The Desk that Keeps on Giving

Hey long lost friends!  I'm sorry to be so slow in blogging.  I had to have surgery a few weeks ago and am about to have to go back to work.  Thought I'd get you caught up on a few projects I managed to get done while I was home on medical leave.

Twenty-five years ago I bought this huge old oak teacher desk.  I remember paying $50 for it.

I used it in my home office for 10 years and then sold it to a guy at a garage sale for $50!  

He used it in his office for 5 years before he changed jobs.

Then I married the guy and got the desk back.  HA!

So it's been sitting in my house taking up room for another 10 years.  I decided it was time to let it go (again).

I gave most of the desk two coats of ASCP Emperor's Silk. 

(I'm now carrying Hue Paint but am also trying to use up the remnants of ASCP that I still have.)

I didn't paint the end panels because I wanted to put some maps there.  I used Mod Podge to apply some cool maps that I had to each end.

My original plan was to cover the top of the desk in rulers, but the glass was chipped and I knew the desk wouldn't be functional without it.  So I painted a red border and used my Blue Star Hue Paint in Black Velvet to fill in the center.  

Then I chalked in a border.

I used the chalk lines as a guide to free-hand the border in my White Chocolate paint.

I gave the whole piece two good coats of clear wax.

The inset panels on the back of the desk were painted in chalkboard paint.  I did this step last so the wax wouldn't interfere with the chalkboard.

She turned out beautifully and sold in a week with two women fighting over her!

Not bad for a second life!

Speaking of life, here's what I learned from my recent medical experience:

1)  Don't put off getting your colonoscopy!  I put it off for three years and ended up with a tumor that was benign but 6 months away from being malignant.

2)  If you have to have surgery, find a surgeon that does your needed surgery all the time.  My specialist does colon surgeries every day and was able to do mine laparoscopically.  Consequently, my "major" surgery did not result in major recovery!

I am so blessed!

Merry Christmas!

Here's Your Sign

Last year I had a buffet that had wonky doors.  In an effort to salvage the buffet, I took the doors off.

See how the doors didn't meet?

So I took the doors off.  You can see the rest of the buffet make-over here.

Well I took the doors and made signs out of them.

I started off by taping off the border and painting the panel of the door in Old White.

Then I cut stencils out of contact paper with my Silhouette.

I decided to paint the first sign by stenciling the letters.  

I painted them black

then removed the stencil.

The second was was stenciled in relief.  

I applied the letters to the white base, painted over them in red, then removed the letters to reveal the white below.

Both pieces were then topped with a coat of clear wax.

I'm so glad I was able to take a buffet that redeem her issues!

Grain Sack with a Surprise

One of my most favorite things is old grain sacks.  I love the nubby texture and the blue stripes finish it off for me.  The very fact that some of these have survived for 100 years is proof enough that they're great for upholstery.  I mean, what else am I going to do with a grain sack??

So I found this fabulous settee recently and have been waiting for time to work on it.

The hubster had to help me take off the old upholstery.  There were thousands of upholstery nails!  I then gave it two coats of Plaster Paint.  Not my favorite brand of chalk-type paint, but I wanted to try it.  The result was pink mahogany bleed-through.  Yeah.  Not fun.  (Note: this wasn't the Plaster Paint's fault.  Mahogany will bleed through the best paints out there.  It has something to do with the tannin in the wood.)

I took pictures of the pink mess but can't find them for the life of me! Seems to be the way things are going these days!  

Well, they say the way to block mahogany bleed-through is with a coat of shellac.  I used a spay on shellac that did the trick.  Then another two coats of paint and no more pink!   I gave it a coat of wax and some dark wax to accent the carving.

I decided this was the perfect piece for a grain sack.  Now I've got a stash of them.  I've picked them up at various flea markets and have a hard time parting with them.  But I knew this was the perfect piece for one.  I found a grain sack that was long enough and cut it open to lay it flat.  Guess what I discovered inside!  

I'm not sure what it says but I'm pretty sure it's not English!  How cool is that!  Don't you wish you knew the story??

So I salvage the writing for a future project and upholstered the bench in the rest.

I've reupholstered a few seats in my day, but they've always been the kind where you staple the fabric to the underside.  Not this one.  This one stapled onto the top.  That wasn't so hard in the front.  The back was another matter.  See those skinny spaces between the cushion and the back slat?  Yeah, my staple gun wouldn't fit in there.  So the hubster got out his compressor with the fancy pneumatic stapler and I used that.  Something about that makes you feel so powerful!  Honestly, though, it was very easy to use and I got all of the fabric stapled down.  

The next step was to glue down some trim to cover the staples.  Here is it across the front of the bench.

I'm thrilled with the final product:

The seam across the cushion is where the previous owner actually pieced it together, another great part of it's history that I decided to preserve.  If you look at the left leg, I also attached the draw-string from the sack.  

I've done another bench in grain sack.  You can see it here.

But I do believe I love this one more!

Chairs and Light Bulbs

I have a hard time sticking to one design scheme.  I'm drawn to vintage, retro, industrial, early American, primitives, French country...  There's too much cool stuff out there to pick just one!

I've been looking for some of these old school chairs and found one this summer at a flea market.  I thought it would be a great piece to combine some mid-century and industrial looks.

I used my Silhouette to cut a stencil of industrial filament light bulbs.

I used Mason Blanche's Wrought Iron black chalk paint to paint the stencil.  That way I didn't have to worry about priming or sanding the previous finish.

Once it dried, I pulled the stencil off.  That's always the fun part!

 I topped it off with two coats of wipe-on poly.

The black and white graphic bring new life to this chair.  Of course, the turquoise legs don't hurt!