Secretary Hutch refurbish and upcycle

I’ve always admired my grandmas secretary hutch/curio cabinet. Finally I found one that fit a perfect spot under our stairs!

I found this gem on facebooks marketplace for $150. It appeared that it was already sanded down from a Robbins egg blue color, which meant that half of the work of prepping the wood was already done!

I lightly sanded with a fine furniture sand paper and could jump right in to paint and stain. I went back and forth between a flat black, French blue or ivory color. I sides with the French blue, not quite black but very different from the ivory I’ve done in my latest pieces. The paint I used was Benjamin Moore in Midnight Blue and the stain was Rustoleum in Kona.

Before I start I always try to picture which pieces I want to be painted and stained, usually I try to have anything that is stained either be the top or a table like surface or have it surrounded on all four sides by the paint color I have picked. I think this gives the piece balance and helps to highlight specific areas.

After painting the areas I wanted painted I applied the stain and decided to paint the inside bottom cabinet and stain the inside of the secretary area. I also stained the inside of the curio cabinet. The only thing I dislike is how dark the stain made the inside of the cabinet, but nothing that a small light couldn’t fix!

The secretary cubby storage piece was separate from the inside of the hutch so I decided to attach it to the top of cabinet with several small finishing nails, now my laptop fits perfectly in the cabinet.

Now there is just more room to fit more antiques and junk!

Vintage Makeup Vanity Table Upgrade

My grandparents frequently drop off furniture or odds and ends that they no longer want or project pieces that they think I would have fun with. This horribly worn down vanity with the mirror was one of these items.

In the beginning it needed a lot of work! I removed the mirror which came off easily and took to using a furniture grade sandpaper to start taking off the layers or old paint that was giving this vanity a very rough texture. I sanded everything including the top wooden part, and this took a lot of time. Sometimes redoing furniture can be such a tedious task, especially when it comes to sanding because it is setting up the foundation of how good your piece will look!

After all that sanding (and there was a lot of it!) I decided why not sand a little more. I found this old chair for $3.00 at a local antique shop and brought it home. It was the perfect height for the vanity! I began by sanding the piece down and priming it before painting it white and using an old grain sack to reupholster the cushion.

Unfortunately all I have left of this project are the finished product pictures. But after sanding the piece down and finishing the chair I painted the piece in a soft mossy pastel green color, that could almost be mistaken for off white, and painting the mirror in soft cream color. After the paining was finished I went back in and stained the top of the vanity with a dark stain and clear coated the top. I switched out the knobs for some I had found at Hobby Lobby and reattached the mirror.

And there you have it, a simple country vanity that can be completed in a weekend!

Bathroom Burlap Rustic Christmas Tree

I grew up in a household where every room had a Christmas tree… even the bathrooms. So by wanting to carry on that tradition I decided to put a gifted Christmas tree in the bathroom and wanted to decorate it with burlap and homey items that you would find in the kitchen and laundry room.

So by adding a burlap bow that I bought at hobby lobby for 50% off and wrapping the tree in burlap ribbon that I had bought at the dollar store I thought I was off to a good start.

Next I created some ornaments by taking apart clothespins and gluing them flat sides together and organizing them into the shape of a Star. The second ornament is Walmart brand mason jar lids that you can get fairly cheap. I added some leftover burlap I had on hand and added a bundle dried lavender. You could really almost add anything to the middle and use the mason jar lid as a background!

I also added some burlap ribbons that I had found at hobby lobby, it’s seriously the best place to get your Christmas decorations!

Lastly I used some clear plastic ball ornaments I had gotten from the dollar store and used that same burlap to wrap them and gather the material at the top of the ornament and hot glue it in place, adding some green floss wrapped around the top as well, just to make it appeared tied there.

As simple as it is, I think it adds a good mix of simplicity and elegance. Only six more trees to go!

Coffee Bomb Bar out of Old Ammo Crate

Every now and then you find something at a shop that you don’t really know what you’re going to use that item for, but you buy it and hold on to it. That was the case with this ammo crate. I had carried it around with me, from house to apartment and left it alone, until I bought my house a year ago and found the best place to put it.

It’s slowly evolved into what it is now, but for starters we had tried to install old table legs to it and try to get it to stand on its own, however, the legs didn’t look right and the table was unstable.

So the table legs came off and we decided to attempt to create a floating “Bomb bar” for our Keurig. We started by taking off the top and using a drill to make pilot holes through the back of the crate.

Next, using long screws we drilled those into the studs of the wall and added two decorative brackets underneath the box to help support it a little more.

To help the Keurig fit into the box and slide up against the wall we used a drill again to drill out an area into the box, below the lid, so that the cord would fit into the box and drilled a hole through the bottom of the box so it could come out the bottom and plug in. Now because I thought having a cord hanging out of the bottom would not be very attractive, I wrapped the chord with hemp rope and hot glued it in various places to help it stay put.

Later, deciding that I wanted to use the lid of the crate to hang a rake head that I had found to hand coffee cups from, I was left trying to decide what I wanted to use as a lid. We decided to use glass that was cut to size and to fill the crate with straw and whiskey bottles.

Using wood plugs I drilled a small hole that would fit the plugs and used wood glue to hold them in place.

The wooden plugs I used like this,

After many years of carrying around the now coffee bar it was definitely worth the hassle!

DIY refinished Lane cedar chest

Sometimes a deal that’s too good to pass up just happens to stop right in front of you. In my case that was this Lane Cedar Chest. Even with the water damage and missing woodwork on one of the legs, for $10.00 I knew this piece would and could be something truly beautiful.

Like all of my projects, I started by stripping it down to its bare bones. In the case of this Cedar Chest that meant taking off the handles and the secret decorative drawer at the bottom, then using an electric sander to sand the top of the chest. I attempted to remove as much of the water damage as I could, however, I was unable to get all of it. I like to think it can add to the charm!

After breaking the piece down and filling in the holes from where the handles used to be, I gave the entire thing a good sanding and wipe down with a wet cloth and moved on to reinforcing any loose or unstable parts with wood glue and clamps.

After the piece was reinforced and cleaned up it is time to move on to painting. Seeing that I had a theme going of white furniture with dark stained wood tops I wanted to keep this look going with this Cedar Chest.

This piece took three coats of a flat off-white paint and I stained the top a dark color in an attempt to hide the still visible water damage. Instead of finishing it off with a glossy top coat I went for a satin finish which I think works better with the rustic nature of my home. Luckily the inside of the chest was perfect and only needed some Cedar chips to bring back the smell.

I decided against adding handles back to the front of the chest, and added a new layer of red felt to the drawers with fabric glue.

This is just another example of what a little TLC can do for an outcast diamond in the rough.

Refinished Vintage Dresser DIY

After purchasing my first house a year ago I quickly realized that I was lacking furniture and my home was rather empty! Instead of spending hundreds of dollars that I didn’t have on brand new furniture, I decided to be frugal and green by buying second hand and vintage furniture at local shops and repurpose and refinish them myself. I found that as daunting a task as it may seem, it is way easier than I ever thought it would be and that once you begin to collect the necessary items to refinish furniture like sand paper and paint, it gets cheaper and cheaper to refinish each item.

One of the items I needed badly was a dresser! I found one at a local Amish owned second hand shop for $70, and spent approximately $15 in wood appliqués to help spruce it up a bit. The other items I found laying around my house and had purchased for previous projects.

While maybe not the prettiest piece of furniture initially, I fell in love with the rounded front feet.

To start the piece I stripped it down, gave it a good sanding with a medium grit furniture grade sand paper and wiped it down with a damp cloth. Then I added the wooden appliqués for a decoration with wood glue and clamped them on for 24 hours to ensure that they had dried.

I did the same with the appliqués and sanding to the drawers.

After painting the body of the dresser and the drawers with two coats of a white flat paint, and staining the top with rustoleum wood stain in Cherry and clear coating the top it was time to replace the handles and reinsert the drawers. The handles I purchased at Hobby Lobby for 50% off!

I think that the finished project turned out great and looks like a much more modern piece of furniture that cost way more than $85!

On to the next one! Stay tuned for more reviews, hauls, DIY’s and overall miscellany!

Vintage Sewing Machine Table Upgrade to DIY Makeup Vanity

I have a hard time throwing anything away and am always trying to repurpose and redo any random piece of furniture I can find. This vintage singer sewing machine table was gifted to me and instantly I knew I wanted to make myself a makeup vanity. Being the first piece of furniture I attempted at repurposing there definitely was a learning curve! Hopefully these photos and semi-instructions can inspire and help anyone else looking to start on a repurposing DIY.

To start the table didn’t look like much, the drawers were full and the top veneer was peeling off, the base was rusty and the sewing machine was still inside. Don’t let a little rust and dirt stop you from seeing the true potential in these old pieces of furniture! A little elbow grease goes a long way.

To start, just assess how you need to get the piece down to its bare bones. Does veneer need to be taken off? Sanding? Major pieces removed? I began by simply disassembling and cleaning the piece.

After taking the machine out, drawers out and figuring out how to take the top off from the base I used a chisel to remove the veneer, some of which I did heat up with a iron to help remove easier. Luckily, underneath the veneer was a wood and grain that I liked even more! From one DIY’er to another, keep all of the screws in a plastic bag or jar, and if you really need to, draw a diagram of what pieces go where for when you go to put the piece bag together.

The easiest part was refinishing the base. After scrubbing it with a kitchen sponge, I used rust oleum hammered finish spray paint to redo the base.

The biggest problem I had to face was creating a storage area for makeup where the sewing machine used to fold in. I ended up removing enough screws (which sometimes when trying to figure out how these older pieces are put together takes a lot of trial and error!) and was able to completely remove the rounded base.

After removing the base for the sewing machine, I finished removing the veneer and sanded and filled in any dents or imperfections in the top with wood filler and used wood glue to fix any loose pieces coming away from the main body.

At this point I focused on finishing the drawers, which were simple enough. I removed the older wooden handles, patched the holes, sanded and painted. I did eventually find different handles that I liked at Hobby lobby which has been my number one choice for finding knobs and handles, especially when they are running a 50% off deal.

In order to refinish the top part of the soon to be vanity, I placed it back onto the stand which allowed me to get a 360 degree access to the piece without having to worry about moving or touching it directly. After sanding and washing the body I painted it with a flat white paint, and stained the top with rust-oleum stain in the color Kona. After the stain was dry I put on a couple layers of clear coat, the smoother the surface the easier it will be to clean all of the powdered and pigments! At this point I also had to decide how I wanted to create a base for the main area under the top lid to store makeup. I used 1×2’s and created a frame that I attached a piece of ply wood to in order to create a box. I then attached this box to the bottom of the sewing machine, as can be seen in the picture below. To tie it in to the rest of the piece and give it a more finished look I added some trim to the bottom of the box and stained it in the same color as the top.

As finishing touches I also added decorative appliqués that can be found at any menards, Home Depot or Lowe’s, I’ll post some links below. Using wood glue and clamps I added these decorative pieces on prior to painting the final coats of white.

For another finishing touch I added the knobs that I purchased at hobby lobby and added a mirror to inside of the top drawer. The mirror that I found was on sale at meijer, but mirror is fairly cheap and can be found at most glass shops and hardware stores and cut to size. To finish off the edge of the mirror I added some decorative ribbon, small trim could also work if the mirror was the right size. Chain or a elbow bracket could be used to ensure that the top of the vanity doesn’t open  up all of the way and hit the wall, causing any scuffs or scrapes.

For wooden appliques, look at these sites:

https://www.homedepot.com/s/wood+applique?NCNI-5

https://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=wood+applique