Laminate is indestructible.

This project is a PERFECT example of the need for patience when working on projects in your home. This is something I have very little of when I get on a roll.

The new look in kitchens is two tones for wood cabinets -- for instance, cherry cabinets and a black island. Depending on the room and the wood tones, I think this can be beautiful. The other night, I was watching an HGTV show and they covered the back of an island with a ratan rug -- it gave it texture that was interesting.

Dangerous. I start looking at our kitchen...thinking of how everything kind of melts together...the cherry cabinets, cherry table and chairs (I'm working on that one), cherry floors and cherry island. I thought, how great would a black island look? I'll add molding to it (an obsession of mind, as you will soon see) and paint it black! Brilliant!

Well, I thought I had planned it out well. I knew the laminate they make the sides of the island out of would not hold paint well. So I got the sander out, got the right grit sandpaper, planned out my painting... So I sanded and painted. When I sanded the first coat, it rolled right off. Gah. So I sanded again. And again. And. Again. Gave up, got the liquid sandpaper. It seemed to work great -- I painted again. And I go to paint the final coat and paint was literally rolling off in my hands. I mean, really.

At this point, I am over this project in a big way. I painted it one more time and will just have to see how it holds up. If it doesn't...I'm calling in the professionals.

The moral of this story is...TAKE YOUR TIME. Do it right. And USE PRIMER!!!

Here is the before:
And here is the after:
The best part -- this was a $30 project:

• $24 for the molding materials
• $6 for liquid sandpaper
• black paint was leftover from another project

What have I done in a year?

Well, I know. Plenty. But there are certain projects I have been meaning to tackle for at least a year now, and I haven't yet. Some are because they cost more than I want to spend, most I blame on my complete and utter inability to focus on one project at a time.

First, to get what I'm saying here, you need to go read this post if you haven't already -- I don't heart you. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Taps fingers.

Looks at watch.

Umkay, done? So I have a serious aversion to the brass in our house. I really, really do not like it, not at all. Even so, I have gotten rid of very little brass around here.

These are still around:
And a couple of these:
They are high, so nobody sees them. That's what I keep telling myself.

I have spray painted these though:

I figured out a while ago you can just pop them off, but we do like having them there:
YES I know they look just like the vents, and you can barely see them. I know that now, I didn't realize when I was spray painting them. Gah. And I didn't use high heat spray paint, (it's oil-rubbed bronze) so we may have take them off when we light the fireplaces anyway. I was just so anxious to get rid of some of the BRASS.

I spray painted some of these too:

And now they look like this:
LURVE!

I'm a freakedy freak and hated the light in our master closet. It was boring and didn't put out much light.
So I did replace that and love it!It was less than $30, not a bad price to pay to actually see our clothing.

Not ONE of these has been changed out:

This is my final frontier -- I hear it's fairly easy to change out faucets but I haven't attempted it myself. But I will. Oh yes. I will.

I showed you this cutie little desk almost a year ago:

I got it at a barn sale and it was only $15! It only took ten months (TEN MONTHS) but I finally redid it. I sanded it down and spray painted the whole thing with the extra paint I used on our deck planters:

I hope to use this color in his big boy room, so eventually the desk will be in there. I added his name to the back of the chair with stickers (that blur is his name) and I am just thrilled with how it all turned out:

LOVE it!! I don't think it's antique but it is nice and used (maybe from the sixties?) I love all the dents and marks in it:Best part is our son really uses it! :)

You may remember how excited I was about this...uhhhh...thing last fall:

I can't even tell you how excited I was to get it! I had such high hopes. Uhhhh...let's just say it was a big, huge, massive FAIL. Yikes. I mean, it was bad. I ended up tossing the whole thing. Even the lights didn't work.

They can't all go right, you know?

A (cedar) chest redo.

I had to throw the "cedar" part in there -- you know what I'm sayin'? (Hang in there till the end for the winner of The Sheet Boutique giveaway!) Remember this lovely I found last week for $40?:
At first glance, it was perfectly lovely on it's own, but the lid had a yellowish paint on it, drip marks and a really awful stencil. I think the person that painted it put too much poly on top that yellowed the paint and made the stencil bleed all over the place.

All I needed to do was sand down the paint and the stencil a little and then paint over it. Easy project right? Ummm...NEVER say those words out loud peeps. Karma comes around every. time.

The person who had painted it before did not prepare it well before painting, so as I was sanding the paint started peeling right off:
I could just pick at it and peel off strips. Nuts. This meant one thing -- I had to strip the whole thing down. (Oooo I am going to get some interesting searches off of "chest" and "strip" in the same post.)

I haven't had to use paint stripper for years, I avoid it if I can. This time I used water-based stuff and I really liked it:

The instructions say you can even use this inside, but I wouldn't recommend that. It's super easy to use though -- just glob it on.

If their are only one or two coats of paint, it should only take one or two applications. If there are about eleventy billion, it will take a couple hours and a few more applications:

Gah. If you ever need to do this, use fine steel wool to get the paint out of the detailed areas.

Then, I put on a couple coats of primer and then about five coats of paint, because the wood was quite literally sucking it right up. This is when one of my little painting tricks comes in handy:

You can keep a brush or roller without cleaning it for quite a while if you just bag it up.

This was the result:

It still needed somethin. Think Sarah, think.

Oh yes, the poor (wo)man's custom cushion:

Yet again, I just wrapped the fabric around the foam and hot glued it. Serious folks. When I get an extra $100 for thicker foam, more fabric and a professional, I'll get it done for reals.

Here is Stink Eye Sister modeling it:

Oh yeah, did I mention she's baaaaaack??

It still needed something, so I held my breath, crossed my fingers and distressed it just a bit:

LURVE!!!

I had a hall table in this spot before, but had been contemplating moving it down more into our foyer anyway. I did some rearranging and really like how it looks now:
Now we have a "real" foyer set up and it's so warm and cozy! It's a little more in that spot than I'm used to there, but I love it. I thought about moving the art around but like how it works for now -- it may not stay for long: The chest is now the perfect spot to sit, and it will be great during parties -- everyone seems to congregate out in this room. I need to install some safety hinges and then it will hold all this too:
Well, not the cat. All the toys. Gotta love that. :)

The randomly picked winner of The Sheet Boutique pillow giveaway is Julianne Hendrickson!! Julianne, please e-mail me and I'll get you in touch with Cara!

Next up -- my tile project! I love it! And I am honored to be featured at a great site tomorrow -- stay tuned!

When FAB happens by accident. (And for FREE.)

So I've never considered myself a dumpster-diver. I mean, I will dig through the Goodwill shelves with the best of them, but trash just ain't my thing. But a couple months ago on the way out of the neighborhood, I saw something sitting at the end of a neighbor's driveway with the trash.

I couldn't really tell what something was...I just saw it had GREAT legs. Long, curvy, sexy legs. I slowed..but my pride got the best of me. I mean, really. Was I going to pull over, grab that thing and stuff it in my car in broad daylight? In my own neighborhood?

No way.

I totally sent my sister instead.

Ah yes, she is ten years younger and used to doing my dirty work people. When she was three I was elated that we could make a game of "Go get sissy a snack!" and "Go pick up sissy's room!" It was fab. And still is. I begged her to go grab it. By now it was raining and I was panicking. She must get it NOW!

She did it and called me cursing because it was "soooooo heavy Sarah, seriously" and babbling on about "like 50 pounds" and "you totally owe me" -- blah blah blah. I was all, "Toughen up Sister!" and "It's good for you!" and, "Go get me a snack!"

Well, I felt bad later cause this sucker was HEAVY. Like, what the bleeping bleep is in this thing?, heavy. Upon some inspection, we realized it was a very old sewing cabinet:

She was in really, really bad shape. I had a vision though...

First, I put on my super cute accessories -- a mask (dollar store) and goggles:
Up till a few months ago, I never used either one when sanding, but now I try to use them all the time. I see the HGTV guys do it, so like always, I do as they do.

Next I took all the innards out of the table and she lost about 40 pounds like that. (Wouldn't that be nice?) Then I pulled out Mr. Cutie Patoot Sander. This little guy is cheap and will do just about any job in half the time as sandpaper:

After you finish sanding, you must wipe it down, like, fifty trillion times. I swear it takes longer than the sanding. I just use wet paper towels but tack cloths work great too:

Keep wiping till no more stuff comes off.

Because the top sanded down so easily, I had a wild hair to stain the top instead of painting it:

But I just wasn't feeling it. It was beautiful, but it wasn't my original vision. I did a little freak out that I had just wasted all that time, but I had another wild hair as I started painting over it:
I did one thin coat so you can see the red wood coming through. Um. People...I LOVE it. Ack!

I was so excited to get to the next step -- my inspiration for this was a beautiful little side table that was one of my few real furniture splurges. It is black with a very faint gold scrolly design on the front and I love it. So I gathered up my stenciling tools to recreate the look:

My shimmer/faux paint (bought it at Lowe's years ago and it has lasted FOREVER) and my glaze paint -- also has lasted forever, like a freaky long amount of time:

You need very, very, very little -- just an itty bitty dollop:

Mix them up and use the little stencil foamy thing (also has lasted about five years) and just dab it in:Get all the excess off, you want as little on the foam as possible:I taped the stencil down, and taped over the areas I didn't want to get painted:

Then I pulled it off and....

FREAKED OUT. I hated it. It was waaaaaay too bright. And I completely forgot about the handle that had to go back on as well. I thought I had taken a pic but I think I was freaking out too much.

I decided to paint the whole front panel black and just be done with the whole thing, so I started sanding over it. And a beautiful thing happened -- exactly what I wanted:

Well, I'll be. It was perfect. By accident.

Then I distressed the whole table just a bit. Because distressing stresses me:

I didn't use poly to protect it, I don't think this one needs it. I just scrubbed the old hardware and love how it turned out:
SWOON people!!

I'm still playing around with accessories:

The print above is going -- I'm making something else for that spot I'm very excited about. Let's just say the two little words: Ballard. Designs. Ack!

Here's a really bad, dark before picture with my GORG little Goodwill side table that was just too short:

And here's a really bad, dark daylight after picture:

I love!! Here's the Singer that was inside...she's a beaut:

Anyone know if these have any value anymore? It really is gorgeous. Wish I had a spot to display it.

This whole project was FREE! Free trash and free Glidden paint. Say it with me... Awwwwwwwww yeah.

I want to thank Kelee for highlighting me this week over at The Katillac Shack -- if you head over to see her beautiful site, be sure to comment! You'll be entered to win this FANTASTIC headboard!!:
Not even kidding, that is awesome!

P.S. I am so humbled and thankful for all of your wonderful, helpful and inspiring comments and and e-mails concerning my last post. I can't thank you enough. I am SO excited!!