My next project is here! The piano came today thanks to my awesome friends and family who helped me move a piano in the cold snow.
 I am insane.
 I know this.
The sooner you accept it the better off you will be.
    I do feel bad that my one friend smashed his finger and we also hit the corner-bead really hard and I have to fix it now. I also took pics of the glider rocker, I am getting the fabric this week and am going to start putting that together. I hope I can do it. It'll be the first time I tackle anything like this. I figure if it's not perfect it's ok, she can use and and I can always recover it in a few years after the kid has drawn on it a time or two. Chase totally took a black ball point pen to all of it.
It's been sitting in an attic for about 4 years now and it's disgusting. Pretty much anything I do to it will be an improvement, the actual chair is still good. it needs some love.

Work is getting less which is good, I need to take this time to get stuff in order. I also think I am going to sell my first refinished piece. I need to tweak the stain, I went a little heavy handed with it and I need to repaint the mirror frame with the base white I used.
As my house changes and becomes what it will be, things are moving around and I am figuring out what I want and what I don't.
I'm not sure I really want to do refinishing as a job but I wouldn't mind earning some money if I can fix things and sell them for a little bit of a profit. Post all my mistakes so anyone reading this will know what NOT to do. Either way the dresser I bought for the bathroom in the house we were originally going to buy doesn't work well in the house we actually bought. I have an armoire I need to sell as well though I haven't touched it and maybe I should. No need to keep them so maybe someone will buy them!!

I figured I'd post my before pictures of my scary projects, I'll clean the piano tomorrow. I think I'm just going to use a restore a finish since the finish is in pretty good shape and I don't really mind the shade, it'll look a lot better with minimum work and a little love.. the chair needs ALOT of work and a TON of love. I think most people would just get a new one.

 Oh the horror! I have a lot of work to do! Wish me luck!

50% off at the thrift store? Yes please!

    So not too much happening, I still need to pick up the fabric for my next project, I've been working and hanging out with the fam. I stopped in the thrift store today and it was mobbed, no neat furniture to pick up sadly but everything was 50% off and I did pick up a sweet vintage Pyrex set with sunflowers on the tops for 5 bucks! Score of the day: A sweet vintage black umbrella with a metal tip and curved wooden handle. I have a tan one but I've been looking for a black one for years now so I was really happy when I found that! I spent less than ten dollars and I got a bunch of cool stuff. Including the Milk glass bowl, I'm thinking fruit bowl.

Hello Beauties!!

   So at home and bored, I wandered over to Craigslist and I noticed a girl who refinishes furniture, I looked at her stuff and while it is done well I can't help but feel like ... I don't know, she's redundant. It's all very shabby chic borderline rustic I guess. I like the shabby chic look but usually only when a piece is so far gone there is not much I can do for the wood or if it's not a very high quality wood to begin with, then by all means paint away. However if you have a vintage piece of nice wood that can be refinished for the love of god and all that is holy please restore the woods original beauty! I'm not a wood purist by any means but it takes more skill and time to refinish a piece properly then it does to slap some paint on and sand off said paint in choice areas to create a vintage look. Just my rant for now. I guess mostly because I want to die when I see what she has done to some of those beautiful pieces. I was once a paint over stuff to fix it because I didn't know any better, of course as I learned more techniques I kicked myself in the ass because, have you any idea how hard it is to strip paint off?? If the piece has detailing, my god forget it, you're in hell for weeks removing it! Chasetin's dresser is a prime example. I painted it back when I was just starting to learn how to do any of this stuff and now I know I'll be removing that paint because he's going to out grow it. I do not look forward to that day. I actually might tackle it this summer, every time I look at it I want to strip that paint off. Lessons learned the hard way. don't get me wrong I did a nice job and I loved it when I did it... still.
   My sisters dresser however, paint was the way to go, it was one of those dime a dozen late 70's early 80's pieces super dark wood and just over took her room. I painted it bright high gloss white and the room became a thousand times lighter. We also spray painted her knobs bright pink. It came out really good and I don't see her keeping this dresser forever it's not an heirloom by any means so no harm no foul. I can touch it up anytime it needs it but it was by far the best thing to do,  her desk and bed frame was refinished but I used a polyshade, I think I would have gone a different route if I did it now but it was quick easy and done in one step and both look a ton better. Whenever I get bored I refinish a room in my parents house. That was the last one I did before we bought our house and I'm going crazy being on hold because I am anxious to finish the rooms. Really soon now! I have a piano to pick up tomorrow which is going to need some love though it's in really great shape, just needs a good cleaning really maybe some buffing to let her shine. I might post some pics of her if I get a chance.
   I also need to bring home my vanity my sister bought me, I went and looked at it yesterday and I am so much in love, it's a beautiful piece from the 20's one family owned it and it's in beautiful shape, a little veneer loss and I'm going to look into how to deal with that without ruining the original finish as I want to keep as much of that intact as I can. It is a very ornate piece, a lot of carving detail and I do not want to mess that up! I'll probably just clean her up and keep her as is until I have a little more experience with how to take care of such a problem without destroying the integrity of the piece. I'll keep my eyes open for some practice pieces!
   That's it for now, quick boring update of nonsense chatter just getting myself into the hang of this really. Hopefully I'll have something to actually post next time, you know that's worthwhile. ;)

First post.. here goes nothing!

I keep trying to get back into some kind of blog, it's been years and a lot has changed since the livejournal days. I decided to do this despite my hesitations, as it seems a far better to place all my projects in more detail for anyone who cares about that lol. I've read a lot of fantastic blogs over the years and it makes it all very intimidating. How do I start? Every time I try to start it sounds so forced, so here it is, a more natural evolution of something, or maybe nothing. I'm hoping this is an easier platform for my grandparents to use as well since not all of them are on facebook. Plus it sucks trying to in-depth detail a project on facebook,

   We have been working on the house and it was pretty much balls to the wall before the holidays, it's slowed down since then and I have some smaller scaled projects coming up so I'll be posting them and perhaps posting some of the older ones even though I didn't document them as much as I wanted to since I was in the middle of every room and packing and moving. It's a little easier now. I have a glider rocker that I am about to transform for my nephew who just graced us with his presence!

 I don't anticipate that this will be 100 percent projects since I have been wanting somewhere I could express myself on some level that isn't face book. I'm trying to decide where my next path is as I look to change job tracks. I've spent 10 years doing drywall and acquiring all the amazing skills I have because of that but I have to branch off into another route. I have been told I should write, but it's been years since I have written anything I almost feel as though I have completely forgotten how. Or about what. I need something to do with my hands and creating. I don't know how to not create no matter what the price to my body. I expect to go back to school this summer/fall and I am hoping to have the rest of the major projects closer to being complete by then so I can just focus on that and smaller projects I can tackle mostly by myself. Sadly I need help hanging drywall and pipe installation so these are on hold until further notice. I decided that for my first post I would put up pictures of my last big project, I made some mistakes but I learned a lot so I'll do my best to document it so long after the fact.

The Project:
   

     Vintage buffet/side table

    $40.00 @ Thrifty Shopper

Now please forgive me, my pictures are rubbish and I know it, I was crunched on time as I wanted this done for thanksgiving and I had a week to pull it off. I forgot to take pictures until after I had already sanded the top. It was water damaged as you can see from the top and middle pictures, though it did look worse.

 

   My first thought was just to sand the top down and match the existing color because it's lovely (not so much in these pics) and I didn't want to lose that beautiful pattern. I only sanded the top because of the water damage. I used restore a finish for the first attempt and I was pleased with the outcome, however the middle picture is what it looked like and the top was still less than stellar. As you can see.

 I went online and started looking at what else I could try because I wanted to wood to glow, and be glossy. I knew I'd have to poly it eventually but I was hoping to fake it for the holiday. I decided to try linseed oil and wax because I thought it would be natural and surely this is a good time to try new things why not? Not like I'm on a time crunch or anything.
 I was in a rush. Mistake number one. I like to just jump in but for something like this really research and take your time, it'll be better for your sanity trust me.

 Bad news, I didn't take photos of the linseed oil debacle, but let me tell you I messed it up something awful. When I sanded originally I sanded down the left half more than the right, this led to the oil soaking deep into the wood while the right half was a thick sticky mess. Horrified I looked for a fix. Turns out if you put too thick a coat of linseed oil on you wind up with a sticky mess that never cures. I scraped off the oil and used mineral spirits to remove it then sanded it (after it dried) but the wood where it had soaked into now had black marks like the original water damage. 

*Sigh
What's a girl to do?

Bleach. 
Bleach totally removes black mold from wood and can restore the wood almost to new, you have to be careful it doesn't lighten the wood too much unless that's a look your going for. I wasn't. The bleach did help a lot though the wood had some deeper color it blended well, and I removed almost all of the original water damage.

After it dried I re sanded it down (for the 5th time) and I used a maple stain I had in my stash. I did two coats of poly over the whole thing and I love how it came out. 

Right side is damage free and a little lighter than...

The left side which was dark from the oil since it seeped in so deep, luckily the bleach worked enough that it appears natural. And it is just a little darker than it was.

You can't even see the spot anymore, you have to really look for it. sadly the wood split a little and I had to fill it, that's not perfect but it's hardly noticeable so perhaps a future redo will be in order but it's more than fine for now.

So I bit my lip and went on a limb as I polished the hardware with brasso. I was hesitant on this because you just never know whats under the patina, and patina can be so beautiful you hate to remove something that took decades to accumulate, some people would kill me for doing that. I was afraid I made the wrong choice when I first uncovered them, however I ended up pretty pleased with the results. I am not a big gold/brass tone person but I really loved the contrast I ended up getting. I also polished these with a jewelry cloth to get the soft shine they have.

So here it is in my dining room being loved and used finally since I have bought it over a year ago and it's been sitting in storage waiting for us to buy a house. It's finally home!

I will hopefully be starting the rocker in the next week so I'll post that as I do it.