(Re)Construction: Side-table

For Christmas, I wanted to give J a coffee table and TV table. Unfortunately, troll the Goodwill though I might of a Saturday morning, I couldn't find anything worth converting. A stop by TROSA resulted in the purchase of Broyhill side-table that looked like a promising start for the TV table (as J's TV is fairly small).

But, a) I could never find anything that matched for a coffee table, and b) after thinking things through a little more, I realized it would be very hard to add a shelf to hold the DVD player to this table's rounded legs. So I made J's coffee table from scrap wood (more about that eventually), and decided to give the Broyhill to Kenzi, who is sadly lacking in furniture. But before I could turn it over to her, I needed to personalize it slightly. So, after pondering and combing the paint collection for ideas, I slapped on a couple coats of Kilz (I learned my lesson after the pink bed incident. Everything gets covered in Kilz first).

Then a coat of the same white paint that adorns my bookcases (Rust-Oleum American Accents in gloss white. I love this stuff with an unhealthy passion, and am heartbroken that they no longer make it). And then, to make it truly Kenzi-fied, I used Kenzi-blue (the color she most frequently has in her particolored hair) to apply this paisley stencil to the inset on the top.

The result:

I almost don't want to give it away.

(Re)Construction: Bookshelf

I am a book hoarder. One of those people who, with good intentions of clearing up some clutter, takes a bag of books to the used book store, only to walk out with twice as many as I came in with. Needless to say, all these books require storage space, and so roughly half of my furniture was either intended to house books or has been repurposed for that use. So when Mom said I could have the bookshelves that currently hold my parents' VHS collection, I was extremely excited. There was only one problem. They looked like this:

Which doesn't, exactly, suit my style. So, three coats of a white paint later, it looked like this:

Which was much prettier, but somewhat boring. So, after trolling some of the crafting blogs (This post at Twice Lovely, to be exact), I decided I wanted to do a little damask detail up the sides. So I made myself a stencil

and did a few repeats on each side of my bookshelf in a slightly yellower white. It's so subtle it's difficult to photograph, but it looks a little something like this:

3 repeats up both sides, and one in the center of the top. It turned out exactly like I wanted, and I couldn't be happier.

(Re)Construction: The Bed Saga

In my ever fruitless quest to encourage my dad to finish the construction upstairs, I decided to tackle some of the furniture that will eventually go in the bedroom I floored this past summer. It's going to be a guest bedroom, and after much arguing between my parents about the size and type of the bed/beds it ought to contain, my mom prevailed and we agreed to use the two twin pineapple-post beds we had up in the attic.

We've had these bed-frames for close to 25 years now; one of them was my first big-girl bed when I was 3. They originally came from the old tobacco farmhouse of a friend and neighbor, and are consequently of indeterminate age, although I would hazard a guess of at least 55-60 years old. When I got them down from the attic, they looked something like this:
I tried sanding them with 80-grit sandpaper, but nothing doing. The paint would not budge, but the wood that showed was getting worn down to nothing. So I went at it with a paint scraper, which was actually a lot of fun. I discovered that sometime in the past, both beds had been painted pitch-black, and that was covering a burgundy stain (remember this, it will be important later). After getting most of the paint off, I glued down the loose pieces of the headboards, filled in the really obvious holes, sanded the whole thing down with 220-grit sandpaper. The result?

Because I knew I was just going to paint them, I wasn't as worried about getting every bit of old paint off. I just made sure the edges were smooth.

Then I started to paint. And paint. And paint. Because it was quickly becoming clear to me why the past-someone who had painted these suckers black had been so avant garde for their time - it was the only color that would cover up the ridiculously strong burgundy stain that had been originally applied. I applied the first coat of the ecru paint - it turned pink. So I went at these babies with Killz primer, which I usually find is strong enough to take on God himself, and after three coats of it (so, four coats of a paint-like substance), the beds still looked like this:

It took three more coats of the ecru paint before the beds finally came out ecru-colored and not pink. But they're done, now, and aren't they pretty?

I can't wait to put up the rest of the trim and get the room finished, so they can be put in their place of honor.