Old frame rescue

It’s dangerous to put free stuff out on the table in the office! Dangerous for me, at least! A couple weeks ago I walked into work and passed an old, dusty, cracked, chipped frame with a dirty, stained, faded, torn picture in it. Did you notice that I said I passed it? Yep, I walked right by without thinking about it with just a little interest. I even went home that night without snatching it up, but when it was there in the morning, I knew I had to try to pretty it up. Kyle thought I was crazy, but he’s quickly learning to appreciate the little cheap/free projects that keep me occupied at night. Upon further inspection, I even found some little bugs crawling around between the paper and the glass! Needless to say, it lived in the hallway in our apartment building until I ripped the picture out and sanded it down. Here is a before picture. Sorry about the glare…sun and glass don’t mix well for pictures.
As I said before, it had several large chips in it. Because of the detail of the frame, I had to rebuild some of the leaf detail. I used a basic wood filler for this and just used my fingers/nails to mold it into the shape I wanted. I also tried to fill some of the larger cracks with it too.
After that dried, I gave it a quick coat of spray primer. Then I decided to paint it the same color as the cabinet. I thought the light gray would be pretty! Well, it was, but it wasn’t pretty on the wall. Because our walls are a light creamy yellow color, it blended right in while clashing a little. So, last night brought the darker gray/blue out with the paintbrush. MUCH better! Now it stands out on it’s own.

One of the reasons I like the frame so much is that it’s so versatile! I put a little bunting in it, but once I get tired of that I can change it up using whatever I have around the house. Who knows, maybe it’ll become a seasonal thing…Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines, 4th of July. Endless possibilities! Kyle would be rolling his eyes right now if he was reading this! Hah! But he’s have that cute little amused smile on his face at the same time. He’s so patient with me!
The bunting was very easy to make. Well, most of it was! I had some left over muslin from something and a roll of twine from another project I might share later. I cut the twine to the right length and hot-glued it to the back of the frame so that it zigzagged (is that a word?) back and forth. I wanted to use the EcuyerDAX font for the lettering, but didn’t want to spend money on transfer printer paper. So, I printed out the letters in the correct size on normal paper and traced each on on the muslin. Yes, I traced ever single one. Don’t ask me what I was thinking! Actually, it wasn’t too hard, but by the time I was finished, my patience was as well! But the end result was worth it, in my opinion. After the letters were all traced onto their triangles, I hot-glued the string and wrapped the top of each triangle over until it cooled. Be careful if you try this…the glue likes to ooze out and burn poor little unsuspecting fingers! Here’s a closeup of the bunting.
So, next time you find a old, yucky frame, consider rescuing it! You won’t be disappointed!

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Cabinet re-do

Kyle’s brother Seth took a wood-working class (not the official name, I’m sure) a couple years ago. One of the projects was to make a kitchen cabinet. He kept it for a while, but when moving to another dorm room, decided to trade us the cabinet for a desk that we had. We got the better end of the deal, I’m afraid! :) It was completely unfinished when we got it. My first attempt at finishing it consisted of walnut stain. I thought I liked it, but after living with it for a couple months, I got sick of the prominent wood grain. It just didn’t fit our decor at all! I tried to find a picture of it in all its glory, but could only find a corner of it. So, pardon the terrible before picture. I thought for sure I had a better one!

I had no intentions of doing anything to it soon, but my wonderful husband offered one morning to take me out paint shopping. “For what?” I asked. The cabinet! Yahoo! So, we ended up getting some basic primer and some $3 paint samples from Lowes. We went with Olympic paint since it’s low/non VOC and doesn’t have such terrible fumes. I wanted to paint inside as much as possible to avoid the heat and bugs outside!

So, out came the cabinet! We don’t have any yard to speak of outside of our apartment, so I took over the back step. It’s hardly used and big enough that I figured I would be in anyone’s way.
I sanded it down, taking special care on the areas that I had spilled food and olive oil on. :) Just ask my hubby…he’ll tell you to steer clear when I’m in the kitchen. It can get messy!
I thought that maybe I’d paint the edges a dark blue and then paint over with the lighter color. I’ve never tried the distressed look, but was curious to see how it would turn out. So, here’s my little undercoat job (or whatever you want to call it).
Then came the final coat of paint. I went with a light gray color. It was lighter than I thought and closer to white, but I like the way it turned out. It’s hard to get the right effect on camera, plus it looks darker inside.
Before we put it all back together, I replaced the hardware. Seth had made a wooden pull on the drawer and the door didn’t have a knob. We took a little trip to Home Depot and found just the right set! The knob was even on sale! So, here are the pictures of the finished product! Oh, and I tried distressing one corner…it didn’t work. Even light sanding took it down to the wood and didn’t show any of the dark gray/blue. I didn’t like the look either, so out came the light stuff! By the way, that one little paint sample was just enough to do the whole cabinet! Not bad for 3 bucks, huh?

So, there you have it! The finished product! It really doesn’t match great with the wall/trim color in the apartment, but since we can’t paint the walls and won’t be here for super long, I thought I’d go with something I would prefer in the future. Nothing like thinking ahead!
As far as the top goes, we have a butcher block top on our wish list. After lots of searching for an affordable one in the right size, we landed on this one from Hardwood Lumber Company
The paint colors we used were Olympic Thin Ice D58-1 for the light color and Olympic Sheffield Gray D51-5 for the dark. The gray is really pretty and definitely has blue undertones. The paint really covered well! There were some stains that the primer didn’t cover, so I had given up on them. After one coat of this paint, however, they stayed hidden! Haven’t seen them peeking out yet! It does dry quickly though, so if you’re doing a large space you may want to add something to keep it from gumming up. I got a few globs of goo in mine that created some problems. But hey, for cheap little samples with no fumes, you can’t be too picky!

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First Post!

Well, I’m just getting started and really have no idea what I’m doing!  Hopefully with a little more playing around I’ll get the hang of this and be able to use this blog to be an encouragement to others and keep family and friends informed on what’s going on in our lives!

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