I've Reclaimed My Guest Room

'Way back in the summer of 2012, I worked tirelessly to transform this half-baked attempt at a guest room into a welcoming haven.

My son had moved out, my husband's chemo was over and I had the summer off.  Was I ever busy!

I sewed a dust ruffle to complement the Waverly floral duvet cover I'd made years before.  I had just been pulling the duvet long enough on one side to cover the box spring as you can see above.  Hey, the other edge was pushed up against the wall where no one ever saw it, and it was better than looking at the boxspring and frame.  Or so I told myself.

I envisioned a ticking striped fabric but found a cute botanical/alphabet print.  It was the perfect pink and the price was unbeatable.  Sold!

I painted a resin ORB yard-sale wall lamp in my favorite white ( Behr Sleepy Eyes), recovered a vintage lampshade frame with chenille (this is not it btw), rewired with white cord, then stood back and admired my handiwork with glee.

With a little ingenuity and an electric drill, I even figured out how to hang the lamp despite missing hardware.  The challenges of upcycling!

We had also been using this spare room for storage and it has a high decorative ledge that's perfect for hiding boxes behind paintings and other decor. I'm a packrat ("this might come in handy someday") and a sentimental mommy (toy trains, models, teenage odds and ends)--not a good combo.

I barely survived some hard-hearted purging and a couple trips to the Goodwill donation center but it felt good to be organized and have kept only a few choice items.  I look back at this pile and think "Yikes!"  No watermark on this photo for some reason but feel free to Pin it if you have a "Hot Mess" board!

While I was clearing the ledge, I even scraped some popcorn off one small part of the pitched ceiling and painted it--just to see what it looked like.

This was before I repainted it.  Even without any texture, it's such a nice clean difference.

I finally painted the whole room farmhouse yellow.   A warm mellow yellow that existed only in my memory of a wooden chair in my grandmother's California ranch house rather than on any of the hundred yellow paint swatches (too green, too blue, too gray, too orange, too gold) I'd been collecting.  I mixed up my perfect farmhouse yellow from my craft acrylics and then had it color-matched.  I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner, but it is the easiest way to get the paint color you want.  Duh! 

By the end of the summer I'd decorated with old family wedding photos and some of my MIL's original floral art and the room was beginning to look quite welcoming.

 I even created a sewing corner with thread, notions and a bit of Mary Englebreit happiness handy.

Two weeks later my son moved back when he and his roommate parted ways!  Let's pause for a moment of silence.

Sigh.  It was wonderful to have my live-in dog-sitter,hen-watcher and part-time chef back, but...as they always say, every silver lining has a cloud.  

Fast forward two and a half years to last week.

The boomerang kid now has a better job and good prospects for the future, and has moved out.  Again.  Maybe for the final time? I hope so for his sake.  No one should have to move back with their parents if they want to retain their sanity.  I couldn't have!  He seems to have escaped unscathed--perhaps we are just unusually wonderful lenient, understanding, awesome parents?

Once again, I have a lovely empty room that's begging to become the guest room it always wanted to be.  I've moved out almost every lingering vestige that he has yet to transfer to his new home--blackout curtains, extra computer parts, old textbooks, navy comforter, ratty posters--and I feel like I have a bright and welcoming space to play with again.

I have plans.  Oh, do I have plans!

All the decor is still stored away because I'd just love to resume scraping off popcorn.  (It'll never be this empty again, right?)

 

The bed has never had a headboard and I'll be making this Ana White farmhouse version.  Unless I can find an old brass one like this one during my garage sale rounds.

 

Minus the 70's quilt and dark gray carpet, hopefully!

I can just see plantation shutters, crown molding, new baseboards, beefed up trimwork.  My son removed the closet doors and it looks so open and spacious without them--not to mention how much easier it is to access anything inside--that I would like to hang curtains if I can find a fabric I love.

Oh, the possibilities!

I wish I could wave the magical DIY wand that so many bloggers seem to possess.  I would be able to show you a series of perfectly-styled photos by next weekend, right?  Real life just isn't like that. I have a husband and a dog, four new chicks, a job, housework and an awakening garden--all of whom need my attention.

For now, just having a (mostly) empty room is enough.

Stay shiny,
 

Last Year's Projects: Rescuing Jenny Lind

She wasn't a roadkill.  Just a damsel in distress.  Wait, I'm getting ahead of the story.

It helps when you volunteer at the PTA Thrift Shop because you get first crack at the goodies as you unpack them.  Sounds great, right?

Remember that saying "No good deed goes unpunished?"   Lavender-blue dangly earrings--check.  Flannel-lined sleeping bag like the one I had as a kid--check.  Vintage Jenny Lind bed--check.  Jenny was a find with a capital F and more than a bit of a bargain at $7.50 but still dangerous to those of us with more vision than sense.

Still, there are times you grab the deal and hold your breath until you're safely away.

In my defense, I didn't price it--some other volunteer mom did and the finish was disastrous.

On the other hand, that was in 1987 dollars and she's been stored since, so maybe she wasn't quite the bargain I'd intended? 

Tell me that I'm not the only one who's held on to a project for eons.

I always meant to re-stain the bed, but the thought of all those turned-wood posts meeting sandpaper effectively discouraged me from starting.  Then we moved Nevada from SoCal and she's been tucked away in our garage ever since.  Waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Not unlike a princess asleep in her tower.

A very messy, garage-like tower with large gargoyles office desks lurking in the shadows.

Pinterest to her rescue.  A very playful, adventurous yellow or red or aqua rescue--I absolutely knew no white knight paint would suit her.  As a bonus, if I painted rather than re-stained her I wouldn't need to sand even one spindle.  That's a win/win, in my book.

I fell in love with this bed from Land of Nod currently "on sale" for five hundred down from five hundred ninety-nine (allow me to interject an exclamation mark at both those prices here). Inspired, I bought a subtle Robin's Egg Blue paint sampler from the Paint Mart and was ready to begin the transformation.  Sort of like a fairy godmother. 

That was the plan.

It always seem easy at the start, doesn't it?  Then reality interrupts that pleasant easy DIY daydream.

I was NOT pleased when I wiped off all the dust and spider webs and found my damp cloth was brown.  And not from dirt either. I had not bargained for bleed-through at all. (I did think it was odd though, since the old stain wasn't of the reddish/mahogany variety and I wasn't dealing with veneer.)  But the second cleaning gave me a brown towel again.  ARG!

Bear in mind that I worked on this project as a way to avoid the elephants in my garage (aka the two huge office desks that take as much space as a Mini Cooper)--not trying to give myself another headache. 

This story has a happy ending though.  Turns out the original finish was in such poor shape that I was actually wiping it off with a washcloth.  Crazy good!  I was able to use a medium sandpaper and "flick" the entire bed, spindles and all, down to bare wood without breaking a sweat.  Might have taken a whole hour, at most.

The only way it could have been easier was if the finish disappeared when I gave it a stern look.  Or waved my Fairy Godmother wand.

The result may be my favorite painted piece of furniture of all time! 

It is just the most perfect color possible.

 Pictures don't do it justice. 

The ironic part is that after all these years I don't intend to keep this sweet bed for myself!

   Why?  Well, I don't foresee a vacation cabin on a lake in my future.  Or a home with a loft where I can put multiple beds covered in homemade quilts for all the grandchildren. Some dreams you just have to let go.  And I already have a cutie-pie red iron bed in our guest room. 

So next summer (sniff, sniff) I'll take some evocative photos of an aqua Jenny Lind dressed in lace and ruffles in our flowery backyard and then with a great deal of reluctance (sniff, sniff), I'll post her on craigslist (for a bit less than the Land of Nod price).  Somewhere out there is a sweet little princess who needs the perfect bed for her tower.

The other happy ending...I was so happy with this project that I did actually finish the  two gargoyles elephants desks before the snow flew!

Stay shiny,

 
Party Central:  My Romantic Home
French Country Cottage
Miss Mustard Seed
Remodelaholic

Playing With Wood: The Coffee Table

My original plan for my little square table was simple--sand the scarred top and rub on some tung oil and then bring it back inside to hold remotes and prop up our feet as we watch Netflix. That plan didn't last long--little did I know that I was embarking on one of those (cue scary music) Refinishing Projects That Go Bad. 

I should have known right from the git-go when the finish gummed up the sandpaper so quickly that I knew I was gonna be stuck using a chemical stripper. I don't like using strippers--they stink and sting and are messy. But a girl's gotta do whatever's necessary to get ahead. And actually the stripping process went very smoothly. The maple top looked soooo nice after I fine-sanded it.

I wanted to add a bit of color though and reached into my stash of stains. Early American was way too light and didn't add anything. I tried Puritan Pine stain which looks great on my bath tray  but it still wasn't right. So I reached for English Chestnut, the stain I absolutely love on my mid-century black-and-wood desk..

Big mistake. Huge.

The darker color highlighted the fact that the maple top was made of twelve different boards and each took the stain differently. You can't believe how quickly I grabbed the paint thinner hoping to remove as much stain as possible. No luck. So I stripped it again and discovered my stripper was great at taking off the finish but didn't do one single thing to remove stain color.

I figured I had two choices at that point: I could sand it down again. Or I could paint it.  Or a third choice would have been to ignore it, but I'm reserving that for The Desk.

Ordinarily, paint is not going near turned legs (let's just say I had an unfortunate experience involving removing latex paint from our dining table and chairs that I don't ever plan to repeat). And I resist painting pretty hardwoods because I dearly love the look and warmth of wood.

But the truth is that I fished this little table out of my neighbors' garbage pile when they left for North Dakota in the middle of a late November blizzard. Solid maple weighs a ton if you try carrying it on your head--even if it just three houses away--and it's too awkward to carry with your arms.  If I'd paid good money for it I would have sanded it.  But it was free.  FREE, people!

So I took the easy route and grabbed my favorite white paint.

I gotta say...no regrets that I painted it!  I love the way the paint brings out the cute lines of this piece.  And I'm officially educated about a multi-board top vs. a single board.

This coffee table wasn't intended to be a blog post about projects gone wrong or even a roadkill rescue story.  Hence the lack of "before" shots.  It was just another way not to finish that monster of a mid-century modern office desk.  Do you ever have a project that you want to finish but you just can't make yourself dive in?

As long as I'm thinking about said desk, I guess I'll see what I can do to move it forward, even is just a bit.  Because summer vacation is just about over and the classroom is looming.

Progress is good!


Be (INSPIRE)d,
 

Playing with Wood: Desk Number One

So...this desk is the ongoing project that might...possibly...hopefully be close to finished and ready to sell in the very near future. 

The backstory: My sweetie's office closed several years ago (a geologist's life is a series of changes) and we grabbed some of the furniture, including four desks. Yep, I said four desks. All of which have been occupying one-third of our three-car garage since.

Why would we do such a crazy thing, you ask? Well, we'd rescued a desk previously and our younger son transformed it from a clunky blackish-stained monstrosity to a gorgeous natural wood desk with sleek pulls that he's used as his computer desk since. So there were two more of these diamonds in the rough available, but somehow as we started stripping and sanding, we forgot how much time and effort was needed for metamorphosis.  So our garage has been home to one almost-completely-sanded and one unstarted oak office desk for eons.

Oddly enough, this is the one that we didn't begin on that's almost ready to sell.  I went two-tone which meant that I only had to sand the top--love the contrast between the rich wood and dark finish.  I kept the original drawer pulls but I spray painted them in brushed nickel. 

Now I "just" have to reassemble the innards so that locking mechanism works again. And then work on Desk Number Two.  Will it never end...sigh.

Be (INSPIRE)d,

Playing with Wood: The Bath Tray

Summer, I love you, let me count the ways. I love your warm days and long sunshine-y hours and morning walks and fresh veggies and beautiful flowers and endless amounts of time in which I can do whatever I want without a school bell interrupting my life.

Sadly, our school district has a new "balanced" calendar which stole three! whole! weeks! from my summer.  So I'm making hay while the sun shines.  Yep, lemonade from lemons.  Looking for that oft-touted silver lining aka no procrastination with a deadline in the near future..

Who am I trying to fool?  It's not a deadline...it's more like Godzilla looming menacingly over my summer.  I'm in full-out panic mode knowing that there are a hundred million projects and less time than usual.

I started the summer with three desks in various stages of incompleteness, one girl's vanity-to-be, a coffee tabletop to refinish, thoughts about trimming out a window or two, an ugly entrance to the chicken run, and miscellaneous Pinterest ideas to attack..

I'm almost done with two desks (hurray, hurray!) because I've decided that paint is faster than stripping wood.  I love the way my two-tone desks look.  And I'm really praying that someone on craigslist is willing to pay good money for these suckers because they're taking up some valuable real estate in our garage.  I just need to screw the pulls back on the reassemble the locking mechanism and they'll be ready to list.  Desks gone, cash in my pocket.

So naturally I decided to make myself a wooden tray for the bath instead.  Because, gee, it's been in the triple digits and I just can't wait to take a hot bath instead of a cooling shower!

Truth is...I have a new toy called a Kreg Jr. jig and like any kid I had to play with it NOW.

A pile of leftover oak flooring, some cherry trim that's been hanging around forevah and days too hot to spend in an house without air conditioning.  Add a cool dark garage, sandpaper and sander, plus my wonderful laser miter saw, some tung oil and mix well with my Kreg Jr.

The result:  totally and completely worth the time and effort.

 I love the contrast of the woods and know it'll be awesome for long soaks next winter.

It's not perfect but it's not bad for a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants design.

Next up:  addressing the ugliness of the chicken coop fence and gate.

Be (INSPIRE)d,
 

Where I party: My Romantic Home (of course) and a certain French Country Cottage
plus Miss Mustard Seed

A Peaceful August Day

August is such a relaxing time in the garden. The seeding and planting and transplanting and pruning and digging are done.

  

I can settle back and enjoy eating breakfast and lunch by Lilypad Pond.

I wonder when my neighbors' grapes hanging over our fence will be ripe?  

I love fruit that requires no work on my part.

Our volunteer pumpkin plant is pretty low-key too. Although I did prop it up on some old two-by-four pieces to keep it off the wet ground.  And I did have to wrangle the vine itself so it didn't wander all over the lawn when it was in its how-fast-can-it-grow phase.  It's only mid-August and it's plenty large and getting larger in spite of a most impressive hailstorm (see the shredded leaves).

It sprouted (along with some siblings that I culled) from the compost I used to enrich my raised bed last spring.  The Bombshells like old pumpkins and I guess some of the seeds escaped their notice.  As composters, they're pretty good but not perfect.

And if I can ever find the right-sized staples for my staple gun, this little beauty will be finished.

It's coming out nicely. It's part of a roadside rescue and I have no idea of what I'm going to do with it when it's finished.

This footstool was planned and it makes my old easy chair even more perfect than it was before. 

I had just enough leftover fabric and trim from the chair reupholstery to cover it. Oh, how I'm going to enjoy sitting in the winter sunlight with my feet up while sipping hot cocoa.

And here's a glimpse of my extremely high-tech and fancy-shmancy weight room.  I'm hoping all the tricep/bicep curls payoff as muscle by Labor Day.

It doubles as a workbench when I'm jigsawing, sanding or painting. The dogs use it as their preferred lounging/lookout area.

I hope you're enjoying every last delicious summer day too.  Summer is my absolute favoritest season!


 

Heirloom Wardrobe Makeover

Painted in a vintage ivory-cream color, she looks like she just came out of a California ranch house. My uncle (a former Seabee) built it for my aunt (the love of his life) so she'd have a place for her pretties.  I think my aunt and my uncle would both approve of her fresh new look.

 

He went to college in Chico on the GI Bill and they lived in one of those older homes with bedroom closets the size of a shower stall. Or littler. I've never understood why anyone would design a home with a miniscule closet space. Hello! Even babies and toddlers need closet space.  Much less a new bride!

We rescued the family wardrobe from my cousin's storage locker last summer and it's been cluttering up the Queen Mother's garage for the past year.  I almost couldn't wait for my priority projects to be done so I could tackle her makeover!  My young neighbor aptly calls this color "Burnt" and it did nothing for the wardrobe.  Neither did years of dirt and a very splinter-y attitude.

 

It didn't help that someone had made these random cuts for electronics cords sometime. 

 

But a little hocus-pocus involving a luan skin appropriated from a rickety bookcase and some wood putty combined with a surprise apple-green interior have dolled her up considerably. 

 

She may have been "Burnt" before, but she's a bonny lass now with a story to tell and ready to be useful once again.  Can't you just imagine her in a craft room filled with glue and glitter and piles of lovely quilt fabrics?  Maybe with a couple of storage baskets on some added shelves?  Or in a child's room with sweet little dresses hung up and small shoes below?  Or in a farmhouse-inspired kitchen holding pantry items?

I enjoy what happens when elbow grease meets vision and creates something worth keeping!  Even more when it's quick and easy!

Swiftly,

Party time! Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday (say that fast five times!)

and the ever-wonderful Show and Tell at My Romantic Home!

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch

The Old Lane Cedar Chest

It's an older Lane cedar chest that has seen better days.  (Stop drooling over the fancy antique trunk and focus on the cedar chest, people.)

 

What?  You don't think those faux Mediterranean handles add anything to it? Me either.

Remove them and you suddenly notice that those grooves seem like beadboard.  Ahhhh!

It's had a few ups and downs and the finish is finished.  And the storage tray inside is in pieces and will need to be rebuilt.

Now it's time to give it some TLC and send it to a new home where it will become a storage bench in the master bedroom.

This is one reason why it will be painted rather than refinished to match my sister's bedroom furniture.

The wood is permanently damaged (water?) where the finish was marred on the lid.

Even sanding didn't improve it.

And here's another reason.

Right now you're probably thinking that you love the little heart-grained wood pattern.  Me too.  So what's the problem??  

The other end isn't holding up its end of the wood-grain bargain.

Blah is the kindest thing I can say about it.

Finally, the dainty relief on this carved edging (which no one ever noticed before) will be the belle of the ball once some paint dances with a bit of glaze.

Ninety-minutes with my palm sander and some 120 grit sandpaper...

A little wood putty in the holes, a final sanding, a coat of primer and it's ready for a lovely coat of soft white paint.  Are you ready?

Before:

After:

And that carved molding?

Looked great without any glaze.

Start to finish, I spent little bits and pieces of time for a month.  It's been delivered to its new abode, complete with the key, labels and original warranty plus the rebuilt tray inside; ready to store seasonal clothing, extra blankets, special keepsakes or linens.

Thrilled that I actually have a furniture piece to share at: