It’s time to sell this coffee table…

Back last summer I purchased this coffee table.

I know you are thinking it’s beautiful as it sits (NOT!) but I decided to freshen it up a bit.  Wow…lots of crackle on this piece.

I stripped off the top of the table and painted the legs black (no picture to insert here).  It wasn’t special, but I thought surely somebody would buy it if I priced it cheap. 

Well I was wrong.  It sat in my booth for several months so I brought it home to give it more of a wow factor.  Thanks to Red Hen Home, I had the perfect inspiration…paint a clock face on the table.

Even though I have a projector, I don’t have the patience to paint the clock numbers on the table.  Instead I used my Pazzles to cut the numbers out. 

After cutting the numbers out, I did use my projector to project a clock face onto the table so I didn’t have to take a lot of time to position my stickers.  This picture shows the clock face being projected onto the table front.

And here I have not so carefully placed my stickers on the table.

Once the stickers were in place, I filled my stencils in with black paint.

Houston we have a problem.  When I removed the stickers, a lot of paint was removed too.  This was a bit of a concern in the first place, but not enough to stop me.  And now I have paid the price.

So I decided to use sandpaper to mimic the look.  That didn’t exactly work either.  I figured the best remedy was to apply stickers to the whole piece and pull away the paint just as I had when I removed the number stencils.  FINALLY a use for all those vinyl scraps that I have been saving for some unknown reason.

And guess what?

It worked!  A little more sanding and some waxing and it was ready to go.

I loved the table and I got to enjoy it in my living room for a couple of weeks before taking it down to Liberty Belle.  I marked the table up $64 more than my previous asking price and it sold right away.

Not bad for about 2 hours worth of work.  Hmmm….I’m thinking I might just have to keep an eye out for another round coffee table.

We have a cool new bar

I picked up the awesome dental cabinet at auction for a mere $35.

I was the only bidder.  I probably could have gotten it for less.

Perhaps this is why nobody was interested in it.

This is what the cabinet looked like when I bought it.  Well sort of.  The top was painted black and I had already stripped that off.

Contributing to it ugly appearance, it was awfully dusty (even by my standards), it had a broken caster and one of the drawers was put in wrong so it didn’t close properly.

Fortunately for me, my fellow auctionmates obviously haven’t seen how awesome metal cabinets and lockers look either stripped down to bare metal or painted with silver paint.

Even though I knew how I wanted to finish it, it sat in my garage because I didn’t know where this would go in my house (or what beloved piece of furniture I would have to get rid of to make room).  It would take me months to figure out a purpose for this cabinet.  And when I did finally come up with it’s new use, I won my husband over when I told him it would be a bar in his man cave.

I stripped off some of the paint and then got to sanding.  Unfortunately, sanding proved to be too big a task to get down to bare metal (my original plan) so plan “B” was to spray paint it.

I’m a little impatient when it comes to sanding and try as I might, I didn’t get a completely smooth surface to start with.  So we chose Rustoleum’s Hammered Silver spray paint to help camouflage the imperfections.

After taping off the parts I wanted left alone, I got to spraying.  I think the whole piece got two coats of spray paint, and some areas more.

I put all the hardware in an egg carton to hold it in place while I sprayed it.

Initially I thought that this cabinet had 2 small drawers and 3 large drawers.  But was surprised to learn that each drawer is just a little larger than the previous drawer.

I didn’t happen to have a spare wooden caster laying around to replace the broken one.  Lucky for me, I had gone to an auction the very day we were finishing up the cabinet.  I found a chair with casters on it in the dumpster and snagged the casters (with no particular project in mind…I just like to have casters if I need them).  My husband had to do a little rigging to them, but they work perfectly.

The cabinet had a lock.  We decided that perhaps we should lock up the liquor since we have a teenager in the house (not that the liquor is locked up now though) and it will be so easily accessible.  We had no key, however, my husband was thrilled to learn that the key was broken off in the lock.  Sounded like a problem to me, but my husband got the key out and I kid you not, fashioned a duplicate key out of a jig saw blade.

We added a light inside the cabinet.

And to complete the bar, we brought a mini (also locking) refrigerator in from the garage.

I also painted this awesome trash can with the hammered silver paint.  I got this at the same auction house for $15 back in August.  I easily could have sold this item in my booth at Liberty Belle, but something made me hang on to it.  Glad I did!

And on top I “temporarily” have this cool liqueur beverage dispenser which I picked up for a song at the Salvation Army.  I say temporary because I will put it in my booth at Liberty Belle next month.  But for now, I get to enjoy it.

So here is my our new bar area in all it’s glory!

Would you like to come over for a drink?

Wire Organizer Frame

A while back ago, I picked up 3 “lovely” large framed paintings from Goodwill.

 

I bought them because I knew they would make great display organizers.

After removing the artwork it was time to paint.

I initially was going to remove the “canvas” interior matting, but it was more work than I was willing to put forth at that given moment.  I just painted over it (knowing that if it looked bad, I could remove it later).

Turns out that I liked the look of the painted canvas, and the extra bulk of the frame by having that “matting”.

Next, I removed the existing hardware.

And installed my own.

Using 20 gauge wire, I created a zig-zag pattern across the back of the frame, securing in place with my staple gun (make sure your staples don’t show through to the front of the frame!).

Here is the final product hanging in my booth.

Pumpkin Patch

I made a pumpkin patch of pumpkins last month.

Ok maybe not a whole patch, but over 30 painted, modge podged, and glittered pumpkins and pears.

Most of them (all but 2) are displayed in my booth at Liberty Belle this weekend.

I picked up a whole bunch of styrofoam pumpkins and pears at the Dollar Store.  First order of business was to take a knife and remove the stem.  Then came the painting, glittering and modge podging.

To finish them off, I wrapped moss around the top and plugged the hole with branches and wood found I found in my yard (or twigs in the case of the pears).

After the sale is over, I will scoop up every last pumpkin that didn’t sell and use them to decorate my house.

Sheet Music Cabinet

I picked up this beauty of a cabinet a couple of months ago.

Don’t ya just love the teddy bear wallpaper border on the lovely flowered background?

I decided to “wallpaper” over the flowers and bears with sheet music.  I also freshened up the wood with Restor A Finish and changed out the knob.  This is the finished product:

A BIG improvement.  Off to Liberty Belle she goes

Linking up to:

Wooden Letters

Remember these “SALE” letters?

I had plans for them.  Do you see it?  Those are great editing skills aren’t they?

Look what I have several month’s later…

I finally asked my husband to turn the “E” into an “I”.  I just thought he would lop the arms sticking out but he went the extra mile and glued them onto the other side.

I have them sitting on my new cubbies in front of my new petroleum pipeline sign.

Chair and nightstand redo

I got this nightstand about a year ago at an auction for $2.00.  It was stained and I had decided to paint it white a while back.

I didn’t really have a use for it and it got put into storage for many months.  I decided to fix it up and take it to Liberty Belle.

I decided that some vintage sheet music would be perfect on this piece.  I taped off the top and got to work.

I decopauged sheet music onto the top and into the drawer inserts.

Then I waxed it.

I picked up this chair at another auction for an insanely low price.

Awesome chair, ugly cushion and VERY wobbly.

After a couple go arounds with Gorilla Glue, a chisel and some sandpaper (to clean up the glue residue) I finished it off with Restor A Finish.

And here are the finished products being modeled by my lovely assistant Frankie.

Here is a close-up of the top.

These projects are now all finished and ready to be taken to my booth next weekend.  See my other post on my glittered pumpkin/sheet music pumpkins.

Chair & Table

I picked up this chair for $3.00 at the local consignment auction house.

Actually, I picked up all 3 chairs from the same auction house but so far I have only finished the middle chair.  You can’t tell from the washed out photo…but the cushion is a lovely (NOT!) shade of gold.

I picked up this table for a whopping $1.00 at an estate auction last July.

Both items needed to be glued back together to improve stability and the table took a bit of sanding.  Both were painted with Barn Red milk paint and protected with Briwax.  The chair cushion was re-covered with bleached drop cloth.

Here is the pair before heading down to my booth at the Liberty Belle.

Yikes…. it looks like we need to make some time to mow the grass one last time this season.  Please ignore it…and the weeds in the back…I HATE to garden.

Apparently I’m in a Shelf kinda mood

My last post was about my new cubbies….and this post is about  3 more wall shelves.

First up is this shelf I picked up at Goodwill for $1.99.

It is hard to tell from this picture but this is really quite large and the cubbies are deeper than you might think.

It took a whole can of spray paint to fill in all of the nooks and crannies.  I was tempted to keep this shelf, but decided I didn’t have a good place to store it.  So I took it to my booth at Liberty Belle for next weekends sale.

I picked up this next shelf at a thrift store for $4.00.

Looks like the previous owner did some traveling…and some rock collecting:

 

This shelf has a glass front and a wood back.  I had to remove the glass front to remove the labels.

I decided to keep this shelf for myself.  Here it is in it’s new home:

My final shelf is yet another Goodwill find for $1.99.

After a couple coats of ASCP Old White and Country Grey, I had this:

This shelf is also in my booth at the Liberty Belle.

You can see a sneak peek of the chair and table I also delivered to my booth yesterday.

I’m about out of shelves.  I’m working on a  table now.  Hopefully pictures will be ready soon.

My New Cubbies

I got this cubby shelf recently at a garage sale.

I stopped at this sale on my way to work.  Only it was kinda out of the way.  As a result I was late.  Oh well.  The sale was worth it.

The Craigs List ad said everything free or nearly free.  That’s my kind of sale.

Of course it was the free part that got me.  Because the house itself was pretty scary inside.  You know the kind of house that when you leave you want to run home and take a shower asap.

I had dug around the sale for a while and as I always do, I look through everything again.  On my way out into the garage to look the second time, I spotted this on the wall.  I asked if it was for sale.  The lady said yes and the man said no.  Can you guess who won?

Even though it was in the garage it smelled as bad as the rest of the house.  I left it outside to air out for several weeks before getting to work on it.

The outside was perfect, but I did not like the black glue stuff inside the cubbies.  It had to go, so I painted it with red milk paint.

The left side of the cubby has a bottle opener.  It is hung on my basement wall behind my desk.  Since I don’t have any drawers in my desk, it will hold small items.

I didn’t take a picture of everything I got at this sale, but it was quite a bit of stuff.  And the price?  Well I got out of there for $10.  Heck…I was thrilled because I would have paid $20 for this cubby alone.

 

Linking up to Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday