Tag: handle

Furniture

Gray painted dresser

Jessica Smith

I have a (bad) habit of taking any and all furniture that people don’t want. So when my mom and stepdad cleared out their laundry room to make way for some nicer storage, I happily took the dresser they’d been using for years downstairs.

Our family friend painted this for my older sister — in fact, she had a whole matching set at one point! I kept it as is for a while, knowing at some point I’d want to update it.

Painted Dresser_BeforeTo update this dresser, I opted for paint. Since it was already painted — and rather nicely, too — I didn’t want to go through the hassle of stripping and sanding it down.

I splurged on paint, buying Satin Impervo Benjamin Moore paint, which is made for kitchen cabinets. It’s an oil-based paint that cures, not dries.

Painted Dresser_Satin Ipervo

And you know what else? It is stinkyyyyy. Holy smokes, is it stinky.

Painted Dresser_Mask

I wore this bad boy the whole time I used it, which I should be doing anyway when I paint… but it was way necessary this time.

Before I could start painting, I sanded the whole dresser down.

Painted Dresser_Sanded Drawers

Then, I filled the wholes and sanded down again. This ended up being an unnecessary step because I ended up using the holes anyway. Oh well!

With everything sanded, I started to paint.

Painted Dresser_Drawers

I let the paint dry for days (I think 4) before doing a second coat. I was worried because the paint seemed to be tacky for the longest time, but the more I researched I learned that the paint cures, not dries (I know I said this earlier). That’s really important though, because you can’t add your second coat until the first cures completely.

When the first coat cured, I added a second. And then I let that cure, too.

When everything was dried and hard to the touch, I added back the hardware. I chose black cup pulls and I love them. Seriously, they are fabulous.

Painted Dresser_Finished Product

The cup handles are fabulous, the paint is fabulous. I mean, just look at the top and how smooth it is!

Painted Dresser_Angled

The paint, while expensive ($25/quart), was worth it in the end. Much better than anything else I’ve used. We’ll see how it holds up over time, but at least right now I am so super pleased with how it turned out.

Quite a difference from before, huh?

BEFORE:

Painted Dresser_Before

AFTER:

Painted Dresser_Final

On an unrelated note, happy birthday to my neighbor Allie and her twin Shelly 🙂

Home Improvement

Busy weekend

Jessica Smith

Hello, blog!

Well, we did it. We finally installed our new doors. It took pretty much all weekend because our house is amazingly crooked, but they are installed. I’m only going to share one photo with you today because I’ve only had time to paint the outside of our doors. The inside is still a primed, boring beige.

Guess what color the doors are??

TEAL!

That’s right, teal. They look fabulous. Or at least I think they do. Turns out a lot of men don’t like the color teal, especially not on a house haha. Oh well. 

Here’s a photo of our doors installed, not painted, and with no trim. Looking pretty good, huh?

Image

Tomorrow I’ll share all of the troubles we (mainly my amazing stepdad) went through to get these bad boys onto the house.

Craft Projects, Jewelry

Spoon earrings

Jessica Smith

I was a crafting machine this weekend and tackled a project I’ve been meaning to try for some time now: spoon stamping! I have a bunch of old, silver spoons sitting in my craft room (not sure at this point where they came from) that I was able to break in half pretty easily, and from there went about flattening and stamping both the spoon and the handle.

What you’ll need for this project:

  • Spoons (at least two if you want to make earrings)
  • Pliers
  • Ear hooks
  • Thin chain
  • Drill
  • Mallet
  • Clamps
  • Hammer
  • Metal Stamps
  • Two pieces of wood
  • Sandpaper

First off, break your spoon in half! You can bend it back and forth until it breaks, or get it started with wire cutting pliers. Both ways work. Both ways are fun. After all, who doesn’t like to break stuff?

Your spoon will be rough where the break occurs, so sand the edge until it is smooth.

Then, place your spoon onto a piece of wood.

Sandwich your spoon with another piece of wood and tap on it with a rubber mallet to flatten in out.

Once it is flattened, take the top piece of wood and tap your spoon with a hammer. This will help flatten it out even more. Note: My spoon is all sorts of wobbly in the middle, which I really like. I didn’t try to get all of the wrinkles out.

With my spoon flattened, it was time to stamp it. I bought a small set of stamps off of Amazon, so I pulled those out and got to work. It was pretty easy… just place your stamp where you want it and hammer gently. If you hammer too hard, you’ll see little circles around your letters.

Once your letters are stamped into your spoon, you can fill them with sharpie and then clean off the excess with a dryer sheet or a jewelry cleaning sheet. Both work remarkably well for cleaning up old silver.

Next up: drilling holes. Clamp your flattened and stamped spoon onto your piece of wood and drill through the tops using a small drill bit. My electric drill is MUCH better at doing this than my cordless drill. When your holes are drilled, attach them to ear hooks (I used chains to do this) and your spoon earrings are complete.

If you have cool handles too, you can turn them into earrings as well using the same process.

Happy Tuesday!