The Art of Living Positive: July 2013

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Old Side Table Livened Up With Annie Sloan Chalk Paint In Graphite

I had been seeing all over the internet, pictures of furniture using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I wanted to try it!

I quickly got on the computer and searched Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I thought "Oh maybe Lowe's or Home Depot carries it." Not! Only certain stores carry her paint. Lucky for me, there was one store in town that carried her paint.

I went over to Old Town Temecula where the store is located and dragged my family with me. As soon as I walked in I was so excited! The furniture, the colors, the EVERYTHING was amazing! I fell in love. There was a whole corner in the store dedicated to Annie Sloan Chalk Paints! With samples of furniture for sale in the store painted with her chalk paint. Oh my! Such beautiful pieces! If you get a chance head on over to The Vintage Begonia in Old Town Temecula. Here is their website: http://www.vintagebegonia.com/

Annie Sloan's paint is expensive at about $40 a quart. Yes, I said a quart. I read everywhere that it would go a long way though. So I bought a quart of Duck Egg, because I immediately fell in love with that color and two sample bottles $15/each in Graphite and Antoinette. I wanted to paint my daughter's furniture in Antoinette but she was digging it so I got a small sample of it to test it out. You can see how that furniture turned out here and here.

I started with the Graphite on this small side table I had.

I was reading everywhere that one coat would do but I wasn't seeing that here.

You could still see the oak underneath and that's not what I was going for.

I went from leg to leg and after the fourth leg, I was able to start the second coat right away. The paint dried pretty fast.

I was really liking the matte finish this paint gives.

I have never used chalk paint before so I didn't know what to expect or really what brushes to use. I didn't want to use a roller brush so I used a paint brush I had laying around. You can see the paint is still drying above. I then took Annie Sloan's Clear Wax to it and scuffed up the edges a little and rewaxed. I like the way it turned out! Perfect for my magazines in my little corner of my room.

Have you used Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint yet? What was your experience and what colors have you used? I'd love to hear about it!

~Myda

White To Pink

In my previous post, I showed you how my husband and I converted a tall dresser into a bookshelf. Click here to see it. My sister in law gave my 10 year old daughter all of her old furniture. I found out over the weekend, that even my sister in law was not the original owner. I was told that the furniture was close to 50 years old!

If you notice, there's a lot of posts right now, where old furniture is in!

As part of the set, she gave my daughter a desk and hutch. I saw some great potential with this set! It would be perfect for my daughter to do her homework on, write letters to friends and keep her little chapter books on, along with some homemade stuff of hers.

I wasn't digging the color though.

My daughter had been begging us to paint the walls in her room pink but since we are renting, I didn't want to do that. So I promised her we would paint her furniture pink and I'd even let her choose the pink she wanted! Yikes!

We headed over to Sherwin Williams and this is what she chose! Vivacious Pink!

I didn't have to do much prep work. I sanded the desk and hutch down after a quick clean and got to work!

I left the bottom of the hutch untouched because I was going to put cork board there. After I went to Hobby Lobby though, I wasn't happy with how the thin the roll of cork board was. So I found some thicker cork board that came in a rectangle shape and bought two.

They weren't big enough to cover the whole space so I ended up painting the white part pink.

After the pieces were painted I then waxed them with Annie Sloan Clear Wax, mixed with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antoinette.

Below are some pictures of the end result. The pictures do not do this piece justice. It is much cuter in person and even my husband loved it when it was done, and he was very hesitant about the Vivacious Pink! The wax gave it a softer and whimsical look.

I painted the knobs with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antoinette then touched the edges a bit with the Sherwin Williams Vivacious Pink.

I love the curves on this set. Beautiful!

You can see where I had to space out the cork boards to fit evenly on the hutch.

Don't mind the messy mattress on the ground there...that is a future project as well. ;)

Oh! I also redid the chair. I actually did the chair in reverse. I painted it with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antoinette then waxed it with her clear wax mixed with the Sherwin Williams Vivacious Pink.

Here are some pictures.

Before

During

After

I took some left over material from my daughters favorite blanket and added it to the chair. It's an easy fix and I think when she gets a little older I will change it out to something a little more elegant but for now that's what she wanted.

I hope you enjoyed this post! I'd love to hear about any furniture you've redone! Which way would you have done it? Would you have chosen the Vivacious Pink or Antoinette as the main color? I wanted it all to be like the chair, but I also wanted my daughter to be happy in her room. :)

~Myda

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Tall Dresser Converted To Bookshelf

Since we moved into our new home, my daughters mattresses have been on the floor. They went from sharing a room to getting their own rooms. They shared furniture in the old house.

My husband and I kept telling each other that we really needed to get their rooms situated. Once again, law of attraction came to play.

The weekend it all started

I received a text from my friend saying they were re doing their daughters room and asking if I wanted her bed. If not, they were going to donate it! I remembered loving her daughter's bed. It was very cute and perfect for my 4 year old. So of course I said yes!

Isn't it cute!? I traded the nightstand we had and she gave me the matching nightstand for this bed. My daughter was so excited we had to go out and get a bedspread. The Tinker Bell bedspread was $9.95 at Target! The bed is a little high so she has her Ikea step stool. (I love Ikea!) The green cords on the wall are from flower lights from Ikea as well. It's hard to get a picture of it all from that corner.

What about me?

Well, my 10 year old daughter insisted she wanted to keep her mattress on the floor but when she saw her little sister's bed, she decided she wanted a "normal" bed. Yes!

My sister and mother in law are moving and were giving away all of their furniture, give or take a few pieces. She asked me if I wanted her old furniture for my 10 year old. I said yes! The only thing is, there's no bed. It's a couple dressers and a desk with hutch. We decided on a platform bed, since her room is small and the window is kind of in an odd space so there really isn't room for fitting a nice big bed frame (I was wanting a canopy type bed for her). Jason will be making her bed in the near future. For now, we needed to get all her books off the floor and onto a bookshelf.

Well, we got 2 dressers from Jason's sister. One was a tall one and one was a long one. She didn't need 2 dressers so we decided to make the tall dresser a bookshelf.

The Weekend Project

My husband is sort of a neat freak. Well, borderline OCD! I wanted to make the tall dresser an open bookshelf but he wanted any clutter hidden. Books are not clutter in my eyes, but oh well. I usually let him get his way, so he got to work. I wish I would've gotten more pictures of the process. Sorry.

First, he cut the sides off of the drawers and then glued the drawer faces together and put them together with a piece of wood and some metal bracket things. (I don't know the terminology and he's not here right now for me to ask him). He then took out the wood pieces in the dresser where the drawers slide in. He used the bottoms of the drawers to make the shelves flush. In the above picture he is using wood glue to lay down wood pieces so that when he lays the drawer shelf down it will be flush. The bottom shelf is done and he put big pieces of concrete on it to put pressure on the shelf to dry.

Above, he is putting a drawer bottom over the wood pieces to make the shelf flush.

He used some clamps to hold it down while it dries.

Since he's never done this before, he feels it is a little sloppy but I love it. You can see the wood down the middle of the door and the metal pieces that keep each drawer face together. He had to mess with the hinges to make the door fit as good as possible. He spray painted the inside white.

The finished product. His job was done. I noticed when it was done that he had put the top drawer as the 3rd drawer though. He was so disappointed. I told him it's not really noticeable, but I guess everyone knows now! Haha

Here is an angled view.

Now it was my turn to do some magic. Well, my daughter LOVES pink. I mean really loves pink. She wanted her walls painted pink but since we are renting I said I didn't want to do that and promised her pink furniture. I really wanted to use Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. We went to a store in Old Town Temecula called Vintage Begonia that carries her paint. Lucky for me because not a lot of stores carry her paint. You can check them out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/vintagebegonia

The pink that Annie Sloan has is soft and beautiful, but my daughter didn't like it. Well, she was looking for a more vibrant pink! The color is Antoinette. Click on the name to go to Annie Sloan's website. Below is the color swatch of Antoinette and a nightstand painted with Antoinette from her website.

So we went to Sherwin Williams and let my daughter pick a color. Bold, I know. She chose Vivacious Pink below.

My husband was taken aback by it's brightness but I told him it's her room, you don't have to live in there. :)

I started my sanding and prepping, which wasn't much.

Since my daughter really loved the brighter pink I started with that first. I took the handles off and painted the whole dresser Vivacious Pink.

Excuse the ugly couches in the background. Those will be covered at some point.

When I first got done with the pink, I thought it was a little too bold. I had some Annie Sloan Clear Wax and decided to mix the Antoinette with it to make it a Antoinette wax. It gave it a whimsical look and my husband immediately loved it!

Below is a closer look at the wax on top of the dresser.

I then painted the handle with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antoinette and brushed over the top with the Vivacious Pink so that it hit the edges of the handle.