Saturday, November 17, 2012

Painting a Thrift Store Find

I have a seriously embarrassing lack of seating in my house. One of the things about moving from a 900 sq ft apartment to a 1450 sq ft house....you can't fit many chairs in 900 sq ft, but it starts to get embarrassing when I try to have people over now. I shuffle chairs from the dining room to my music room so I and my cello students can have a place to sit. I thought about it the other day....I only had 5 dining-ish chairs. I'm not really sure how I ended up with that odd number, but I decided to remedy the situation.

There is a thrift store not far from the house called Southern Thrift that I've taken to wandering through every so often. Sometimes I don't find anything, sometimes I find something really cool....like this guy.


Now, I know it looks a little worse for wear in this picture, but I figured that for $3 (thanks to the fact that Southern Thrift gives 50% off all furniture every Monday), I could scrape off the K-Swiss sticker, sand it down and give it a fresh coat of paint.

I chose a basic glossy white. The other chairs in the dining room are stained wood, but they were significantly darker stained wood with upholstery (and don't match), and I liked the idea of a little variance. The other thing I chose to do was use spray paint with primer already in it. I'm all about saving work where I can. Some people call it lazy....I like to call it efficient.

I dragged the chair outside, sanded it down and then wiped it down with a damp rag. Once it was dry, I started spraying in thin and even coats (to avoid drips). Here's a picture after the first coat.


It took two full coats, plus a few touch ups. I let it cure for a few days in the garage before bringing it into the house to let the paint harden and to give the paint stink a chance to dissipate. Here's the finished product.


I like the contrast of the white with the darker wood tones and the aqua color on the walls. Have you been painting furniture lately? Tackling other projects? I'd love to hear about them!

Friday, November 9, 2012

Excuses, Excuses and Painting the Potty

Man.....I've let it go another month between posts again. Sorry y'all!

I have a (sort of) good excuse though.....I've been working my tail off. Not at blogging, but with my music. The month of October hit with a vengance. I think I played two or three weddings, sang at a master class (the same day as one of those weddings), performed on the red carpet at the BMI Country Awards (what?!) and performed a solo recital. Whew! I actually have one more thing to do before I can stop, breathe, and take a mental health day (or two or five)....I am auditioning for grad school next week. Because, you know, I didn't already have plenty to do.

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook have already seen this picture, but in case you didn't see it, this is from the BMI gig. Sorry for the grainy image....it was an iPhone picture.

And yes....I was playing on a platform that was five feet off the ground. On a ghost chair. In a VERY glittery dress. And don't you just love the calla lilies they used to decorate our music stands?!


Onward.

So before the whirlwind hit, I actually did get a thing or two finished around the house. Like painting behind the toilet....something I had been putting off for way too long.

Back when I painted the bathroom green, I left out one spot. Mostly because I was intimidated and foolishly thought I was going to have to take off the toilet tank to paint behind it. This is what I was left with for the better part of three months.


Not so cool right? Once I finally got sick of looking at it, I started looking online to see how I could remedy the situation and I read that hardware stores carry special tools for painting behind the toilet.

There is no such tool. They looked at me like I had three heads when I asked about this.

So I improvised. I had one of those thin rollers that I could fit behind my toilet, but  I would have ended up with green paint all over the back of it, so I taped a trash bag to the back of the toilet tank and painted away.


Here's everything put back together. Isn't that so much better?!


So what have you guys been up to for the past month? Any cool happenings? Improvisations to share?