Why I Haven't Had Time to Blog

You know how you think of one teeny, tiny project to do and then that leads to another one, and that leads to another one, and before you know it, you've basically redecorated and painted an entire room? Well, that's pretty much what happened this Spring in our kitchen.

It all started because the $20 chandelier that we bought on Craigslist had two shorted out sockets. I finally couldn't take the flickering lights anymore and took the thing down. Daniel looked into repairing it and while he did that I hit it with a coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint (I figured if it didn't work we may be getting rid of it anyway since it was broken). It came out beautifully! However, after the spray paint was on it, the red shades really didn't look all that great, so I headed up to Pottery Barn to see about getting some burlap ones. The price tag was a bit much for 5 mini lamp shades ($120!), so I bought some knock offs on Ebay for $40. In the mean time, Daniel replaced the two damaged sockets and got it working like new again. After another coat of paint to the chain, it looked like a brand new light fixture!

The one from Pottery Barn I tried to mimic. Not bad, eh?

Once the light went up, it highlighted how oversized our table was for the eat-in kitchen... so naturally that had to go. Sheesh. Daniel had long been wanting to build a new table and he found some great old reclaimed wood on Craigslist that he planed down and used to make the most beautiful table! The wood was salvaged from an old saw mill out in the country and he ended up with lots of heart pine and a couple of red oak beams (those suckers were HEAVY!) Based on the date that the saw mill was built and operated, we figured that the heart pine were probably saplings around the time the Civil War started. Pretty cool.

Anyway, he got busy building a table that was better suited for the size of our kitchen while I decided that the walls needed some lightening up. I loved the colors that we had used in the flip house we did last year, so I used some leftover paint and got the whole room painted one night while Daniel was on call. He was a little surprised when he got home the next day :)

We went through a TON of sand paper smoothing this thing out!

Of course now that the walls were lighter and brighter, the Tuscan Countryside painting I had over the old table didn't really go so well. Plus it always was a little too small scale for that wall anyway. Enter Project #3 (or 4, I can't keep track at this point).

I had shown a house to a client earlier that week that had a really cool framed chalkboard in the kitchen and I took a picture with my phone to remember the idea. We headed to Homegoods and found a neat framed mirror. Fortunately the frame was broken... I say fortunately because they gave us a huge discount and Daniel fixed it in about 5 minutes after we got home. Then I got busy turning the mirror into a chalkboard.

This took a couple of tries to find what worked. First, I brushed the chalkboard paint directly on the mirror and recoated. It looked great, but when I removed the masking tape around the edges, the chalkboard paint came off with it in one big sheet. Fail.

Take two: I taped the whole thing off again and sprayed a gray primer, then sprayed chalkboard paint. This seemed to stick, but the coverage of the spray chalkboard paint was not even at all, so I brushed one coat over for coverage and to get the right texture. Then, voila! It worked!

Next, we hung it and slapped some vinyl fork and spoon decals I've had forever (I bought them on clearance months ago for $5 with no real plan for where they would go), and I *think* I'm finished tweaking the kitchen :)

I love how the table turned out! The character and gorgeous texture of the wood is so lovely and since it came from North Carolina pines, it will always remind me of our home for the last 7 years.

Before and After

I didn't take a proper 'before' picture, so I dug this one up from last Christmas and it will have to do.

After.

Here's the breakdown:

lamp: purchased on Craigslist 2 years ago for $20, spray paint I already had, lampshades $40, new sockets to repair it $16.

paint: already had it.

table: $50 for lumber, $18 for supplies, $200 for a planer that Daniel already wanted and can keep for future projects (so I'm not counting it in the total :-)), $40 for self-leveling epoxy (to fill knot holes) and high quality poly urethane.

chalkboard: $25 for mirror, $12 for paint, $6 for primer

vinyl decals: $5

Total Cost: $212

Woo Hoo! I do love a deal!