We’re Back!

I’m not sure where August went.  It seems like the summer has a way of slipping away at the end.  With the change in the seasons, my motivation was rejuvenated.  We have started to focus on the inside of the house.  My garden looks like crap but on the bright side, it will be dead soon!  My attitude surrounding the garden and yard… we can fix it next year. 

Now on to what we have been doing.  We’ve gone to a lot of yard sales and have found a lot of fun items on craigslist.  The only challenge with this approach?  You have to refinish the items so that they are presentable.  That is what has taken so long!  The first item I’m sure you remember because I was so excited when we found it… the dining room table and benches.  Here’s the story of the table…

The Before: The table definitely had potential but was severely scratched.

Here’s what we saw when we looked at this old table in need of some TLC.  This is the inspiration behind the transformation.  We decided that we were going to have a stained table top with painted legs.  We also like the idea of painted chairs on one side, the bench on the other and two upholstered chairs at the head of the table. 

In Progress: We sanded down the top of the table to the bare wood, applied a darker stain and two coats of polyurethane. (This may sound easy but this took 2 weeks.  Mostly because after sanding and staining, I wasn’t happy with the results, so I tried again.  It wasn’t until Steve convinced me to just use the polyurethane anyway, that we realized that was the key!)  

Here’s the finished table in place in the dining room.  We still have to paint the chairs, sand and stain the bench and find the upholstered chairs, but for now we have a dining room. 

While we were working on the dining room, we had to do something with the terrible lighting fixture.  Here’s the before and after.

Before: Gold with ruffled light shades

 

In Progress: We spray painted the gold fixture black.  Then we picked out a bubbled glass light shade to give it a different feel.

The “final” dining room.  There is more to do but it’s done for now…. it could be months before I do the rest of it.

Once I saw that the table had turned out so well, I wanted to paint everything in sight.  It was getting late, so I only did one thing.  Steve and I have had an unfinished hutch for about 5 years now.  It’s actually the first piece of furniture that we bought together and we’ve been waiting for the house so that we could paint it the right color.  Here’s the before and after.

After: Staged in the bathroom.  This is obviously our favorite paint color.  This paint was actually $0.25 at Home Depot! Score!

Here’s where it’s actually going to live.

I have a couple of projects that are in the works and will update soon.  After doing so much at the beginning, we needed a little time to rest but now we’re back!

~Jill