Tag: furniture

Life

Best weekends ever

Jessica Smith

These past two weekends have been superbly awesome. I’ll have to take a few pictures tonight of all of our hard work this weekend in the yard, so no spoiler alerts in this post about what we’ve been working on.

I should have already blogged about the weekend before, but since I am practically dying to get outside any chance I have, I haven’t been sitting behind my computer too often unless I’m at work. Anyway, last weekend I went on a treasure hunt with one of my best friends and her daughter. Amy, Catherine and I (or as I fondly call them, My Number 1 Boo and My Number 1 Boo Jr.) headed out early Saturday morning to hit up a barn yard sale in West River, Md. We got to hunt through an old barn and see what treasures we could find. I walked away with an old grain bin and Amy got a silver ship’s bell.

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After we raided the barn, we drove to Galesville, Md. to visit both Salvage Chic  and Re-Find. Both are cute stores selling refinished furniture and all sorts of other goodies. I cannot wait to go back!

Our final stop of the day was an awesome antiques and vintage store in Lothian, Md., called GypsyFaire. They had the coolest stuff! I got birthday gifts for my sister and neighbor and Amy bought the cutest mint green birdhouse as a bridal shower gift.

We pretty much spent the entire morning in the boonies. But it was SO MUCH FUN!!! These stores are only open on certain weekends of the year, so next time they are open we will definitely be making another day of it — especially if it means I get to hang out with this little one again.

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She was so good all day 🙂

I cannot recommend visiting these shops enough if you ever have the chance. Talk about a neat and fun experience.

Furniture

Pedestal Table (again)

Jessica Smith

Last summer I turned a rickety old plant stand into a side table using a silver tray. Well, I’m here to tell you guys that while it turned out adorably, not the best choice if you don’t want to constantly remove tarnish from your furniture haha. Oh well, I had the best intentions.

{A Smith of All Trades} Metalic Pedestal Side Table

I was perusing the aisles of Home Depot and found a round piece of wood that would make the perfect table top — who knew Home Depot was so useful?! OK, OK, I did.

I purchased it with the intention of re-redoing the plant stand.

TAble Top

 

First, I sanded the table, which was mostly smooth, minus the edges.

I didn’t want to repaint the base of the table, so I opted for a fun color of stain. I used a mint green, water-based stain from Minwax. I pretreated the wood first, using Minwaxs wood conditioner. Then I applied two coats of stain.

I sealed the top with some poly and let it dry before attaching it to the table base.

Mint Green PEdestal Table

It’s different and I like it, but it doesn’t look so good next to my blue chair. Whoops.

TAble and chair

All in all, this table redo took me about an hour total, not including dry times. Not to bad for the second time around!

 

 

Furniture

Before & After: Run-Down End Table

Jessica Smith

My latest piece for A Slap of Paint was a doozy. It should have been an easy flip, but I botched it big time. Luckily I was able to fix my mistake.

I started with this end table that I picked up from Habitat Restore. I can’t tell you how much I love that place.

Navy Side Table_Before

 

To fix this piece up, I removed the table top and sanded the heck out of it.

Table Top

Then I stained it using a black Varathane stain. I coated the top in poly and set it aside.

I painted the bottom of the piece in navy chalk paint. I mixed the paint myself using Paint Minerals. It turns any flat paint into chalk paint. The best part — you can paint your pieces without sanding them down first. Awesome!!

Painting in PRogress

Two coats later and my piece was painted and beautiful. I wanted to do a layer of protective coating on the piece, and I should have used wax, but I didn’t. I coated the entire piece in polycrylic, effectively ruining the beautiful paint job. See, the polycrylic dried and bubbled and made the whole piece a hot mess.

Bummer.

Once everything was completely dry, I sanded the paint job so I could start fresh.

Thankfully, the second round of navy paint covered beautifully. I didn’t totally mess the whole thing up after all. Phew.

The second time around I waxed the painted portion of the end table down. Right choice.

Even though this was more work than I anticipated, it turned out beautifully.

Navy End Table

The knobs were also from restore for $1 a piece. Woo!