Chalk Paint Project

After my last post, some of you asked for me to do a post about my furniture upcycling project whenever I was finished. Well, I'm finally finished!

Here is the before and after and I couldn't be more pleased with myself or how it turned out.

I found lots of pictures on Pinterest of this old Thomasville French Provencial china cabinet...like the exact same one that I bought...and it gave me lots of ideas for what I wanted to do with mine.

I ended up using the Annie Sloan chalk paint...I used French Linen and Old White...straight up, no mixing colors. I didn't distress or use dark wax either...just a coat of clear wax buffed up real nice and shiny.

One thing that I did and I'm glad that I did it is taking off the doors up top. I wasn't sure if I'd feel like it looked naked, but I think it modernized the piece without taking away all of the character. Also, I replaced the pulls with knobs! I LOVE knobs! The above pic is missing two of them because I bought out Hobby Lobby and they had to order more. I tried to place a special order for two knobs and they looked at me like I was crazy. But I was kind of nervous that they wouldn't get anymore and I'd be short. Rest assured, they came in and I bought them and I don't have a drawer that's missing knobs. 

Not a great photo above...but I wanted one of the entire room and this is the only light in the whole room so it had to be on. You can see that my dining room table is a dark wood finish and I wanted a different color than brown for the new piece, since so much of our furniture is brown. Brown dining table...brown leather sectional...brown bookcase...brown sofa table...brown entertainment center...brown end tables...ok, you get the point. I think the neutral colors I picked complement the room great by adding some interest and contrast while not competing for attention or being too loud.

Also...all of this is just my opinion...I don't have a design background or even all that much confidence in my taste, so if you're looking at this like, "girl...get a clue", you might be right. 

I took a bunch of pictures of my progress so I could keep track of things and send updates to my mom...although I wasn't all that great about sending the updates real time. I thought it was super fun to take everything apart...we got a new power drill that has a cord (so it NEVER dies! Woohoo!) 

 My husband was a little nervous after the first coat dried that it was going to need like 12 coats...but he's one of those painters that tries achieve full coverage in one coat. Don't even get me started. This is what one coat is supposed to look like.

It ended up taking 2 coats of the French Linen and 3 coats of the Old White. I loved every minute of the painting. I thought it was so fun to see the transformation. Oh I also bought the Annie Sloan paint brush and wax brush because I wanted to make sure that I didn't screw it up. I figured as a rookie, I needed all the help I could get. 

 I didn't take photos of it, but I ended up filling the holes in the drawers and drilling new ones for the knobs. I like pulls but I couldn't find any that I liked and I think knobs are wonderful. So I needed new holes that were more spaced apart.

Y'all...waxing was seriously a work out. And I read all these things that said that the wax makes it "come alive" so I was kind of expecting some spectacular show.  Well I didn't have such a revealing time with my wax. It definitely makes the piece feel finished...if you don't wax the chalk paint, it scratches if you look at it wrong and it feels rough and chalky. You definitely have to wax but it's like, not that exciting. I also watched a tutorial video that put all kinds of fear in me about using too much wax. So I spent an evening waxing this bottom piece only to go out the next day and realize I had done absolutely nothing besides rub a slightly greasy brush all over my still chalky chalk paint.

So I'd say the waxing step took me the longest because it just wasn't all that fun for me. It made me feel like, ok...I really don't want to do this to every piece of furniture in my house. It just didn't provide the initial transformation that the paint gave (which was fun and exciting) and it took some elbow grease, which I was kind of not in the mood for at 9:30pm, which was usually the time I was working on it. 

When the waxing was done, I did love putting the piece back together...reconnecting the doors, bringing it inside and stacking the pieces on top in their final resting spot...yeah, that's good for the soul.

I've spent a little bit of time putting some of my favorite things on the shelves and let me tell you, there is an art to decorating one of these. My rules...which are in no way founded in anything other then my own personal opinion is to stay balanced (which honestly is very unlike me...I am a sucker for asymmetry), stick with neutrals, show off your favorite things and put as much breakable stuff as possible on the higher shelves. Also...go to Home Goods to find some fun fillers.

Also...that lamp doesn't go there. My three-year-old just thinks that we're moving all of the things over to this part of the room now. :)

So after it was all said and done...my sweet and supportive husband was all..."You could totally sell this for a couple grand. How about you do this to make some dolla' bills?"

Stay tuned...

ha...just kidding!

Close Calls

Is there anyone else out there who feels like their entire existence is just a long string of close calls? I feel like this is my life right now. It's terrifying, emotional, gratitude-inducing and honestly, kind of annoying. Like, could we just not have these things happen FOR ONCE!

Take last night, my husband has been putting our 3 year old to bed so that I can work on this upcycling project that I created for myself when I stopped by an estate sale in my neighborhood two weeks ago. In short...I bought an old china cabinet...because we've been married for 6 years and we don't have anywhere to put that expensive china that everyone told me that we needed when we were receiving wedding gifts! Why did nobody tell me that I would need a Caribbean vacation for my 6 year anniversary? Or a lifetime supply of pedicures? Where was that gift on my wedding registry?

But anyways, I do need one and I've wanted one for awhile but just didn't really have the time or energy to think about it. Not that I have an abundance of time or energy right now, but that Estate Sale sign was just calling my name. So I went in and I bought it...here's a before, just because pictures are nice in breaking up blog posts.

Ok, so back to my original thought...

My husband was putting our son to bed without me and it was taking a REALLY long time. I was in the garage working and thought that maybe I should go check on them. When I opened the door, I was greeted by the lovely sight of my son standing up on top his dresser while my husband is passed out asleep in his bed. Um...excuse me while I hand out "Parent of the Year" awards to myself and my husband. Oh...it was 9:45 at night. 

(For anyone who is not a parent that is WAY too late for a 3 year old to be awake)

What if I hadn't walked in? I'll give you one guess as to what the next step is for my firstborn after he has climbed up on top of a dresser and then stood completely up. If you said "jumping off" you'd be right. I'm guessing he would have hurled his body onto his bed right on top of my unassuming, slumbering husband.

Not even 24 hours later, (that's a fancy way to say, this afternoon), we were driving home from playing with some friends when I had to hit my brakes a little hard for a red light. The trash from our "special treat" Chick-fil-a lunch, ice cream cup included, went hurling into the floorboard of my passenger seat. Without even thinking...I leaned over to pick it up so that the sticky melted ice cream remains didn't spill all over the place. What I failed to do was put my car in PARK!

Y'all, when I had retrieved the trash from what I thought would have been a devastating disaster spill, I looked up to see that my car had drifted into the intersection where oncoming traffic had been given free range by their green light to drive in the exact spot I was sitting in. What is even more panic-inducing is that a car had just made a left turn onto the street I was coming from...I don't know how to explain that better because I'm not a drivers ed teacher. But basically...that car should have hit me. I don't know if it was a timing thing or if he swerved out of the way of my drifting car, but it seems...it REALLY SEEMS like that was a miracle. 

It also was a miracle that no other cars were coming through the intersection at that very moment. 

It was a miracle that my son didn't jump off of his dresser and bust himself up last night. 

It is a miracle that my heart is pumping and my lungs are breathing and my babies were born with their vital organs functioning. 

A miracle.

I think we like to come up with reasons not to believe in miracles. I think we like to excuse things that happen as coincidences, when really, they are divine protections over us. It's easy to flippantly say that it was a lucky break, but I choose to think that God values me more then that. I think he has plans for me that require him to save me daily from myself. 

I know sometimes that those close calls turn into disasters. Sometimes we can understandably look at God and say, where were you on that one? What happened that time? I don't have all of the answers for those...but I know that sometimes, the easy route or the route we had planned doesn't always end up being the best thing. I know that every single person will have things happen to them that they wouldn't choose and that all of us carry different loads with us. It's not a fair world we live in...that's why it's so good that it's not all that there is for us. You are so valuable...you are worth more than being left up to chance.

We may dismiss significant events in our lives as coincidences, but I think that deep down, we know that there's more to it. We know we are worth so much more. I mean, aren't we? When I turned around and looked at my babies in the backseat of my car today, I know the answer is yes. 

So if we can't dismiss our close calls, we can't dismiss our existence either. We know we were created for SOMETHING. We have a purpose. We need to stop thinking unintentionally about our days. And definitely stop thinking about things that happen to us as accidents. So before you start thinking about the Friends episode where Ross has a "near-death experience" when a car backfired, I'll just say one more thing.

I can't help but be really grateful for the close calls. They snap me out of a daily, un-engaging existence to an awareness of gratitude and joy. And they make for some pretty good stories too...