Is It Really Easy?

This is a question I asked myself about this deco podging business.  Nearly all the blogs I follow at some point or other there is some mod podge mentioned.  We recently had repainted a dresser that I had painted a beautiful white & pink with gorgeous knobs.  However with the room update the pink had to go.  The dresser still needs a lot of work.  I'm not completely happy with it.  However I knew for sure the knobs tho gorgeous did not work.  You see they were pink with pretty pink flowers in the middle & they cost more than knobs should cost ($18 on ebay).  That being said I knew I could not afford another $18 for drawer pulls.  So I went in search of something cheap but found only 2 pulls for $4.  Sure that doesn't sound bad at first, however they were the wrong color & I needed 8.  So my search continued.  Then once more I hit pay dirt via the local thrift store.  Only this time it cost nothing.  Outside sitting in their trash waiting for our local bulk trash pick up was multiple broken dressers.  Saddly the dresser I wanted to refurb was too broken for my nonpower tool owning self.  It was missing the 2 back legs & the one support for the leg was complete split which would have required some cutting.  I looked more & there was a completely busted dresser but the drawers were still intact as were their drawer pulls!! YES YES YES!! they were exactly the right size.  Later that night Will & I journeyed forth in the heat with screw drivers, collected all the knobs & one drawer and a drawer face for later projects.

The knobs were in pretty bad shape with some really old ORANGE paint.  We sanded and sanded & just when I thought I had the paint even with the wood I spray painted them all white, that's when I found out that nope I definitely did not sand enough. 

It was okay though because I planned on mod podging something over the front. That being said, prior to this project we had bought a 16oz jar of Plaids Mod Podge for around $11 on Ebay (can you tell we buy a lot on ebay?).  So we let the spray painted knobs sit for 24hrs & then I started the "podging" process.  Now mind you this is my first time and after much investigating via Google I believed I knew what I was doing.  It sounded easy enough.

It's easy, indeed it is.  However I think it takes practice.  My knobs dried kind of flat instead of glossy, also there were brush strokes.  Not that you can see real well unless you have the knobs directly in your eyeball.  Oh & doing round drawer pulls I'd suggest a big whole punch.  I do not own one so I gave it the ole college try & cut them out myself.  I also used a piece of art from my favorite artist that I had saved on my computer.  I just went to photoshop grayscaled it, multiplied it a couple times so the lines were nice and crisp, scaled to fit.  Then I switched to word pasted 12 (in case of mistakes) picture & printed off.  After a couple hours here were my end results.

artist: Kurt Halsey

on the gray dresser drawer

blue & gray.  I'm not content.  I'm thinking about painting the 2 blue drawers gray.

I'm still not happy with this dresser.  I wish now that I had used gray spray paint instead of white.  Also it needs a fresh paint job on the frame.  Not sure if I will do white or a lighter gray instead.  Opinions are welcome & there will be another mod podge project for the top of this old thing soon.

Ending price for this project:

• Knobs: free
• spray paint: free (already had it)
• mod podge: $11 (but it will do a lot of projects)
• artwork: free (used something I had copied on my computer)

Total: $11

The Second Shelf

We live 2 blocks away from a tiny thrift store called The Second Self.  I absolutely adore it, not only for it's great stuff but because the manager is so familiar with my mother & I we get stuff at half price quite often.  Recently Will & I rearranged our bedroom (after we painted) and we were struggling for a shelf to hold my bulky photo printer but also his xbox 360 (did I mention we are avid gamers?).  With no other options we used this ugly little night stand because it gave the xbox room to breathe.  Very ugly set up:

please excuse the bad picture & the bad PS.

As you can see my printer is barely perched up there.  Add to the fact that my cat Bunny likes to sit up there, it's a miracle that it hasn't fallen.  So I searched & searched even went to IKEA, but wasn't willing to spend a lot of money for such a small item.  $30 dollars seemed a bit much for such a smaller shelf, plus it seemed too "new" if you know what I mean.  FINALLY!! I hit pay dirt at the thrift store.  There was a little wooden cabinet for $6.00, then she says to me...I'll give it to you for $3 if you take it out of here. SOLD!!

Just so you all know ahead of time I am horrible at remembering to do the before photos.  That being said this is the door of the cabinet so you at least know what the wood looked like.

Not bad looking wood I know, but there is enough wood in our room.

So we decided to paint it to fit our color scheme.  We also decided not to put the door back on.  We're saving the door however, something tells me it will come in handy at a later date.

My printer fits much better, plus we have an extra shelf for books or games, DVD's or whatever we feel like.

Needing a Little Shade...

We have recently repainted our room.  Prior to it being OUR room it was my very pink room:

Very pink; don't judge me.

 

 

 Then once it was OUR room I decided not to torture him by making him live in that room for to long.  So we painted it a lovely light blue with a gray accent wall:

horrible picture but you can see the accent wall.  You can also see that our room is NOT shabby chic.

 

 

 

 

Now due to this change in color schemes I had a lamp shade that was just not working, so I decided to try my hand at recovering it.

I followed (kind of) the instructions from one of my favorite blogs:

Young House Love

Dark brown shade before:

& After:

whoops is that upside down?

 

there that's better.

I'm not sure I'll be keeping it on the floor lamp, I have refinished a old brass lamp & might consider using that instead.  This is a very easy project but it will indeed take two people.  Also I think a round barrel shade would be easiest to use.

Inspired

weheartit

                                                              The Medowbrook Blog
I am absolutely in love with the curio cabinet.  I saw a corner cabinet in a thriftstore yesterday, tho small it would have held a lot of our shabby plates & vintage china. Hmm might go back & get it see how it takes to a coat of paint.

                                                                           WeHeartIt!

Chic-Mania

 I did this to a coffee can, though we did not put flowers in it, but used it for storage in the bathroom.  However what a great idea.  I think I might be spray painting some more cans.