Step 2: When I almost loose an eye

So now we are at the point of the table saga that I should begin to see the fruits of my labor. Well, the thing is, I am luck that I can see anything at all.

You see, as I mentioned in the first post about the table, there were a lot of nasty chemicals involved in this process. After stripping the wood down you then must use 1000% steel wool to scrub down the whole thing and get all the little bits of old varnish off the table. As I began doing this step at night in our garage, in the heat, I was beginning to get to hot to wear all the protective gear I did in the first step. This time no gloves or goggles were being utilized. This is not something I recommend to anyone. Ever.

As I pulled the steel wool out of the can to get scrubbing some of the chemical after wash splattered on my face. At first I was just startled by it, but did not feel anything. Then the burning of the after wash (which is like mineral spirits) started to kick in. I managed to not get any in my actual eye but there was a few drops on the lid and under my eye. I quickly proceeded to the kitchen and told Parker to get me some face soap. I flushed my eye out for about 10 minutes and washed my face. This is all going on while Parker is reading on the can that I am supposed to go strait to the ER.

I felt fine though after getting the stuff off my eye and face. I do have to admit it was a close call and stupid mistake. Parker was pretty mad at me and told me to stop the project all together. I just could not give up.

So back to the action I went. I tested out a few different stains and decided to go with a slightly darker one than I had originally planed on. Here it is on the base:

Here is a shot of the top about halfway through. This shot really shows you how light the natural wood is next to the finish I put on. It actually made me a bit worried at first.

As you can see the top is a bit lighter than the bottom in the end.We can not tell if it is because the bottom has more grain in it that the top. I am not really happy with the actual table top. It is almost exactly the same color as the old finish. Parker and I can't believe it. So I have decided to let it dry for a few days and then do another coat of the stain to really darken it up. I wanted it to be much richer than it is in these pictures.

I will show you step three next week. I will be redoing the whole stain thing again and then sealing it up. I hope that there are no more threats on my life and that I will be seeing you all with both eyes for a long time!

How Very Mad Men of Us

Parker and I have been having this argument for the last few months about how to store our things in our master bedroom. See, the issue is we have two closets. On in the bathroom and one in the bedroom. Right now that, plus our super old Ikea dresser works just fine. BUT alas we will not have that luxury for too much longer as we have HUGE plans for the master bathroom (and the closet therein).

So I began hunting for ideas for storage solutions for the master bedroom. One is to do a copy cat situation of my favorite blogger old master bedroom and install two Ikea wardrobes on either side of our bed to make up for the potential lost closet in the master bath.

Click here to see what they did. I love the look and I think Parker and I could totally do it. By the way you will notice, I totally, and shamelessly copied their wall colors as well. I know I am a stalker.

Anyway back to our bedroom. The other day while walking through our local consignment store I cam across these really cool mid-century modern dressers. They were priced at $260 a piece. Totally not worth it in my mind but still super cute. I told Parker about them that night but then just went on my merry way thinking about the built in Ikea wardrobes.

Well last weekend I stopped by to see if those dressers were still there. I was drawn to them for some reason. And there they were sitting up front saying, "Christine BUY ME!" and even better they had been marked down to $189 a piece. I was pumped. Parker came by to see them and also liked them. We both agreed they were a steal, but were not ready to pull the trigger. The next day after going to a few stores including Salvation Army and Goodwill I realized how good of a price those dressers were. So I rushed back to the consignment center and they were still there! Yeah! But wait there is more...

After walking up to the counter I heard two other couples asking the sales people about the dressers. I knew it was now or never. I ran over to the dressers and ripped the tags off and proclaimed them MINE! I then had the audacity to ask if there was any room for negotiation on the price. And the sales lady ended up giving them to me for $160 a piece! SOLD!!!

After rending a Home Depot truck for a total of $14 with gas, these babies ended up in our master bedroom:

9 drawer dresser, and mirror. I am thinking I might change out the pulls on the drawers.

Tall dresser, 6 drawers. I love the look of this one so much.

You can see there needs to be some clean up done to these dressers. But they have great bones.

This shot really shows you some of the damage.

After some polishing up these babies are going to look great and add a lot more usable storage to the house.The reason I told you about the wardrobes is that we are still thinking we are going to install them as well. We are just going to have to be a bit more creative about the space in the room. We don't want it too full of stuff. So down the road we may move the tall dresser into the office or into a babies room when the time comes. But for now they stay parked in out room.

I love the Mad Men feel of these dressers. I love the lines. I imagine Don and Betty Draper smoking cigarettes while dressing for a fabulous party looking in the mirror. I love these dressers.

I will show you how well they cleaned up as soon as I have time to get detailed shots. I think you will be impressed!

It gets worse before it gets better...

This week I got on a roll and decided to strip our kitchen table and re-finish it. This was a bad idea. I had no idea how much time it was going to take.

I began sanding it on Saturday and our neighbor saw me in the garage. Being a woodworker, he was intrigued so he came over to talk to me. He quickly noticed I was going to destroy the table. WOOPS. So he put me on the correct path of using a stripper and wood after wash product so I did not change the shape of the table.

I ran out to Home Depot and grabbed everything he told me to get. $75 later I was back in business. Sunday I began to use the stripper. This stuff is nasty and hard on the hands. So with heavy duty rubber gloves and goggles I proceeded.

Fist the stripper (Parker giggles when I say this) was applied using a "Chip" brush. This lifts up the seal and stain in minutes. I then would scrape it off with a shovel type tool. FYI if you wait too long it dries out and does not work, and if you go too soon it does not work either.

After a days worth of work I got most of the base done and the table top was next. This process makes the wood look horrible and destroyed. I was basically in tears while doing this thinking I had ruined this really nice table. After our neighbor came by to check on me he told me I was on the right track so I proceeded. I came to the conclusion it just had to get worse before it got better.

Here is what it looked like after the first and second and third round of using the stripper.

As you can see there were a lot of chemicals involved. Not very earth friendly I know.

As you can see here the wood looked damaged, and uneven. There was a lot of flaking and residue left after this first step.

The base looking nice from far away.

I will follow up with steps two and three later this week. I think you all will be super impressed with my skills.

ORB'ed

Oil Rubbed Bronze or ORB is great stuff. This spray paint is easy and quick to use but has a huge impact. It actually comes out looking like ORB metal not paint.

This weekend I grabbed a bottle of it and went to town on Parker's old knight. We have had this thing "gaurding" our house since we moved in together. It is great on the front poorch, but the years of weather and sun have taken their toll.

As you can see here it was covered in rust and dirt.

And after here it is all ORB'ed out! Looks like new! Go Mr. Knight!

Now he can get back to work gaurding our house in style.

On the flip side

On the other side of the living room I have updated the fireplace with these items.

I added a large map, and I plan on adding pins of where Parker and I have been. Then our thermometer and clock (also with a map on it) and succulents. I actually have quite a few of these around the house and change out which plants are up there as needed.

In addition, Parker and I found these pillow coves at crate and barrel. We bought them with leftover money from the wedding. I know, crazy 2 years later I am still spending it.

The blanket is from Homegoods, which if you don't know is one of my favorite stores in the world. I was $20! Woot!


What do you think? Up next we are finally hanging pictures in the bedroom, and possibly refinishing our kitchen table. I will post pictures soon!

Wall O Frames

This last week I decided to get on finishing up several lingering projects I have had around the house. One of them was re-hanging our gallery wall I made at the last house.

If you did not know, I had a lot of picture frames left over from our wedding. At the apartment I spray painted them all a cream/kaki color and hung them over our sofa. In this house the cream was not going as well, so I bought a can of white spray paint and went to town. The result is a fresh looking new gallery wall.

I love the idea of creating "free" art around the house so I hung several things in frames that mean a lot to Parker and I. The rest are pictures from the wedding and travels.

Wide shot to give you perspective.

Up close you can see some of the artwork.

The buffet is from Parker's Poppy and on it I have the bouquet from the wedding, and a bottle that I used as centerpieces at the wedding. I think the look came out really nice. I plan to let the wall evolve, hanging pictures as we take them and changing out frames as well. I like the idea of changing it with our family. There is even a big drawing of Harry in there for good measure!

Garage Sale!!!

Parker and I held our first garage sale this weekend. Not our first in this house but our first, ever. We had done some research about how to throw the proper garage sale event and we think the advice we found was super helpful. We thought we would tell you all about the sale and throw in some words of wisdom we learned from our experience.



First off, the whole thing was a huge success. We made a huge amount of money (but I am going to make you read this whole post before I tell you our final number)! We had several great stories from the day, and we met some of our neighbors which was super nice considering we had yet to even really see anyone outside of their houses. Thank goodness they are all super nice!



So here is the lowdown on how we had such a great garage sale experience:



The week before I advertised our garage sale on Craigslist.org 2 or 3 times. This was what I think was a huge factor in our success. We had people waiting for us as we were setting up our tables at 7am! We advertised starting at 8! By the time 7:45 rolled around we were already out of most of our electronics and "good stuff". I know no to get to garage sales early and act fast. We also advertised on the street with large bright readable signs so people would know where to head.



Here is a picture of parker an hour or so into it. Imagine about twice the amount of stuff out there to start off! You can see him waving at me if you squint!

We spread out. We used lots of tables and looked like we had a lot of stuff. We also kept putting new stuff out and arranging items to everything was easy to see and look at. I think this made us look "professional".



We did not set out trying to make money. The agreement was we were not there to make money, but to clean out all of our extra stuff and crate some space in our garage. This was our motto when people would negotiate us down. We figured 5 bucks was less than 10 but at least is was no ZERO!

We did not bring anything back into the house that we put out for sale. Not one thing we put out went back into the house. This was a huge feet for both of us but we really did feel great clearing out everything from our garage.



We did not take anything personally. We never got upset or concerned when someone did not want our stuff. The funny thing is stuff that Parker and I thought would go right away, never sold and all the weird odd and end stuff was gone right away!

At the end of the day this is all we were left with! Two tables full of little odd things and some old books. Oh and that bookcase sold to a former school teacher for $5!



Speaking of odd things we thought would sell, our sofa did not sell all day! We were so ticked by this! We thought that would be a big money maker for us and we had no takers. At 1:00 we were about to start packing up and a guy came by and asked if it was available. Parker jumped at the opportunity to not have to bring that sofa back into the garage and wait for Salvation Army to come by and get it and said we would sell it for $25! That guy got a STEAL!!!! Best part was right after the first guy offered to buy it these other guys pulled up in their burnt orange longhorn tuck. They wanted it too! We could have started a bidding war for it!



Guy number one was driving around in a BMW convertible and could not take the sofa right away. So he bartered with the buy in the truck and played him $25 to drive his sofa to his house! Not a bad deal for either of them. Here is Parker loading up the sofa:

I would also like to point out that I put out a few plates of my Chocolate Chip cookies and they sold like hotcakes! Hmmm maybe one day that could be my job!

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