Week of Turquoise

We decided to let the past weekend be the weekend for redoing things! I worked until 2 but when I got off work, we really got going. Then the week continued with projects. Things I didn't finish over the weekend were done after work during the week. Here are pictures of our little projects! I realized later that there's a LOT of blue, which doesn't bother me a bit, but is the reason I titled the post like that.

Stain

We've used this chest as our coffee table since we got it when we first moved to Cleveland and it's always looked pretty beat up. I sort of liked that look, but I have to admit that it was pretty shabby and that honey-stained color that I'm not in love with. We decided to sand it down and restain. We've stained only one other thing before - our rocking chair - and that was a darker color and just a LOT of work for a project. We decided on a grayish stain and picked out Minwax's "Classic Gray". It's more of a blueish gray but looking around our apartment, blueish is the general color around here anyway, so it's just fine!

Before: 

Carson did all the work. Because the chest isn't THAT big, it was determined that since he had a greater opinion on how it should be done, he should be the one to do it. He hand-sanded some of the rougher areas and then used the orbital sander on the whole thing. 

And then it was time to stain! He used one coat of the stain and didn't rub any of it off - just painted it on and left it outside overnight. Once it was light in the morning, we decided we liked the one coat and he went over it with a polyurethane. 

The lighting in our apartment is SO BAD but here's the finished project. It hasn't been long of course but we like the color (I didn't at first - it's quite blueish and I wasn't sure) and we were able to use it pretty soon after putting the poly on it. 

Spray Painted Mirror

While Carson worked on the chest, I decided to get to work on some other projects I've been meaning to do. We got this mirror the same day we got the chest (and our table and the rocking chair - all at a thrift store, all picked out by Carson while I was at work or something) in Cleveland and since day one, I've wanted to repaint this thing. It's sort of a laminated wood thing and just dated and not my favorite. We taped magazine pages to the mirror (and I feel like you're due a disclaimer - my dad randomly finds random free magazines and subscribes me to them which is why there was an US Weekly to tape to anything - it's great for painting on!).

I used just about an entire can of white spray paint on this thing and I don't think I did a perfect job. If it bugs me enough, I'll go over it with some white paint-paint, but for now it's really nice to have a fresher-looking mirror!

Little Spray Paint Projects 

This frame was black with gold before and just way fancier than my typical style, but I got motivated by all the turquoise Erin has around her house while we were in Maryland, so I went after this with a can of spray paint. The color is called "Lagoon" by Rustoleum and it's slightly more teal than pictured here. 

Morgan gave me these little decorative balls over a year ago and I liked them a lot but there's already so much brown in our apartment so I wanted them to be a little different and misted them with some gold spray paint (Valspar - I don't know if it's important to remember what kinds I used or if I'll actually reference it later but just in case... I'm writing it down). I also sprayed a random golf ball I found and now I want to find more golf balls and spray them too because it looked really neat. All of these are in glass on my mantel. 

Some Hand Painting

My mom gave me this sign for Christmas in 2012 and I really like it. It adds to my accidental collection of things with our last name, and I think it's just fun. I've considered painting it quite a bit but couldn't decide on a color so when I most recently re-did our gallery wall, this was just not the right color. I mixed a navy and sage green from my craft paints to come up with the color for this and I'm liking it. 

Fabric Painting

I've wanted to make a pillow with an ampersand on it for a long time and I finally did it! I sewed a peacock colored linen pillow cover and then used textile medium with glitter paint to paint the front. I did a "love" one that I will probably give away and then my ampersand one. For the ampersand, I did what I usually do and I traced an image of an ampersand, magnified, from the computer screen onto to freezer paper, ironed it to my fabric, and painted in the lines. I have some gold buttons to sew onto the back and then I have to make loops to close the pillows, so I haven't actually finished this one, but it's coming along.