Once in a Half Moon; half moon table makeover

Still stalling on my other project, need some diversion on this cold winter morning.  The other day, before the cleaning of roses began at Cheers!, I sanded this little table and knocked it apart.  It was very wobbly and one piece was completely pulled out.  I glued it back together and left it clamped for a few days.

Last night I cut out a stencil with my silhouette (you would not believe how much trouble I had, I really need to use it more, or get lessons from Sterling because that was ridiculous), and did just a light spray coat with white gloss (it's what I had on hand), and then peeled the stickers off .  This morning I gave it a light sanding and a coat of ebony stain.  I wanted a really old and worn look, 

the legs turned out awewome!

I like that the wood is showing through in some places and the white is very worn looking.  I'm going to finish it with a coat of polyurethane but need to get some from the store.

Libler and Son, or is that Libler and Mom? Part I

Happy Friday everybody, for me the happiest part about this Friday is that Valentine's Day is over, Hallelujah!  Now, I don't have anything against Valentine's Day, I am as romantic as the next girl, but I work in my sister's flower shop for this occasion and believe me I mean WORK!  For all the lovely ladies (and gentlemen) that receive flowers, I hope you appreciate them, because it takes a lot of work to get them to your table.  I was so tired last night that I just sat on the couch all evening.  I don''t even want to think about how tired my sister is, she was pumping out arrangements for 3 days, I just help with the easy stuff.  Good job Lesley, we sent some gorgeous arrangements out the door.

Anyway, there are more ways to show love than sending flowers, thank goodness, or I wouldn't feel very loved.  This project I am going to show you just a snippet of, is one way my family, has shown their love to me.  You see, I was walking past a realtor's  board one day and saw the name "Hudson" on one of their listings.  Hudson is where I grew up, just 20 minutes from where I live now.  Naturally it caught my attention, it was cheap, but of course there was a reason for that,  it was a tiny house, with a precariously slanting floor in the living room and no bathroom, yes, that's right I said no bathroom!

Now, besides the attraction of being cheap, it has this view!  Does it get any better than this?

It is also a couple of houses down from my Mom's house, where I grew up and 3 houses down the street from my Aunt and Uncle.  Anyway, my husband said if I bought this little house, I was on my own, he would have nothing to do with it.  My oldest son lives in BC so he wasn't in the picture, so I asked my son Budd if he would be my carpenter (I think he was 20 or 21 at the time (you can see that I have big faith in my kids ability).  He looked it over with me and said he would help renovate.

Well after a long time, and a lot of red tape, we bought the road allowance beside us in order to put a septic field in (no community sewer here) and we were ready to roll.  This all took 2 years, all through that 2 years as I gutted the house completely, right down to the studs and all insulation out of the walls and attic, my son and my husband were trying to talk me into knocking it down and starting fresh.  My son had spent 6 months building houses and was more comfortable with starting new than  with adding an addition and working under this place to make a new foundation.  I finally relented and after stripping it down to bare bones, we called in the big guns and had it knocked down.

Now I will tell you the story of my footings.  We had the gravel contractor clean off the area, the bedrock was pretty close to the surface.  In order to put footings down we had to
build step footings, this was all new to us.  My son wanted nothing to do with it and my husband said to hire a contractor because we know nothing about this.  I told him we couldn't afford to hire a carpenter and if a carpenter can figure this out so can I.  Believe me, this was hard for me, I had no idea what I was doing.  It took a while and of course it was Fall, so we were racing against the weather but I persevered, and prayed a lot, and cried a little,  and guess what, I did it.  Now that I have done it once, I wouldn't hesitate to do it again, but I would make sure I had an extra set of hands.

 After the framework was complete, my son and husband (as many times as my husband told me he would not help me with this, he kept coming back) spent quite  bit of time tying the rebar in and I rented a huge hammer drill and drilled holes into the bedrock to put pegs of rebar into so this baby will never move!  Once it passed inspection , we got a crew of volunteers together and poured the cement.  After being told over and over again by my husband that I couldn't do it, this is one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen.  When it was all done my Mom asked him what he thought of me now, he told her I was a stubborn old goat, because he never would have done it.  Believe me, that is a huge compliment.

Days after this, the snow came, and stayed until Spring.

To be continued...

Cute Little Dresser

Well, I am still working on the "big" project, and have to admit,I am stalling on it, so I pulled out something else to work on.  I've had this dresser for quite a few years, we bought it from a friend's yard sale because the kids needed it, however, it never made it into their bedrooms, not sure why not, but it has been waiting for a paint job for a long time.  We paid more for it than we should have, but we didn't want to insult our friends.

I sanded it down and spray painted it with Valspar Satin in blue, and the drawers with white (can't remember which brand).  I first used heirloom white, which I love, but against the blue it looked yellow, so I painted over it.

I downloaded an image from the internet and sized it on my Silhouette cutter and cut it out to use it as a stencil (I used outdoor vinyl, for those of you who care about that kind of thing) Sprayed it with Krylon silver.  Agonizing over which way I was going to go with this probably took me longer than anything else.  Some projects fall together quickly and sometimes there are so many ways I could go with a project, and it's hard to decide.  If I had 10 of these, they would all look very different.

I added some beautiful crystal knobs that I picked up on sale somewhere, maybe when I was in Missouri.  I'm not sure if they are staying or not, I love them, but maybe too much to use them, I may have to hoard them for a while :)

I plan to antique this piece, but I only had one can of blue paint, and i got pretty good coverage, but the sides need a little more.  I can't wait, so I'm showing it to you now.

Chalk Paint Coffee Table

I needed another quick project, this one was quick mainly because I already had it painted.  I just couldn't decide what to put on it.  

I bought this at a garage sale a couple of years ago.  It is a decent table, but that didn't stop me from painting it...

with 2 coats of chalk paint.  Then I stencilled on a design.

I scuffed it up a little, and then antiqued it with stain.

                              I wiped the stain off, and here it is.

Desk Chair Makeover

I have been working on a BIG project, which is taking a long time, I felt a need to do a quick project, I need some instant gratification!  I brought this little chair home from my stash in Hudson the other day, I hadn't even planned on keeping this chair, but like I said, instant gratification.

It seems that I was lacking in the picture taking department, so you will just have to use your imagination. Last night I painted the chair with two coats of dark gray, using the chalk paint I had mixed up for the little desk that I did earlier. Today I did some sanding on the edges, just to distress it a little, then I waxed it and buffed it.  I added a one inch piece of foam that I had saved from some packaging, covered it with quilt batting.  I used a small piece of nice bright fabric that I have in my stash, and stretched it over top, stapling underneath the seat.  

Voila!

When I had the chair painted, I realized that it is probably the perfect size to pair with the little desk.  I lightly sanded the edges of the desk and waxed it.  I took the little shelves out that I had set in, I think they look great together.