Getting chalk paint crazy!

I will admit when I graduated from college and moved into my first adultish apartment I had no furniture or money and lived wayyyyyyy too close to an ikea for my own good. I will try to stand by what I've been saying for a while: there is some okayish stuff there if you're smart enough to pick the right products.  I picked the unfinished tarva dressers and rack nightstands because they were affordable (dirt cheap) and could be stained or painted. My master bedroom furniture is American walnut stained with new hardware and I think they look nice. My second bedroom has the same products but the room is a hot mess. One nightstand was stained a terrible color, one was just unfinished and sad and the one dresser looked like it had survived a world war.  What should I do with all this malarkey? Tell me, Pinterest! Ok! Chalk paint and destressing? How hard could that be?

Really freaking hard.

Reader has to remember I think I'm good at chemistry and I'm cheap (house poor but same thing). After many Pinterest links and youtube videos I bump over to Home Depot, pick myself up a box of plaster of Paris, and decide I'm going to risk a nightstand in the name of homemade chalk paint. I had leftover dark blue paint from the master closet and lots of light blue from the bathroom so I was ready to see if my interesting skills were really as stellar as I thought they were. 

I got lucky. First coat of the dark blue went on well. Behr paint works great with a plaster mixture. Know what doesn't? Valspar paint and primer mixed with plaster mixture. Instant chemical reaction.  Paint stiffens up like.. Nah. Not going to go there. But I was so determined to make it work I thinned it out and slapped it on anyway. Lucky for me the paint dried nice in the Carolina heat and I had a pretty cool light blue nightstand. Then came the hard part. I sanded for hours. HOURS. The Valspar top coat was super hard to work with, but I think I finally got it to how I wanted it to look. 

Tip: don't just start painting on your driveway. You add extra future projects. (Note to self, add "reface driveway concrete to master list) 

***Bigger tip: be consistent. Love of my life sanded the last nightstand. One of us sands heavier than the other :/ 

Master bathroom reface

 

I'm not sure how the real world tackles painting rooms. My family growing up never painted. My parents were anti-painting. If it involved painting, it wasn't getting done. That or it had to be meticulously planned but executed really crappy. 

The day before my birthday I was off from work, was bored around 3 pm... And just sat up and said I was going to work on the bathroom. We hopped in the car, went to lowes, and it took off from there.

Everything in this freaking bathroom was beige. Walls, tiles, vanity, shower, you name it, it was beige. Something had to break up the beige, and it was going to be me. settled on a color we both didn't hate, brought it to the dude to mix, dude screws it up the first time and does a completely different color than the one  circled, succeeds to complete the order on attempt number 2 and away I go home with a gallon of blue paint and a dream. 

And then my dream was put on hold by the tape monster. I taped everything I could reach. I'll leave it at that. Took an hour and a half and I almost gave up there. Taping's a cold biotch. Painting is taping's bitch cousin.

I only had a few hours to admire my new paint job before I came to the realization we took most of the lighting down. Light project was second. We found some indoor/outdoor wall sconces and wired them together and secured them to a wooden base to make a giant light feature. It looks awesome. So much cheaper than buying something similar. Then adding trim around the shower door, and handmade towel hangers were a must and finally adding the moulding around the mirror and gel staining the vanity was a must. Bathroom is coming along. Still a bunch of stuff to do, but I'll probably update you with a part two later.  And I know everyone just probably wants to look at the pictures. :)

Still have some work to do, but loving it more every day! :)

Java gel stain take 2

It's been a while and it's really obvious my blogging skills are so sub-par. I can't seem to finish a project and just sit down and reflect on it. I finish three more projects before I even start thinking about the first. 

Anyhoo, tons of stuff has gone down in Laika land. We bought a puppy, finished up some projects, I pinned a few million things to my "new home ideas" board on Pinterest... And then I realized I haven't shared any of our new accomplishments!

Last week I was kind of feeling blah. We've got some big projects we keep mentioning but never just start on, and little pain in the ass ones I just never went around and completed. This is one of those pain in the ass projects it's been put off as long as it has because the first gel stain project was such a pain in the ass. Onward to gel stain part deux.

The best thing about repeating a project on another piece of furniture is you learn from your screw ups. First thing I did was buy a contractors pack of masking tape. Could have probably used whatever but the blue contractor tape is double the price, and I was about to tape floors and stone so I was not about to spend all my money. Taped floor (genius), vanity top, walls, and the INSIDE OF THE CABINETS AND DRAWERS (genius) until I felt that whatever I put my gel stained mitt on wouldn't permanately devalue. Then it was time again to break out the gel. Even the smell reminded me of sadder times when I had to get in every nook and cranny of 34 cabinet faces, but with my trusty vinyl gloves and sock mitt I went to town on the bathroom vanities. 

Same results as the kitchen. Coat one is a complete panic attack. Coat two you're trying  to convince yourself that coat three will be awesome and worthwhile while your pulse is 130 bpm. Coat three you pull yourself off the ledge because it really doesn't suck, and coat four for normal people makes you feel accomplished.. But for me on coat four my new husky puppy snuck his way into the garage and pounced on a cabinet face so I felt like a moron. All good though.  Three helpful words for completing a gel stain project: sock, glove, exfoliate. I get that shit on me everywhere and I buy a floor scrub brush and a giant bottle of dawn into the shower  to get that stuff off. Acetone removes the stain off things you don't want stained... Like ceramic tile. :/ 

Anyway. Looks good. Master bathroom has had a huge overhaul so it will get it's own entry.