make me pretty – so shabby chic!

My husband use to have a food blog and every once in a while he would get free stuff. An extra dish at dinner, a product sample sent in the mail. What was my blog getting me? Well, it did help me get some writing gigs. But I also got a coffee table. One of my lovely readers gave me a coffee table.

I left it in my garage for a long time because it had a leather top and I wasn’t really sure how to work with that. The answer: chalk paint. The miracle paint can cover almost any kind of surface – wood, plastic and leather!

I decided that with all the flower carvings I should just embrace the girlieness and go 100% shabby chic which I believe usually includes cream paint, distressing and flowers! Check, check, check.

 

make me pretty – the color of the year!

I must be good at predicting the future. Or maybe it’s just that green is my favorite color. I see emerald green everywhere now and I am loving it. I painted our bathroom vanity emerald green when we renovated last year. I still had some of the paint and decided to use it on this little table.

Then I put a stencil on top in a dark gray. Jasper, my five year old, said I should have used white because you couldn’t see the gray very well, but that was the look I was going for. Then I painted the whole thing with an antiquing glaze.

I am super pregnant right now, my due date was yesterday. I hadn’t painted any furniture in a couple weeks but I was getting so antsy! This little table was the perfect small project to keep me going!

make me pretty – geometric chair

I taught my “paint finishes and techniques for furniture” class again last weekend at the Visual Arts Center. It is such a fun class to teach. We went over seven different paint techniques for furniture and practiced them on wooden test tiles. I also brought in a chair and we re-did it from start to finish, as a class.

The students had three fabric choices and the class voted on which to use. Then we picked the paint color and the glaze. Everyone took turns sanding and painting and using the electric staple gun to reupholster the seat. I love watching people use power tools for the first time!

I am always surprised how well these chairs turn out, with 8 people deciding the fate of the furniture.

I am teaching the class again in July, if anyone is interested. Go to Visarts.org and search under “three dimensions”.

The chair before:

And after:

make me pretty – typewriter table

This typewriter table was another Vienna, side of the road rescue, from my friend Corbin. Her husband almost claimed it as his own but Corbin rescued it again and it made its way down to richmond.

I took off the desk top and spray painted the legs a dark red. Then I painted the wood table top with chalk paint and added the number 24. I distressed it, waxed it and put it all back together. Don’t ask me what the number 24 means, I just wanted to add some vintage numbers.

make me pretty – our attic adventure

Leave it to me to take on a major house project while super pregnant. Will I ever learn my lesson? I really wanted to renovate our attic and turn it into a playroom for the kids. Of course I thought it would be really fast and not cost a lot of money. I know, so naive!

Oh well, it’s going to be super cool and hopefully it will be done before the baby arrives. You’ve got 7 weeks Steve!

Our attic was completely unfinished and really only the front third is usable people space. The roof slowly slopes down so by the time you get to the back of the house there is only about one foot of space. So we are turning the very front into a play room, it has two windows and a not super tall adult can stand at the peak of the ceiling. Then next sloping 1/3 of attic space will be for storage and the very back will be walled off with an access door.

Here is the attic before we got started:

 

 

So far we have put in plywood floors, fixed up the windows, added insulation, run electricity and added lighting and put in some sliding doors to separate the kid space from the storage space.

A friend who builds custom wine cellars (Classic Cellar Design) hooked us up with some cool old barn wood he had left over from a job and we are using it to panel the walls.

 

I thought we could build a loft type ladder to get up to the attic but I didn’t really take into account how tall our ceilings are – the ladder is super steep. So we ordered a spiral staircase. I kind of can’t believe I’m going to live in a house with a spiral stair case – I thought they were so cool when I was kid!

make me pretty – bar cart

When I found this crazy, folding up bar cart, at the thrift store I knew I had to re-do it. I loved the shiny brass accents, the trays that came out and the odd little fold up shelves on the sides. But man, oh man, what a pain in the but. I had to take the whole thing apart to be able to  paint it without getting paint on any of the hardware.

I decided to paint the whole thing white. I used Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint – it was developed for trim and doors and has a really hard finish. I wanted the paint on the trays to not get chipped when they are pulled in and out. I cut some fabric for the bottom of each tray and then cut plexi-glass to fit on top. That way, when you get bored, you can pop out the fabric and replace it with different fabric or paper.

I have been admiring a lot of bar carts on Pinterest lately. Here are some of my favorites:

From cupcakesandcashmere.com/apartment-therapy/

from smallshopstudio.com/blog/page/3/

make me pretty – cat stool

I went to a yard sale on the hottest day of the summer last year and not only did I score a $7 shop-vac but I also got this crazy cat stool. I know someone would love this fabric but I’m not sure who. But I loved the shape of the legs and thought it would be a fun reupholstery project.

 

I had just enough fabric form this chair redo so I removed the cats, painted the feet and sewed some trim. Here is how she turned out:

 

 

make me pretty – more chalk board obsession

I am an alley stalker. I walk the alleys of my neighborhood with my kids and my dog. I’ve already turned Jasper into a young treasure hunter! He says “I want to find something good!” Once he found a Playmobile pirate ship complete with treasure, pirates and a parrot! You never know what you will find. I have found lots of chairs, tables and books. Around here people leave stuff on top of their trash cans if it’s something someone might want – how considerate! I’m not really into digging in trash cans. We all have our limits.

When I see that a house is being renovated I pay extra close attention. This is truly a case of one mans trash is another mans treasure. I have been stalking a house renovation down the street for a couple months now. I found a bunch of old encyclopedias, which I used to make fun holiday decorations, some good new wood boards and this old armoire door.

This is my kind of find. I would pay money for this at a salvage yard – and they would definitely charge it! The middle piece was missing, most likely it had been a mirror. I went against my instincts here and decided not to paint the frame a bright color and just hit it up with some polyurethane after I cleaned it up. I had the hardware store cut a piece of plywood to the exact size I needed and painted it with chalk board paint. I added a drawer pull, upside down, to be the chalk holder. And then I almost didn’t take it to West End Antiques Mall. I love the way it turned out but I so don’t need another chalk board in my house! But wouldn’t it be cute in a restaurant or bakery as a specials board?

Sorry the pictures are kind of crapy. I will have to start taking pictures of things before I take them to the antiques mall. The lighting is so crummy in there!

make me pretty – fancy desk

It all started with Trading Spaces. Did you ever watch that show, on TLC?

Two neighbors would trade houses for a weekend and redo one room with the help of a designer and a handyman. It was really all about which designer you happened to get – my favorites where Genevieve Gorder and  Laurie Smith. And then there was the “king of country” Frank Bielec. If you happened to get him designing your room, well, you were just screwed.

After Trading Spaces, Laurie Smith came out with a book:

And then a fabric line that was sold at Hancock Fabric:

I bought a couple of yards of this fabric with a master plan of something that I can’t even remember now. But I still really like it and have used it to recover a couple chairs.

I had one of these chairs sitting around that I hadn’t sold and I had a desk that I bought at a yard sale last summer and I decided I should re-do the desk to go with the chair. I didn’t take a before picture of the desk but it was a basic brown. I decided to paint it cream to match the chair and then paint the same design from the fabric onto the desk top. I traced the pattern onto paper and then used a piece of transfer paper to get the design onto the desktop. Then I bought a bunch of tester paints to match the colors in the fabric and got to painting. I always forget how long it takes to hand paint something but man is it tedious! Oh well, it’s done. Thanks for the inspiration Laurie!

make me pretty – sassy red chair

I have been playing it too safe lately. Too much cream and pale gray. So I decided to step out of my comfort zone. It’s time for red!

Here is the chair before:

I am still loving the red and pale blue combo so I decided to pair up my bright red chair with a blue and white chevron seat cushion.

I took this little lovely over to the West End Antiques Mall never really expecting it to sell. I have developed a theory that only my more conservative pieces sell there. But this chair proved me wrong. I obviously still have no idea how things work over there! She sold in a couple weeks.

PS – This is not the first time I’ve worked on this style chair. See the other re-do here.