Sunday, July 8, 2012

Dining Room Furniture Progress

A long while back, Scott and I bought a hutch for the dining room.  The lady we purchased the piece from was such a nice lady and ended up giving us a beautiful dining room table that had some big paint smears on it.  No big deal, we figured we would refinish it anyways. 
Table in original condition (with hutch shutters leaned against it)

And then months pass until FINALLY - this weekend.  This weekend became the table/dining room weekend.   On Thursday, I had found some chairs on Craigslist that looked like they would match great with our table.  And considering they were only $45, I knew that made them even better looking in my eyes. 

Off Scott went on Friday to check out the chairs. It was quite a trek out to them, but overall he was happy with the shape they were in.  Since he only had 20's in his wallet, he asked the lady if she would let them go for $40 instead of the $45.  Well she must have enjoyed being difficult because $40 would not do it for her.  But $41 would.  So Scott had to scrounge up another dollar to appease the crazy lady.  Oh well, $10.25 each for chairs? I'll take it!  Now if only this lady would have had 4 more, I'd be even happier.

Chairs - before
So I pulled the seats off the 4 chairs and went to sanding.  And sanding.  And sanding some more.  Originally, in our dining room inspiration picture, the chairs we liked were white.  Because our Craigslist chairs ended up being in such great shape, I decided I wanted to stain them instead.  Little did I know what kind of work actually went into getting all the varnish and stain off chairs.  So I sanded and sanded and sanded some more.


I made it through a good HOUR of sanding and still hadn't finished a whole chair.  I did get close to the point where it was time to start hand sanding as the orbital sander could not get into the inner areas.  I believe I looked over at Scott and said, "f**k stained chairs" and went off to get some primer.

I lathered on the primer and within less than an hour had the 4 chairs primed to be painted.  I should have followed my original inspiration picture.  I still need to hook the paint sprayer up to the compressor and get to spraying them then putting some poly over the paint.  That may not be a project until later this evening as I have no idea how to turn the compressor on.


While I was working away on the chairs, Scotty went to town on the table to get it ready to be stained.  Luckily, he is a better person than me and did not give up part way.  So the table top still will be stained. 

First, he put stripper on the table to break down some of the poly coat.   And scraped, and scraped and scraped.  Someone REALLY wanted this table's shiny coat to last forever.

Then he busted out the heavy duty belt sander and got most of the stain off.

He touched up the sanding with the orbital sander and the table ended up looking gorgeous.
 
Not sure what the weird haze is in the air...maybe dust?

The table is officially ready for staining!  I had every intention in staining the table today, but got to thinking after all the work Scott put into it, I'd hate to mess up.  I may leave him in charge of that job since I've never stained before and SO many hours went into the table prep.

I did, however, prime the legs to be painted.  Under the table top and the leg will be painted white to match the chairs.  You can call me lazy, that's OK.  I just can't imagine trying to get all the stain out of the leg detail to re stain it.

Phew.  I'm exhausted just thinking about all of that.  I am once again reminded of how much my husband loves me when he allows me to cause so much work for him.  Each idea and project I have I truly do have intentions of completing myself.  However in retrospect, I don't know that I have ever completed anything without his assistance and expertise...  He's a handy man to have around. 

After some grocery shopping today and getting ready for the week, I think I'll prime the dressers to be ready to be spray painted.  I have 2 dressers that my brother and I used growing up.  I ended up with the set and can't bear the thought of ever getting rid of them.  The dressers will go in each of the guest rooms.  Since both rooms have white furniture, the dressers will be getting their first face lift ever and be painted creamy white to match.   I also may mosey my way down to the fabric store to check out the fabric options for the chair seats.  I want whatever fabric I get to match (or at least compliment) the wing back chairs that I will eventually be reupholstering for our living room.  I went with Scott yesterday and his taste just wasn't cutting it so I gave up "including him" in the fabric choice and we left.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Art!

I was feeling under the weather this weekend so took it easy.  On Saturday afternoon while watching a movie with Scott, I pulled out some art supplies I had laying around and made these:


They're canvases of Kaya and Caspian and I think they're adorable!  I took photos of them that showed their sillhouette relatively well, cut the sillhouette out, traced it on the canvas and painted away.  I have to do Chewy's still.  The only picture I had of him wasn't big enough for the 16x20 canvas so he would have looked mini in comparison.

I was able to complete both of these while watching 21 Jump Street, so they weren't time consuming at all! Art project success!  Now I just have to find a place to hang them...  with all these wall choices, I'm almost overwhelmed!