Projects & Other Goings-On

Well!
There is, without question, a LOT going on in our lives right now:
1 - Upcoming move to our hometown of San Antonio (end of Sept - not much time!)
2 - Move requires moving from an 1800 sq ft to a 900 sq ft house
3 - Which requires getting. rid. of. lots. of. stuff.  Half of our belongings, even.
4 - So, yard sale.  Obviously.
5 - This weekend.  Yikes!  Not prepared.
6 - To keep from having to do all the dreaded yard sale prep work, in addition to all the usual daily duties, I decided to take on this project instead:

It's a child-size dresser and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it!  I have no idea what final outcome I have in mind for it, but I'm thinking blue and boyish all around.  While small (which is exactly what we need for our soon-to-be-new-home), it is solid wood and HEAVY.  The price tag didn't hurt, either:

This is his current dresser (which is nice and I would love to keep it for our room, but alas, it's just too much furniture at the moment) that we bought the new one to replace:

Gosh, the more I look at it, the more I want to keep it.  It has drawer track issues (as in, they aren't currently there and I've been too lazy to do anything about it), and the last person who refinished/stained it made some interesting choices (drawer front appears to be upside down and such), but it still has lots of potential.  Ah well, in the yard sale it goes.  Hoping to get our $35 back and use it to purchase something when we get where we're going. :)

ANYWAY, here's my progress thus far (not much, but I couldn't wait to start)!

1 - Appease 2-year-old who REALLY wanted to see a picture of his own tongue.

2 - Inspect/Clean whatever all that gross stuff is. I found some small dings and chips, but I'm going to wait until the paint is off before I go off and buy any wood filler/putty/whatever. I'm thinking it'll be okay. At this point I started worrying that I was dealing with wallpaper removal.









3 - Only contact paper - whew! Peeled it all off and wiped down the dresser thoroughly. I'm still not sure if I'm going to sand or strip it.




 4 - Remove drawers and contemplate whether I should just use it as a bookshelf/toy shelf because it would be really cute! 












5 - Find receipt from 1985 behind one of the drawers.  So it's at least that old.









My next step is to remove the hardware and move forward with the removal of paint.  I'm leaning towards stripping it (though I've never used and am pretty deathly afraid of paint stripper), because the paint is laid on thick....who knows how many different colors are underneath.

FYI, I'm using this tutorial for all of my furniture painting endeavors:

http://romantichome.blogspot.com/2007/08/painting-furniture-step-by-step.html

For Ever's dresser, I'm going to leave out the distressing part and probably go with a polyurethane sealer rather than wax.  Toddlers are known for their innate ability to destroy everything, so I figure a little extra protection couldn't hurt.

MEANWHILE, THIS......

Yet another project.  This one's half-finished, as I'm waiting for the paint to cure at least 48 hours before sanding it and distressing it a bit.  It's a bookshelf that I bought for $10 and we use it in our living room to hold various video game consoles.  I REALLY want to go for the shabby chic look at our new place, and since this will be a fixture in our living room for the forseeable future, I figured it would be a good/easy starting point.  It was originally a dark espresso color and the previous owner's dog had chewed one of the legs up a bit, hence the low price.  Now that it's sanded/painted the bite marks are all but gone and I think it's going to look great once all is said and done! 

We shall see.  I'm definitely no expert, but I'm learning as I go and enjoying the process.  Painting is NOT my forte, but I think I'm doing a decent job even so.

Now to figure out exactly how to pain Ever's new dresser.  His room is a disaster at the moment, but it's space-themed and I'd like the dresser to be a nice addition without looking overly "busy."  Here's one of his walls - with the Moon in My Room and a piece of "art" I made for him recently.  Saw this on etsy:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/69313596/space-art-i-love-you-from-here-to?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=i+love+you+from+here+to+jupiter&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=ZZ&ga_min=0&ga_max=0&ga_search_type=all
and it was $20 JUST for the 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, so I made a similar one myself using Word.  It cost like 30 cents to print out at Office Max and the frame was $8 at Ross.  So, overall, I'm pretty happy with it. :)

Stay tuned for the final results!  Or, you know, don't.  Whichever. :)