$2 Chalkboard Sign - Home Sweet Home

A few weeks ago, I decided to decorate the second story shelf in my entry, and this sign ened up being part of my decor.

I found the frame at Goodwill for $1.99.  Since I purchased it on the first Saturday of the month, I only paid $1 for it.  I didn’t have a purpose for it at the time of purchase, but I loved the color and knew I could do something creative with it.

While thinking about things to put on my shelf in the entry, I remembered I had the frame and decided to make a chalk board sign out of it.  I wanted the sign to be light-weight, so I completed this project using a piece of foam board from the Dollar Tree and supplies that I already had in my craft drawer.

First, I cut the board to fit the frame.

Then, using chalk board paint a foam roller.....

......I painted the board.  

Once the paint had dried, I lined the board up with the frame to make sure it fit perfectly….

….and then I hot glued the board to the back of the frame.

Lastly, I took a piece of chalk and wrote “Home Sweet Home” on the board…..

…before enlisting my husband to climb on a ladder and arrange a few things for me.

Not too bad for a $2 project if you ask me:)

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Furniture Redo - from dresser to TV stand

I spent much of last fall furnishing our loft.  Because this is a large space, I wanted to utilize the area for several different purposes.  I wanted one half of the loft to be utilized as an office/library area, and I wanted  the other half  to be utilized as a family/media area.  Above all else, I needed the loft to have lots of storage.  This was the space in the house where I would store my craft supplies, games, DVDs, books, etc. 

 

I was ideally looking for an old dresser…… with lots of character…… and plenty of drawer space…..at an affordable price…… that with a lot of TLC could be repurposed as a TV stand/craft storage.  It took me over a year to finally find this dresser at Goodwill for $35.

This piece is heavy-duty solid wood!  The Goodwill guys helped me load it up, but Matt wasn't home  when I had to unload it. Let me tell ya, that was no easy feat!  I managed to slide it out onto the garage floor until he could get home to help me with it. 

 

In my mind, I knew exactly what I wanted the repurposed dresser to look like, and I knew that I was going to use ASCP (Annie Sloan chalk paint) to achieve my vision.  You can purchase chalk paint on the internet, but I have recently found a local vender who sells it. 

After buying my paint, it was time to get started.  First I painted the drawers with an ASCP paint brush. The color of the edges is province, and the other color is versailles.

After two coats of ASCP dried, I sanded the edges of the drawers to give the piece a more vintage look.

If you have ever used ASCP, you are familiar with the finishing wax. The wax comes in both a clear wax and a dark wax.

When using the wax, I brush it on with the ASCP wax brush and then wipe it with a rag.  The rag will be ruined when finished, so it is best to make sure it’s  an old rag.

This was my first time using the dark wax. I chose the dark wax because I wanted to make the piece look aged.

The three top drawers were a little difficult to work with because of the detail, but I managed to get by.  When working with something so detailed, be careful with the wax.  It tends to clump if you aren’t careful.

Once the drawers were finished, I moved on to the actual dresser by applying two coats of province ASCP and one coat of dark wax. 

This picture shows how the dried wax looks after being wiped with a rag.

In the end, this was the finished piece!

I absolutely adore this piece of furniture!  I love the dark wax over these two colors!

The dresser was too heavy for Matt and I to carry up the stairs on our own.  Thankfully, a guy from church graciously volunteered to help Matt carry it to the loft.  Once we got it upstairs, I had one final thing I needed to do…..add hardware to the top three drawers, while keeping the original hardware on the bottom six drawers.  Oh, and of course we now needed a TV for the loft, which was the perfect excuse to do a little Back Friday shopping with the hubs;)

 

So let's break down the cost of this project. The dresser was $35 and the paint....welll the paint is not cheap. After two colors of paint and a dark wax, I walked away paying about $100 for supplies. I personally think the cost is worth it. I love the character ASCP gives to certain peices of furniture, and the supplies last a long time. I have plenty of paint and wax left over for other projects. Bottom line is that I created a piece of furniture for a total of $135, but I would pay $400-700 for a similar piece of furniture at Home Goods. Obviously, refinishing something with ASCP is still cheaper.



A few months have passed and the loft is pretty much furnished.  Originally, I wanted to mount the TV to the wall and use the top of the dresser for decorative purposes.  After talking to an electrician, we learned that it was going to be really expensive to mount the TV, due to the electrical set up of the room.  It may not have been my original plan, but the dresser ended up making a perfect TV stand and it has fantastic storage for all of my craft supplies!  It may just be my favorite piece of furniture in the loft:)

Just for fun, I’ll end this post with one last before and after picture of this successful furniture redo:)

Goodwill Barstools Painted Black

 

I’ve  been wanting a pair of barstools for the island in the kitchen since we moved into this house.  Not wanting to pay $20-40 for a nice bar stool, I knew I needed to get my thrift on and keep an eye out for a set that I could refinish.

I did eventually find something that I could work with.  That's how these barstools…..

…..turned into these barstools…..

…..using the same method that I used in “Refinishing CraigslistKitchen Table – No Streaks and No Sanding.”

The black barstools look great with my inexpensive placemats and napkins from World Market and my clearance dishes from Target.

 

I love them!  The black paint makes them look just like the barstools I’ve seen at Target, only I didn’t pay a Target price for them.  Which reminds me….. I almost forgot the best part:)  I scored these barstools at Goodwill.  They were $5.99 a piece, but…..wait for it…..I purchased the barstools on the first Saturday of the month, making them just $3 each! YES….definitely a GREAT BUY!

Goodwill Desk Gets a Green Makeover

 

I’m trying to catch up on the blog this moth by posting projects that I’ve completed over the past year, but for whatever reason never made it to the blog until now. 

 

Last spring, I purchased this desk from Goodwill for $25 and gave it a fresh look with some green paint.

 

 

I purchased the desk, because I was getting sick of the hubs leaving the mail or the bills all over the kitchen counter.  Apparently, the cute red mail organizer wasn’t working for him, so I knew I needed a desk with at least one drawer for our organizational needs.

 

I wish I had a before picture of this desk, but I don’t.  Basically, it looked like a paint job gone bad when I purchased it.  Someone probably didn’t know what they were doing when trying to give it a new look, got frustrated, and then chose to donate it.  Their misfortune was my luck, because I really love this piece.

This refinish was really easy.  1) I cleaned the surface.  2) I lightly sanded it to give it to smooth out the surface.  Had someone else not tried to paint it, I probably could have skipped this step.  3) I painted on one coat of Zinsser 123 Primer.  This stuff is the best primer, and you can usually skip  sanding when you prime with it.  For this piece of furniture I chose to use and angled brush rather than my trusty sponge roller, simply because there were a lot of nooks and crannies to paint on this particular piece.  4) Lastly, I painted on two coats of Sherwin Williams Jalapeño Pepper.  I happened to have a sample of this color in satin finish from when we were choosing colors for our downstairs powder room.   
 

 

Samples cost around $6 at Sherwin Williams. The color didn’t work for the powder room, but I think it made a great color for this desk.


 

I think this desk turned out great, and has been a nice pop of color in the kitchen for about a year now.

 

Tomorrow I’ll post about the up-cycled desk organizers I used for this green beauty.

Going Yellow - Mod Podge Table Redo

 

If you’ve been reading the blog this week, you’re aware of my “Going Yellow” series.  This week I’ve been sharing how I updated my living room  by using yellow accents for less than $100.

 

 

Today I’m sharing an easy redo where this table…..

 

 

 

…was updated to this table.

 

 

The original post , “Decoupaged $5 Goodwill Table”, was about how using paper and Mod Podge on furniture can be a creative an inexpensive way to update thrift store furniture.  For this update, all I did was cover the old paper with new yellow paper using the same method that I shared in the original post.

 

 

I love the black, yellow and grey combination of this space now. 

 

I have one last yellow project to share with you tomorrow, so stay tuned.

 

Going Yellow - When a Lamp Shade Meets a Napkin

 

 

I’m continuing my “Going Yellow” series today with a project I’ve entitled, “When a Lamp Shade Meets a Napkin.”

 

 

Yesterday I shared how I updated my DIY Wall Décor with some new yellow fabric to create DIY Wall Art Redo. Today I want to share how I updated this lamp with a new plain white shade and a festive napkin.

 

The original lamp shade was made with scrapbook paper.  You can go here for that tutorial.  For this update, I kept the Goodwill lamp that I spray painted black, but I got rid of the old lamp shade and made a new one. 

To start I bought a simple $8 lamp shade from Target and $3 napkin from World Market. 

I then tore the napkin in half and hot glued it around the shade. By tearing the napkin in half, I had enough fabric to cover the width of the lamp. The two pieces glued seamlessly together on the sides of the shade, because the napkins already had perfect hems.

I then glued the bottom hem of the napkin to the bottom of the shade.

Carefully making pleats, I glued the torn side of the napkin to the inside top of the shade.  To cover the torn part of the napkin,  I glued some pretty ribbon on the inside of the lamp.

 

I love how the napkin not only had some of the yellow I was looking for, but it also had some other bright colors in it as well. It gave me the right amount of pop I wanted for the space.

 

I'd say this lamp redo was a big success....and an inexpensive one at that.

 

Stay tuned for more yellow projects this week:)