Whitewash Side Table

Over the weekend, I stopped in o Roost to start looking for some fall items. I saw this beautiful white washed buffet there and immediately wanted to try that technique myself. 

This little side table found it's way into my car at Goodwill one day a few weeks ago. Immediately, I fell in love with it's petite size and all the great detail. Not to mention, it was almost in mint condition. 

It had that bright orange oak look, so I was curious how the whitewash would look with that. I started looking on Pinterest for blogs that go over how to whitewash. I stumbled upon Orphan with Makeup's blog post and started from there. From my coffee table project, I had some left over Velvet Finishes paint in Rococo. I mixed this three parts water and one part paint. 

I started applying it with a brush and then wiping it off with a wet rag. This literally wiped off all the paint. So after that trial and error, I applied it with a paint brush very lightly. One section would dry pretty quickly and I would move onto the next section.

Here is how it looked after one coat. I love how it toned down the bright orange oak color and gave it such a pretty color. Also love how the wood grain still shows through.

Once I brought it upstairs into natural light, I fell in love! 

Now, I am trying to figure out what bigger piece I can try whitewashing on next, stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, hope you are having a great week so far!

-Shayla

Farmhouse Bookshelf

With painting furniture, I tend to look a lot of places for inspiration and ideas. One of those places being Instagram and I found NAK Home pretty early on in my painting hobby. I just loved all the unique pieces she found and her style. She also happens to be one of the sweetest and nicest fellow furniture painters that I have met on there. She would paint some pretty unique bookcases and I loved every single one of them. 

So, for a few years here, I have been on the hunt for one. Not having much luck, mind you. I find mostly pieces here in Wisconsin that are from an entertainment center or meant for a big tube TV. Well my friends, I finally found one! I couldn't believe it when I found it at GW and the price tag was still on there. If there was a prank TV show for furniture finders like myself, I swear I was on it with this piece. For the price and quality of the piece, I was on my furniture high for the rest of the day. Next step was getting it home. I didn't even bother to measure it because I knew I was going to get it home, one way (my SUV) or another (my dad's F150). 

Turns out, it did fit into my SUV, if my front seats are almost all the way forward. We got pretty close on the way home. 

Here is a full view before I did anything:

First, I took off the hardware and the cleaned the entire piece with TSP and some hot water. I was envisioning white for this piece, so I wanted to not have to spray the entire piece with primer. 

I cleaned up the hardware with Bar Keeper's Friend and took a picture this time. Check out this transformation:

This truly amazes me every time. All the tarnish literally just wipes off with a rag and some elbow grease. 

After cleaning, I lightly sanded the bookshelf and then shop-vac'ed it to get the dust off. 

At the ReStore, I found SW Dover White paint in satin, so I decided to mix this up to make some chalk paint for this piece. Think I paid $1 or $2 for an almost full quart of paint. Such a great deal for such an amazing color. I used my HomeRight Finish Max sprayer in my garage to paint.

After the first coat:

One tip for using this sprayer: definitely make sure to do a few test sprays first. Then determine if you need to adjust the amount of paint with the spray control that it is spraying. This will really help you avoid the dreadful drips that magically seem to appear!

Between each coat, I lightly sand with 150-220 grit paper and dust off before the next coat of paint. This will really help you get that smooth finish.

Here it is after about 2.5 coats of paint and some distressing:

I then sprayed on 2 coats of General Finishes HPTC in Satin. I lightly sand after applying this as well. 

Definitely one of my favorite pieces this year!

Thanks so much for reading!

-Shayla

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Chic on a Shoestring

Understated Coffee Table

 Please note, while this contest is sponsored and I received free product, all opinions are my own.

Hi everyone! This month I participated in the Fab Furniture Flippin' contest again. This month was sponsored by Velvet Finishes. We got to pick two colors for the theme "Colour Your World" this month.

I was super excited to try this new paint as it is something I have never tried before. I decided to stick with a white theme, as I tend to have hard time straying away. I picked out two colors, Understated and Rococo.

One of my furniture friends gave me an amazing coffee table with a solid wood top to use for my project piece (thank you Kim!). I started off by sanding down the top, as you can see I was partially started here in this picture.

I loved the chunky legs and solid shape of the table. I used a dark stain for the wood top of the coffee table and then I prepped it with Velvet Finishes Ready product for the base. This was super easy to spray on and it dried really quickly. I then applied two coats of the color Rococo. To recreate the wood look, you could paint the top in a nice dark color such as Timeless or Luxurious from Velvet Finishes. Here is progress shot after my first coat and stain.

The paint went on very easily. Super smooth and great coverage for white over a dark green color with the only prep being the Ready spray. I then dry brushed Understated over the base color. I then sealed the entire table with Velvet Finishes Protect product. And here is the final product!

I absolutely love how it turned out! I love the refreshing white tones with the dark top.

Thank you so much for reading. If you want to check out all the other entries, please visit these lovely hosts:

Fern Avenue

&

Sweet Tea Refinishing

Interested in participating along with us in the Fab Furniture Flippin' Contest? You can do so by sending an email over to: info@fabfurnitureflippincontest.com.

Have a great weekend!

Shayla

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Finding Silver Pennies

White Bookshelf

Hello! Long time, no post for me. 2016 has been one of my toughest years thus far. My grandma passed away in March and it has been one of the hardest obstacles in my life thus far. We have always been very close and it was very hard for me to watch her deteriorate in the last few months of her life. I try to keep telling myself that she is in a better place, no longer in pain and cherish all of the memories we had together, but I still incredibly miss her. Life is just not the same! So I lost a lot of interest in a lot of the things that used to bring me so much happiness, like painting furniture. I have still been picking and buying piece selectively though in hopes that I would get it back eventually. 

Summer in Wisconsin is such a beautiful time of the year. I have been outside so much with my new hobby of golf and just enjoying the summer, while slowly working on this piece above. I came across this piece at a local thrift shop and had a 50% off coupon and got it for $7.50! What a deal. Here is the exciting parking lot picture before I load her up in my car.

I bought this piece back on January 28, per my trusty iPhone. And she has sat dormant in my bedroom with me every night up until the last week. I have been very fortunate to meet another fellow Pewaukee-an (is that such a thing?) who runs a barn where she rents out booths to vendors. She also refinishes furniture and occasionally asks me if I have any finished pieces when she runs low on pieces for her booth. This has been so great for the both of us. The Milwaukee market isn't that great for selling refinished furniture. A lot of people try to talk you down in price and pieces just don't sell well compared to other  bigger cities. So this piece went to her booth and I will have a few other pieces going there soon as well. It's a great business relationship for me because I know she will always take my pieces and I don't have to worry about selling them.

With all the spindles on the piece, I used my HomeRight Finish Max Fine Finish Sprayer. By far, still the best investment I have made for painting, besides the furniture. I used Sherwin Williams satin paint that I found at a local ReStore in Casa Blanca for a great price. To protect it when done, I used General Finishes High Performance Top Coat in satin. To apply it, I also use the sprayer as well. I love how it turned out! I need a bigger house to keep all these items.

What do you all think? 

Hoping I am back into furniture mode and I should have a few more posts coming up in the next few weeks. 

Thanks so much for reading, happy Thursday!

-Shayla

Linked up to: A Stroll Thru Life | Chic On A Shoestring Decorating | Pocket of Posies | Patina Paradise | Making It In The Mountains

Original Elegance with Pure & Original Paint

This month I got to participate in the Fab Furniture Flippin' Contest again! It was so fun, I got to try a brand new paint, Pure and Original's Clasico paint line with the theme of Original Elegrance.  This is their chalk based paint made with natural pigments with a matte powdery look. I decided on two colors, Atria and Soft Asparagus. 

Please note, while this contest is sponsored and I received free product, all opinions are my own.

I decided to try this paint on this adorable side table I picked up from a local thrift shop. 

I was tempted to leave the detailed sides, which I tried at first. I tried painting the entire piece and leaving those for the end and a small paint brush. In the end, I decided to paint the entire piece.

 The paint was amazing on the metal detailed parts. It went on so well and only required about two coats for everything. Here are the final pictures.

How do you think it turned out? I am in love with it! This was such a great new product to try and I am so happy with the results. 

Here are links to the host bloggers where you can see all the other projects:

Thirty Eighth Street 

and 

Anastasia Vintage

If you are interested in participating in future contests, please email info@fabfurnitureflippincontest.com for more information.

Thanks so much for reading!

-Shayla

Linked up to: Chic on a Shoestring Decorating | Lost and Found Decor

Grey Bamboo Desk

It has been almost a year since I picked up the desk that started my passion to give old furniture new life. As I reflect on the last year and look at old pictures and pieces, it's interesting to see how my pieces and style have changed over time. There are two major points that I have learned over the last year that I think would be helpful to anyone looking to refinish furniture:

1. Be very selective with your pieces. I used to buy anything just because it was a good deal when I first started. This led to two problems. One, it loaded up my one car garage because I was buying faster than I was finishing/selling and I lost the ability to work in my garage. And 2. my boyfriend thought I was crazy because it started overflowing into my condo. Then, I got sick of items and lost interest in them over time because I realized they weren't that great of quality from the start. That led to a few (about 7) trips to Goodwill to give back a lot of what I had bought from them. Good thing they didn't have to re-tag everything.

2. My style and quality has changed. When I first started, I just loved the idea of fixing something up and reselling it. Now I spend more time really working on pieces (cleaning them, fixing up dents, scratches, taking off veneer, etc). I feel better when I finish the pieces. I also used to love to refinish big dressers, but I just don't have the manpower to do that and I was killing the interior of my car doing that as well. So now my focus is on smaller pieces that I can lift myself, unless I get a custom order.

Anyways, onto my next piece. I have found it interesting that the furniture bloggers I follow and love from the west coast (The Weathered Door, Phoenix Restoration and NAK Home) really find a lot of different styles of furniture compared to what I find. One for example, would be bamboo style furniture. I have rarely come across any here in Wisconsin in my year of doing this, but one day (probably four months ago) I came across this amazing antique bamboo desk at a local Goodwill.

It sat in my garage for awhile (drawer included), and I recently brought it up to work on it. When I took the drawer out, I tried looking for a label or date since this piece was so unique compared to the usual furniture I find. On the bottom of the drawer, I found this inspection stamp from 1916. I couldn't believe it, this piece of furniture it almost 100 years old. It is always amazing to me to think about where these old pieces have been and the story they carry with them.

For this piece, I was inspired The Weathered Door with her amazing bamboo nightstand she recently finished. Lately, the cooling Wisconsin weather has me liking the greys  lately and finally off my white kick from summer. I am trying to be good and use up most of my paint before I go and buy more (I have a lot). When I was going through my Behr deck of colors, I came across Double Click and tried to match it. I made chalk paint with Plaster of Paris and water. I used 5 parts Down Pour from Behr and 1 part Seagull Grey from Behr, all from previous projects.

Then I started hand painting. It took a decent amount of time to make sure the bamboo shapes of the desk were fully covered with paint. I did about two/three coats on the desk. Here is how it looked after one coat.

When I was done painting, I wanted to add something to the desk to emphasize the ornate trim the desk came with. I bought a gold paint marker from Jo-Ann's and used it to fill it in. I then used General Finishes high performance top coat in Flat (a very nice birthday gift from my furniture friend Kim back in April). Here is how she looked when she was done.

What do you all think?

Thanks for reading, hope everyone is having a great week!

-Shayla

PS - I finally bought a paint sprayer! Can't wait to try it and give you all a review soon.

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Thirty Eighth Street | The Painted Drawer | The Crowned Goat | A Stroll Thru Life | Chic on a Shoestring