Table and Chairs

We refinished our table! It's been something I've wanted to do for a long time, but doubted that it would ever happen. For one, the tabletop is linoleum or something, and the whole project just seemed daunting. Secondly, I didn't think Carson would agree to it.

Thankfully he did and so one weekend we decided to tackle the beast. It took longer than anticipated because oil based paint takes forEVER to dry, but it was finished within the weekend and we're pretty proud. 

We went with an oil based primer and a Rustoleum oil based gloss white paint for the top and the chairs (which were a last-minute addition to the project, one Carson sort of regretted at the time). The navy bottom was Carson's choice. It was between white and gray, and since the whole thing was my project, I let him have the final say. We used a color called Royal Navy by Valspar. The power went out in Lowes as we stood waiting for our paint to be mixed, so it took a little for their systems to go back on, but it was finally finished and we were off to paint! (as a side note, that would be a terrible place to be in a long blackout. Lots of helpful flashlights and things but it was so very dark in that split second moment.)

We did one coat of primer on everything, two coats of white on the tabletop and chairs, and three coats of navy on the base. We then did a coat of poly on the top of the table to seal it, but sort of regret it because it's yellowed a little in the weeks following. Strange. 

Anyway, here's the photo evidence of our weekend. 

January Pictures

I read that letting ice cubes melt in dented carpet spots and then vacuuming after it was melted would help it look normal and it worked! The spots where our couch was after we moved it are gone!

Money found at work: "I don't know if you are single but if so, I would like to kiss you" and then a phone number. 

Brought frozen peas because my ice pack popped and I needed to get a new one - I have since, fyi.

The Powerball was the thing this January. It rose to a $3 billion jackpot. We've never played the lottery before and knew our chances of winning were not remotely high, but we decided to play anyway to say we had a part in this whole crazy thing, and we did not win anything at all. Not even one dollar, but it was still fun to have been a part of this thing.

I used my new Pioneer Woman cookbook and made this delicious pesto pasta. Morgan is the best at making it but this was definitely delicious and I'll use this recipe all the time.

Clemson played Alabama in the college football championship and thankfully, they lost. Roll Tide! And Go Gamecocks! 

We tried Blaze pizza for the first time. It's a pizza place set up like Chipotle. You choose all your toppings for one price (and they have gluten free too!) and they put it in an oven that cooks it in 90 seconds. It was so so fast that we were still finding a table when they called our names.

The girl at the counter said one pizza for one person but we definitely had leftovers and next time would get half one way, half the other way and share. 

I FaceTimed with Brooke and Clayton in Washington! Clayton is getting so big and says words and walks around like a little person! His looks have changed too - he used to look like his dad and now he's mini Brooke. 

We used a gift card to 4 Rivers Smokehouse, a BBQ place. I wasn't very fond of the barbeque itself, but the sides were pretty good and we'll probably go again.

C is teaching New Testament this semester and made this scroll for his students. He printed out 14 pages of the gospel of Mark without chapter and verse notations and showed them what it would be like to read the Bible in this format. He was proud and I think they appreciated the visual. And by the way, he's having a very busy last semester of course work and loves teaching this class. He has fewer students than expected and likes the smaller class.

We were busy this month and ate out more than we should have. Here are our fortunes at Panda. 

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.