Repurposed Cabinet Doors

I found two old cabinet doors in the small shed outside. I decided to repurpose them into art! I am making a kitchen chalkboard out of one and a entranceway sign that will serve as a coat/purse/key hanger.

I started with two of these:

I sanded and painted the frames today. The chalkboard got a red frame (to match our kitchen aid mixer) and the entranceway frame is white. This is what I have now:

And this is my vision for the final product:

I am in the process of ordering a decal with our last name. There are tons of options out there, but I've got a couple of cool ones picked out on Etsy. We'll see if either of them can accommodate the size I need. More to come on these soon!

A Glorious Green Table

Here she is in all her green glory! I learned that painting furniture is not really my thing -- I'd rather just spray paint it and have it over with. It is a ridiculously long process and I don't have the patience for painting, waiting for the paint to dry, sanding, painting, waiting for the paint to dry, sanding, painting and on and on! I gave up on putting four coats of Minwax on -- that is just crazy. I might try and put one or two more coats on the top of the table since it will be the most exposed to the elements. But then again, a table cloth might do instead!

Now I'm on a mission to find a mix of chairs to put around the table. If they need painting, I'll go with spray paint for sure!!

Lone Star Quilt

I've been working up quilt ideas for my friend Stephanie who is having a baby girl in October. Lone star quilts are popping up all over quilting blogs these days and I've been wanting to work with diamond pieces again since making the Argyle quilt last year, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. I also had the right number of different fabrics (left over from Libby's quilt), and they were the right length the pattern called for, so it was perfect. Oh, and I also have to learn a new skill -- Y Seams -- to make this quilt, so another plus to chalk up on the board. With all of that going for it, I jumped in and put this together in about 3 hours last night. Once I put in the background pieces, it will be about 32 inches square. I'm hoping I have enough fabric to make another 1/2 lone star and then I'll offset the two and have a good size baby quilt. I should mention this looks much more complicated than it is, here's the tutorial I followed:
http://betteroffthread.com/2012/08/19/scrappy-lone-star-tutorial-part-1/

Primed and Ready for Color Coat

Mike and I spent a good bit of the 4th of July priming all the table pieces. We put on two coats of Zinnser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer. Now it's ready for the color coat. We're heading out the door to start now...

Painting Furniture - A New Adventure

Mike and I found a super old table in the garage (it's probably an antique) and when Gene died, the son said it wasn't theirs so we could do what we wanted with it. Mike wanted to dump it, but I wanted to keep it, so we dusted it off and I've decided to try and bring it back to life with hopes that it can live on the deck of our new house. It is a funky old table. It has a leaf in the middle with a cool folding mechanism that stores the leaf under the table (I just googled it and it is called a butterfly leaf). The legs also separate, so the table can either be a little higher than coffee table height, or normal table height. A bit strange, I'm not sure why a table would be designed this way. It also has a decorative trim that looks burned into the wood. It is pretty variable in depth, so I'm going to fill it will wood filler to try and smooth it out around the edges.

I've been getting some inspiration and more importantly, information, on how to paint furniture from centsationalgirl's website. She does some wonderous things to old, beat up furniture. I doubt my first attempt will be as fantastic as anything she has done, but hopefully it'll be good enough to enjoy a card game and a glass of wine around.

Here are some before pictures of the table (I remembered to take them right before I was about to start sanding).

Table top with leaf:

Table leg base:

Decorative trim burned into the wood:

The folding mechanism for the leaf:

I've taken the table mostly apart, sanded it, filled in scratches and the trim with wood filler and primed the base.  I hope to make some more progress this weekend, so check back for more pictures soon!