a perfect match. First, I tried spray painting them with some leftover Rustoleum Universal in Pure Gold…

But, the results when compared to the leg accents looked really plastic-y…

Not exactly what I was going for.

So, I decided to try a new product. I’d read about Rub n’ Buff on several blogs and was intrigued. Apparently, you simply rub it on to achieve a metallic sheen. So, I ordered a tube on Amazon for just under $7…

The directions recommended rubbing a small amount onto your surface with a finger or a soft cloth. So, I started with the legs.

Which is when I started talking to myself.

Which despite popular belief, means only good things.

“Holy WOW!!!”,

“Geez! This stuff is amazeballs!”,

“Where have you been all my life??”.

All *may* have escaped my lips as I astoundedly rubbed the magical solution on. This beautiful stuff covered imperfections almost instantaneously with just a tiny amount and gave a gorgeous metallic sheen that I’ve yet to find with paint.

Here’s a before…

And after…

I probably should’ve taped off the leg, but it’s nothing a little touch-up paint couldn’t cure. That brass piece literally took me all of 15 seconds to do. I completed all four legs and then treated the knobs as seen in this “after” shot…

Metallic and lovely.

And what do ya know…. They ended up matching perfectly after all. The knobs look a bit “rosy” here, but in person they’re definitely more of a gold. I can’t attest to how well Rub n’ Buff wears, but I’ll keep y’all updated. In any case, it was such a quick fix, that I’m sure I can handle re-treating the metal accents as needed.

And here’s the table in it’s entirety…

I chose to simply accessorize with a cute lamp (found at Marshall’s a while back), some books, a shot of me and Lucas when he was only 18 hours old, and one of my easy mirrored planters (which are still rockin’ it, BTW). This guy was in our bedroom atrium and wasn’t getting adequate light, so I moved him. I’ll have an atrium update soon since I’ve been an accessorizing fool as of late. Actually, I’ll have a lot of updates soon. I’ve been a busy bee this weekend. 😉

Anyhoo, back to the point. Here’s a view of the room from the doorway as it stands now…

So, that’s my little painting project this week. Like I said, I’ve got more in store including a few breakfast nook, living room and atrium updates as well as the results of moving our fence. Joey and his dad are hard at it out there and it’s looking awesome. So, have a great rest of your weekend! Until next time…

*** For updated pics of this space, check out this (adding a new awesome $12 lamp) and this (creating DIY burlap wall art).***

So, HI!

I know it’s been a few weeks…. Let me tell ya, it’s been a few BUSY weeks months. I know summer tends to be hectic for most people, but I can say that this is unequivocally the busiest summer we’ve had in a while. Just random stuff that’s led to jam-packed weekends. And while we’ve still managed to get some stuff done (like fixing our rotting wall), we just haven’t been doing all of the home projects that we typically do.

But, this doesn’t mean we haven’t been planning. (Mischievous finger tapping on table with sinister grin)

There are two larger projects that we’ve been actively brainstorming and can’t wait to get started on.

One is moving our fence on the side of our house and adding a shed for storage. The other would be starting on our kitchen makeover.

So, let’s start with the backyard in this post, and then I’ll break down the kitchen plans in another. Joey has pretty much been salivating over the idea of adding a shed since we moved in. We have a pretty large two-car garage, but it currently looks like this….

Sort of jam-packed despite Joey’s frequent efforts to organize it. He wants to be able to store the yard equipment and pool stuff in a shed so that we can better utilize the garage and MAYBE fit another car in there. Not to mention create additional space for us to work on our kitchen renovation. I totally agreed with this idea, but with all the other more pressing projects that we’ve had to address since moving in, we’d just never gotten around to it. So, for his birthday, I promised him that we’d get going on a shed after the rotting wall was fixed. He was pretty stoked.

But, as any DIYer knows. Nothing is this simple. Because as we tried to figure out a suitable location for the shed, we realized that it’d be premature for us to add a shed without first moving our fence.

Allow me to explain.

Most of you guys have probably seen this area of our yard where The Clarington Resort (huh-huh!) resides…

Well, next to it, alongside our house we have this area of untapped space…

Joey added that paver walkway because prior to that, the land was just mud, so walking through the yard was a huge pain. This is a nicely-sized area, but (secret) it could actually be much larger. Ya see, in speaking with our neighbors, we discovered that 3 owners ago, the man who lived here replaced the fence along the front and side of the house to get it sold. But he only had enough money for a certain number of fence sections. So, the location of our fence now is solely based on the number of sections he could afford. Which leaves this 24′ foot piece of wasted land on the outside of our fence…
We called the city to see if we could move the fence closer to the street and we were told that as long as our survey shows that our property line goes beyond the fence, we could potentially move the fence as long as we left a 15″ space between our fence and the curb. We pulled out our survey and…
We could totally move our fence and potentially gain about 9 more feet of space in our backyard. Which means that the new shed could be placed behind the tree line, much more discreetly and with a more foresty aesthetic. Totally my jam.

Joey and I figured out that we can reuse our current galvanize posts, hardware, as well as the fence sections already in place on the side. We would simply have to purchase two additional fence sections for the front and back and concrete for resetting the posts. Then, we’d powerwash the entire fence and stain it to unite the old and new sections.

Once we figured out the moving-of-the-fence stuff, we looked at sheds. We decided on a metal shed since they’re durable, inexpensive (comparatively), and paintable. And Joey found this guy at Home Depot…

(source)

She doesn’t look like much now, but we have plans (Mu-wahahahahahaa!). This shed is 8″x6″, which is the perfect dimension to nestle right in behind the tree line. It’s also relatively low to the ground. At 74″ high, the peak should barely be seen over our fence. See that little arc in the branches (by that pallet)?

That will lead to the door of the shed.

The plan is to paint the shed the same colors as the house… SW Loggia for the body and Black Bean by Behr for the door. We’ll create a nice walkway to the door with pavers and decomposed granite, and then, when the weather cools off in the fall, we’ll landscape around the shed to soften the lines and make it seem more permanent and intentional. This is kind of the vibe we eventually want…

(source)

Now this is clearly not a metal shed… and it’s a bit more cottagey than what would work with our quirky 1970’s house, but I really like it because the shed feels like it’s nestled into the landscape. It looks cared for and intentional thanks to the pavered entry and flowers. We’re hoping to make our shed have that same feeling eventually. Although, I will never promise flowers… they always proceed to hate me, mock me, then die quick deaths.

So, that’s the plan. We’re hoping to get going on this Friday, then hopefully finish moving the fence Saturday. I’m not sure when we’ll stain it. Hopefully soon after. And then, it’ll be shed time. Woot! 🙂

** Update: The fence has been moved! Check out the results here!**