Beauty Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Wow, I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't done this post yet! Back in April, yes two months ago, I purchased a funky little record/radio cabinet from the Goodwill in Ballard. I was pretty bored around the house and Glenn thought I could use something to occupy me during the day that did not involve HGTV. We figured that refurbishing this cute little cabinet would occupy my time for a while. It certainly did.
First I started by taking it apart.
Then I sanded it to death.
Next was a couple coats of tinted primer. I think maybe the guy forgot to tint it, because it looked awfully white to me. Oh well!
After that I FINALLY got to the fun part. I painted on 3 or 4 thin coats of a beautiful pink by Valspar called Very Berry.
The next step was to spray paint my hardware to coordinate a little better.
Then I had to attach new fabric to the speaker panels.
I lined the interior of the cabinet with a fabric that I just adored using my favorite goop, Mod Podge.

\Last but not least, I reassembled that sucker and marveled in all its beauty!
As soon as my craft room is finished being painted I will have some new pictures of my cabinet in its new home!

This was my very first furniture rehab/painting project and I am very pleased with the results. I can see many more projects like this in my future!

Vintage Finds and Another Sneak Peek

Over the weekend we checked out a couple furniture stores that carry all the coolest mid-century modern stuff. I just love the look and feel of that era of furniture. Sleek clean lines paired with functionality just tickles my fancy. There's a really awesome store in Magnolia called The House that we stopped by and they had sooooo much stuff I wanted! There was a Broyhill Brasilia table that I had my eyeball on so I am hoping it's still there by the time we move into the house. It was a really great price and had 2 leaves. Anyway, we found a couple fun things that we purchased. First, we have this cute in/out tray in a great orange color. I just really liked it and I think it will go really well with the color scheme I have in mind for the kitchen. I think it will be a great place to store and sort mail.
The other fun piece we found is a vintage handmade clock. It's missing the clock mechanism so we're going to pick up a new one and I am going to learn how to make a clock! This piece is also going to be painted pink to match my cabinet and the metal rods will be spray painted the awesome chrome color that are on the door pulls.
In between doing laundry and taking Rally to play over at his girlfriend's house, I managed to get a couple coats of black paint on the trim. It's not perfectly even, but I think with a really thin brush I should be able to fix things pretty easily. Things are starting to come together for my cabinet and I'm really excited!

Love to all!

Sunshine Filled Weekend

This weekend was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining brightly and the skies were boasting a beautiful blue with puffy pillows for clouds. On Friday after Glenn got home from work we took Rally out to the deck and took a nice long nap in the sunshine. It felt so good soaking up all those delicious Vitamin D filled rays of sun. It was also nice to get a little color. I've been wondering if I might end up looking like a sparkly vampire if I didn't spend more time in the sun! We spent the rest of the night inside and watched Fast and Furious (the fourth one) to prepare for the awesomeness of Fast Five the next morning.

Saturday morning we drove out to Gig Harbor to watch Fast Five in DBox seats. If you weren't already familiar with DBox, they are basically seats that have a motion code programmed into them to go along with the movie you are watching. If you've ever been on the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, it's like that. They're a TON of fun and really cool. We saw the last F&F in DBox and had such a blast so we knew we would definitely be doing it again. As far as the movie goes, it was AWESOME! I LOVED every action packed second of it. Plus, I am definitely not going to object to a movie with Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and the Rock. It's definitely a movie to kick off summer the right way.

Since we were in Gig Harbor for the movie, we made our way over to our future 'Hood in Tacoma. We drove by our soon-to-be house (fingers still crossed!) and I giggled as we drove by the house down the street with all the crazy decorations. We're starting to get really excited. I've even began a countdown using the snowflake decorations from Christmas that I never took down. Our inspection is tomorrow (Tuesday) and we are really excited to get back in the house. It feels like it's been forever and we're starting to forget what it looks like inside!

I finally got to spray painting my hardware yesterday. We spent the late sunny afternoon out in the sun again. This time Glenn showed me how to spray paint. I was too scared to just attempt it on my own, so I made Glenn show me how to do it. I'm such a wuss!
We started by spraying the door handles and the diamond panel insets with glossy black. I just loved the way the diamonds looked with the black. I knew it would look perfect against the fabric I chose.
As far as the door pulls go, I've been waffling on that one. I thought that I would try and match the 50's hardware that we picked up at Sanford & Sons.
After one coat of the "chrome" spray paint I knew it wasn't going to match but I was really liking the look. It has a soft shine to it, almost like brushed nickel. The pulls look fantastic against the bright pink so I decided to spray the remaining handles later in the week.
Finally I got to pulling the fabric off of the door panels. They were attached with glue.
After a dusty mess I scraped off the remaining fabric with my putty knife. I am getting super excited about the way my piece is turning out. When it is all done it will be 100% Bri, and that's exactly what I want it to be.

With all the time we spent outside waiting for paint to dry and enjoying the sun, we thought that Rally would get to see his girlfriend for sure. He did! They are just so stinkin' cute together. They really do love each other. They don't act the same way around other dogs. Rally and Mika played together for quite a while before Rally started to get tired. It seems like just yesterday he had boundless energy. Meanwhile, Mika was still all sorts of ready to play. She's only 1, so she's always ready for fun. Rally is nearing his 4th birthday this June! I can't believe it. We've had him for a little over 3 years now. He's such a good boy :o)

We ended up getting a little more color yesterday as well, maybe a little more than we intended. Oh well! We're certainly looking forward to this week and are very excited for Tuesday to get here so we can hopefully get the final green light on the house! After that I am going to start packing things and before we know it, we'll be moving!

I hope everyone is doing well! Love to all!

A Sneak Peek... And Some News

I thought that I would share a little sneak peek on the progress I've been making on my cabinet. So far it has been sanded down to bare wood, given 2 coats of primer, and 3 coats of paint. I've got a little more touching up to do with the pink paint on the larger surfaces but all the smaller parts and details, like in the picture, are pretty much done. After I am all done painting, everything will get a nice glossy coat of polyurethane to give it some durability and mega shine. As far as the rest of the piece goes, hardware will need to be updated by either a glossy black or a shiny chrome... I am still undecided on that. Then I've got to assemble the fabric panels in the door frames and that should be it! PHEW! It seems like I still have a looooong way to go, but it's not too bad. It's been so much fun for me to transform this piece into something I absolutely adore. I have a perfect place for it in our new house.

Yes, I did say our new house! :o) The past couple of days have been completely frustrating and exciting all at the same time. On Tuesday we received the acceptance letter from the bank agreeing to the purchase price. However the seller's were not released from their debt. In a short sale the debt of the seller is forgiven, unlike in a foreclosure where the bank still collects money from the previous owner even though they no longer have possession of the house. That left us in a very frustrating place. Glenn and I did a lot of stressing out and talking over lunch that day. We had a lot to worry about because we only have about 6 weeks left in our lease at the apartment. That left us with very few options, none of which sounded appealing.

We called our realtor and he basically explained that we didn't really have anything to worry about, but we were looking at up to another two weeks for the bank to give another acceptance letter forgiving the debt of the seller. We expressed our concerns about needing to close on the house fairly soon and about the seller finishing the bathroom like promised. In case you were wondering, if the bathroom was not finished at the time of inspection, we would have to use a different type of loan to finance the house. That isn't really an option.

That brings us to yesterday. I got a call in the morning from Glenn telling me that we got the house! Not only did we get the house, but we would be closing on May 12. That's just two weeks! The inspection is being scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday next week and the appraisal will be done at the same time. We are definitely excited. It's still sinking in at this point and we have A LOT to get done in the short time we have before closing. The reason for closing being so soon is that the house is set to foreclose on May 13 and this time there will be no extensions given. Now we just need to get through the inspection with good results and we are pretty much good to go!

YAY!

Slowly But Surely

While sanding my cabinet I never thought I would see the day when I got to begin priming. I couldn't even start thinking of when I could bust out the pink paint! Today I finally got to start priming! So far I have one thin coat on. I will certainly do another thin coat and most likely do another thin coat after that. I guess it all depends on how it looks after the 2nd coat. Anyway, I am very excited to be making visible progress that does not involve dust flying all over the apartment. YAY!

Making Some Progress

Since I got my 1950's cabinet nearly two weeks ago, I have spent every weekday sanding. Granted I don't spend ALL day sanding it sometimes felt like it. Today I FINALLY finished sanding. It is a very happy day!
Anyway, I started using these sanding sponges. They are really handy, but not what I needed for this job. I had 60 years worth of lacquer and varnish to power through and there is only so much my hands, arms, and back can take!
At first I thought that I was doing really well and had done enough sanding. I waited until Glenn came home from work and he advised me that I still had a ways to go. Bummer!

Here you can see the difference between sanded enough (left) and not enough (right). This hand sanding business was not fun.
I know that there is no way I ever would have come close to finishing it if we didn't pick up a power sander. That was my first power tool! YAY! I feel like a big girl now :o)
I was making an absolute mess with the power sander. The little dust collector thing in the back is a joke. It doesn't work at all. I knew I had to do something to contain my mess at least a little bit so I created a sanding fort in the kitchen with some sheets. I was pretty proud of it.
Since I was also tired of inhaling dust and was too silly to pick up a face mask when we were at ACE buying my power sander, I made a makeshift mask out of a gym towel and some hair clips. How do you like that MacGyver action?
Despite my awesome sanding fort, I still got dust everywhere. Check out this awesome mess next to the stove and refrigerator. It took me FOREVER to clean everything up when I was done!
Finally it was time to put the power sander away and get at all the detailing by hand. I used the lowest number grit I had (50) and went at it. Unfortunately I don't have any gloves and after an hour or so I noticed my fingers were getting torn up. It was gross but not really painful. The next day I came up with the brilliant idea of putting band-aids on my fingers. It was perfect!
Here is my beauty, naked for all to see. It's amazing what sanding can do. I am so excited to start priming and painting it now! In case you forgot what it originally looked like, the original untouched cabinet picture is below.

Project Rehab

I have been itching to grab some ratty old piece of furniture that had been well loved and abused from some thrift store. My intentions once I got this piece of furniture were to rehab/repurpose it into something awesome and uniquely me. This weekend we did just that... well we at least started the process.
This hunk of wood is my new baby. We picked it up at Goodwill for 30 bucks. It is a 1950/1951 radio and record player by Capehart. It's a really neat piece. None of it is operable though. Glenn decided to test that and plugged it in. He consequently started a mini fire (according to him... I was somewhere else at the time this happened) and blew an outlet. Fun stuff.
You can see that the condition of all the wiring back here is questionable to say the least!
The bottom right panel houses this speaker, which I promptly took out. It definitely wasn't going to be of any use to me.
This is the panel covering the speaker. If you look carefully you can see the round outline. Don't you just love the cool diamond detailing? I know I do.
As you can see, this is the radio panel. It has an AM/FM tuner. It's really cool and I was hoping to be able to make it useful again, but considering I know absolutely nothing about wiring and the age of everything, it just isn't going to happen. Now I have to figure out a way to bang this panel out of there so I can make it a functional shelf.
Here we have the bottom left door of the piece. This is the only functional storage space at the moment. It has a shelf built in and an operational door. Thankfully I don't have too much to do to this part.
I thought it was so cool when I found the manufacturer's tag on the back. I was really glad it was still intact. I'm going to have to find a way to incorporate it into my design. It was especially cool to me because I was able to look up the model number online and find out the age of the piece. In case you are wondering if I managed to pick up some valuable antique at a steal, the answer is no. It's worth about what I paid for it. Oh well. When I am done with it, I will have a one of a kind piece that I love.
This is the fabric that covers the panels on the bottom. I thought they were some kind of mesh, but after poking around a bit I discovered that it is glued on fabric. You can see where the diamond shaped hardware was before I took it off. The fabric was apparently a dark red at one point before its age and light faded it to a tan color. I'll update it with some cool graphic fabric when the project is closer to being finished.
I absolutely adore the hardware. I may just polish it to restore some shine, but I'll most likely end up spray painting it glossy white or black.
You can see this piece is not in such great shape. It's going to take a lot of sanding and wood filler to get it into workable condition. You may be wondering what my master plan in terms of color is. Well my friends... wait for it... HOT PINK! Obviously.
I promise I will keep you all updated on my shenanigans. Today I begin prepping by lots and lots of sanding. FUN!

Love to all!!!