Entry Room Re-Do Part Five–China Cabinet Makeover

Whew, this china cabinet has been in the works for months it seems. It just kept getting pushed to the side to work on something else so it’s been sitting there being neglected for so long. It’s time has come finally! She’s been patient long enough!!!! So, I started with this:

You can see a reflection of me taking the picture in the glass if you look. I got this china cabinet many years ago. It was a hand me down from Hot Rod’s great aunt when she was being moved to the nursing home. It was originally a blonde wood (very 70’s!). It was much shorter than this with really squatty legs so I replaced the legs with these slightly taller ones and then painted it the hunter green about 10 years ago when that was the color I was going for in my living room/dining room. Needless to say it was tired and needed an update.

The first step was to empty it out, remove the glass, take the drawer out and then I flipped it over so it was sitting on the top. I wanted to work from the bottom up. So, once it was upside down, I was ready to get started.

I started first by painting the inside of the shelves. I went to Lowes and had them match the Rustoleum Painter’s Touch spray paint Heritage White and the Rustoleum Turquoise spray paints to a satin latex canned paint. I wanted to paint this using rollers and brushes instead of spray paint. My reason behind that is a couple of reasons actually. First of all, this is a rather large piece so if I used spray paint it would take A LOT of paint!!!! Also, it would be very hard to keep the spray paint where I wanted it and not where I didn’t want it since the inside and the outside were going to be 2 drastic different colors.

So, I started on the inside and painted the shelves the heritage white. Charlie had to supervise. ha ha ha

Once I finished the white, I let it dry and then moved on to the outside. I am painting it the same turquoise as the lamp on the table. I used a roller for most of this. I bought the roller for cabinet painting. It was perfect sized and worked great.

I did a couple of coats on both the white and the turquoise while it was upside down and let it dry completely. Then it was time to flip it over to right side up.

I painted all of the top surfaces, touched up a lot of the sides and then let it all dry. I didn’t paint the inside of the cabinets because they won’t be seen and hey…I’m lazy like that!

The next step was to age and distress it up a little. What I did first was grab my sander with 220 grit sand paper and just randomly started sanding things. I did sand the edges everywhere and then just touched the sander here and there on the flat surfaces. I only did this on the turquoise part. I left the white part alone. Then I rubbed a dark walnut stain over the entire piece (outside only, not the shelves) and then rubbed it mostly off. I ended up with a toned down turquoise, distressed piece. I love it!

I let it all dry over night (actually a couple of nights.) Then I decided to try and use a rub on wax to finish it up. Luckily I thought ahead here and decided to try it on the back of the piece first to see how it would look and if I liked the final look. Thank Goodness for small favors! Turns out the wax did not work at all. It was a total failure. I rubbed it on and all it did was completely remove the stain I had put on. I really don’t know what I did wrong here and I’m still trying to figure it out but needless to say the wax was not going to work. I just left it out. I’m just so glad I tried it on a small part of the back so there is only one small square on the back that is no longer stained.

So, if you happen to know what I did wrong here I’m dying to know. I know I’ve seen lots of projects that have been done exactly like this but apparently I just didn’t do something right.

So, now it was time to finish it up. I got the hardware for it at Hobby Lobby. I liked the look of it even though the white doesn’t really match the white of the shelves. I still think it’s ok.

Now it was time to put things back in the shelves and decorate it a little. I’ll admit this is still a work in progress. I’m not quite happy with everything yet but it’s coming along. Here are my first couple of tries…

OK…so I like the second shelf…sort of. I really don’t like the top or the bottom one and the top is really not right. Back to the drawing board…

OK, this is a little better on the top shelf. Still not feeling it completely though. Oh, you may have noticed it is now missing one of the bottom cabinet pulls. It just didn’t work, so I had to replace it. I waited until they put the knobs on sale at Hobby Lobby again so don’t worry, it is back in place now.

I finally decided that the blue Ball jars just weren’t going to work on the top, so once I took them down, everything else just sort of fell into place. I changed out the flowers in the vase at the top instead of my wedding bouquet I put some of the branches with blooms on them in it. I really like it so much better. So, what do you think? I’m still not feeling the large goblets on the bottom shelf. What do you think? Should I paint that middle one? It’s sort of an old gold which kind of goes with the maroon, gold, turquoise, and white color scheme but it just doesn’t seem to belong. What do you think I should do? Here is the final look (for now anyway). I do love “most” of it, but I’m still on the look out for some other things to put on display. My absolute favorite thing in the entire cabinet is the matching plate, cup, and saucer in the middle of the second shelf. I got those when my husband’s grandmother died. It was our only inheritance from her and I just love it so much. I found out later that there was an entire set and they split it all up and gave one place setting to each grand child. I wish I could just buy everyone’s from them but I bet many of them don’t even have it anymore. Not everyone loves old things as much as I do I think!

So, what do you think? Do you like how it turned out? I welcome any and all feedback, both positive and negative!

The Entry Room Re-Do Part 4 or Our Front Door Re-Do

Technically this isn’t really part of the entry room re-do, but it sort of qualifies so it is going to be Part 4 of this series.  Our front door is actually something I really love about our house.  When we remodeled our house in 1996 we took out a non-working sliding glass door that served as our front door from 1985 until 1996 and replaced it with a double door.  The doors themselves are actually fiberglass with glass half windows.  I’ve really enjoyed these doors.  Normally one side opens but we are able to open the other side when needed which is super helpful if we need to move big items in or out of the house.  Even though the doors are fiberglass they have a wood grain in them.  Initially we stained the doors a dark reddish walnut stain and then put several coats of poly on them.  Over the years though they have really taken a beating and they were looking pretty sad.  The poly just can’t stand up to our harsh sun, heat, wind, and blowing sand.  It was actually really wild the difference between the inside and the outside of the doors considering they started out looking the same.

So, as we I started revamping the entry we decided we really needed to start with the outside of the house which meant doing something about those doors.  I didn’t get a before picture…YET AGAIN!  But, I do have several pictures of my house from before so you can see how the doors looked from the outside.  This was actually at Christmas time though so try to pretend that the wreaths and trees are not there right now.  I promise, they really haven’t been up since the week after Christmas!  I really promise!!!!!

Well, the first thing we had to do was decide what we wanted on the doors.  I just didn’t want to go the stained door again because quite frankly it just won’t hold up.  Hot Rod did what he does best, he started the research.  He looked online and found the best paint to use on doors.  It is called Hollandlac paint.  It is a paint made in Holland that is used on all of the doors there.  Apparently it is supposed to hold up to extreme weather for 15 years!  Now, it is not readily available though, and there are just a few places that carry it here in the states.  We actually had to order it from a place in Houston as there was no place in town that had it. 

Now to say this paint is expensive is a huge understatement!  It actually costs $48 a quart!!!!  Yep, you read that right.  Almost $50 a quart.  Not only that but we also bought the entire kit for painting the door which included 2 different kinds of primer, a brush, mineral spirits, and tack cloths.  I know that may seem extreme but I wanted to do it RIGHT!  I followed their instructions to the letter even. 

The first step was to take down the doors.  Yes, you got that right too, we actually took the doors off the hinges to do this process.  I have to give my hubs some credit though, he is a GENIOUS!  He thought of the perfect solution for this little “big hole in the house” dilemma.  Man, my man is so smart sometimes!  He went to the hardware store and bought a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood.  We already had one sheet but needed 2.  He also got 3 – 8 foot 2X4’s and some 10” bolts with nuts.  What he did was lay each piece of plywood sideways against the outside of the door.  Then he put the 2X4’s on the inside of the doors.  He drilled holes through both the plywood and the 2X4’s and put the bolts through them.  Basically what this did was bolt the plywood to the house without putting a single nail hole or mark on the trim of the door on either the front or outside of the door.  This is what it looked like when it was done.  It worked like a charm! 

I think our temporary fix was actually more secure than the doors.  It would have taken some brute strength to break into that!  So, time to work on the doors.  First thing was to clean and sand them.  I used my power sander and 100 grit sandpaper to get off all of the old dirt and peeling poly.  They started like this:

 

And after sanding they looked like this:

OK, first step down, next step is to apply the first coat of primer.  Since we had fiberglass doors we had this extra step.  Wood or steel doors only needed the one kind of primer but the fiberglass said to use 2 different types.  The first one was a water based primer made especially for fiber glass.  It was white, easy to clean up, and covered very well.  The instructions said to apply this primer with a foam brush.  Silly me, I thought I had TONS of them.  Well turns out I did have tons of them but they were all the same size, a whole 1 inch wide.  We decided to use them anyway.  They wore out quickly so it took about 6 or 8 of them before we finished both doors.  Oh well, saved me a trip to the store one more time.  ha ha ha

I taped off the glass with painters tape but I had decided to do the trim around the window in the same paint as the door so it got the same treatment that the door did throughout the entire process.  We let this primer dry over night. 

Next we sanded the doors again using 220 grit sandpaper.  I used my electric sander again but didn’t apply much pressure at all.  This step is to just remove any particles that dried in the paint and to give the previous primer some tooth for the next coat to hang on to.  Then it was time for the next primer.  This one was an oil based primer and it said to apply it using a brush.  I really don’t care much for oil based paints because they are so hard to clean up so I decided to use an older brush that I would just throw away afterwards. 

We let this coat of primer dry a couple of days actually.  Since it is oil based it needed a little more time to dry.  The instructions said to dry overnight but due to scheduling it was actually a couple of days before I resumed the process.

I sanded it again with 220 grit sand paper, lightly again.  Then it was time for the color.  We had decided to use the black high gloss paint from Hollandlac.  The Hubs and I were actually in a little disagreement over this.  I wanted to paint the doors in the same red that the house is trimmed in but he thought it would look bad to have the doors and the trim the same color so we opted for the black.  The Hollandlac paint is extremely thick, much thicker than any other paint I’ve ever used.  It supposedly has a lot more color particles in it than any other American paint which is why it will last so much longer.  American paints have more liquid in them than paint particles.  The black went on very well and covered better than I could have imagined especially since the primer was such a stark white compared to the black. 

We did 2 coats of the black with sanding in between the coats.  I seem to have not gotten a picture of the black paint when the doors were still on the saw horses, but fear not…I got pictures after we hung them back up.  The only downside I can tell to the high gloss is it does show every imperfection and we do have a few dings and dents in our doors so they do show up.  Still, even with the dents and dings the doors look fabulous!

Hot Rod used this opportunity to replace all of the seals on the doors too, so every part of them got new rubber all the way around.  They seal VERY well now.  Almost too well actually.  It’s kind of hard to open the door now but I’m sure as the bottom seal gets a little more broken in that will ease up.

After hanging them back up it was time to re-install the hardware.  Another slight problem there.  Our doors have been not working for some time.  The doors were actually not “catching” so unless we had the dead bolt engaged the doors would blow open anytime there was any wind.  Hot Rod worked on them a month or so ago and got them fixed, but when he did the dead bolt no longer matched up exactly to the whole so there was not a metal plate, it was just going into the wood.  During our 4th of July party my mom pushed open the door thinking it was unlocked and it tore out the wood completely.  So, we needed to get the wood part that is between the doors replaced and we also replaced the hardware at the same time since the hardware was not working great anyway. 

We replaced the hardware about a month before we decided to paint them and at the time I really thought we were going to go with the red paint, but as you can see we didn’t.  However, I really wanted the oil rubbed bronze look for the hardware so that is what we bought.  Now, the doors are black and the oil rubbed bronze for all intents and purposes is black too.  We were really worrying how they would look together.  Unfortunately I had thrown away the box the hardware came in so I couldn’t just take it back and get the brushed nickel or some other color.  We decided to go ahead and try it and see how it looked.  I actually don’t mind it either.  I mean it does kind of blend in to the door but it looks ok to me.  So, here are the newly painted doors!  I’m very happy with them.

So, my review of the Hollandlac paint is it is wonderful!  I love how it covered and it looks great now.  Now we just have to wait and see if it will indeed hold up to the West Texas wind and heat and dirt for many more years to come!

Now for a little history lesson.  While Hot Rod was researching the paint for the doors he discovered some interesting trivia on the history of painting doors black.  It actually started in the early 1900’s I believe (or it may be the late 1800’s).  Anyway, when King Albert died in England, many of the people in England painted their doors and frames black as a sign of mourning for the loss of their king.  Queen Victoria actually wore only black for the rest of her life in mourning until her death in the 1930’s.  So, if you are ever on Cash Cab or something and they ask how the practice of painting doors black was started you will know! 

What would you do?

I’m trying to decide what to do with one of my recent Estate Sale purchases, namely this little beauty:

I absolutely adore the lines and style of this table, but I just can’t decide if I want to paint it or leave it alone as is.  I’m not sure you can tell from the picture (lighting was horrible and I apologize for that) but it is a goldish yellow color.  It really doesn’t match anything in my home right now.  However I’m seriously considering some color schemes for my future guest room re-do that actually do have this color.  Here they are:

Or this one:

Or perhaps this one:

(the colors don’t look quite right on the page right now but I’m hoping when I publish this post they will come out right…basically they all have the same goldish yellow hue in the pallet).

So, what say you?  What is your vote?  Do I paint it and use it elsewhere in the house or just save it like it is and use it in the guest room when I redo that room?  Please tell me what you think!  I’m very indecisive on this one…

Bedroom Makeover

Well, it's DONE! We finished our bedroom makeover and I couldn't be happier! I'm incredibly pleased and very proud of the job we did. We have been planning on this project for about half a year now. We actually even bought the wood floor in July or August of last year I believe, right after we finished the bathroom makeover. After the bathroom it was just a crime that we had to walk people through our bedroom with the disgusting carpet in order to show them the new and pretty bathroom. So, we went to Lumber Liquidators, picked out our wood and bought it. Then it just sat in the laundry room for several months until we could get ourselves motivated to actually get it done. After Christmas I told the hubs, it is time to get that floor done! But, I didn't just want to do the floor, oh no...that would have been too easy. I wanted to get another project crossed off the list at the same time, namely scraping off the ugly popcorn ceiling. I figured it was the perfect time to do it. We would have to empty the room completely of furniture anyway so why not do the ceiling once all the furniture was out and before the new floor was put in? So, that is what we did. My hubby works in the financial industry and he has Martin Luther King Day off, so I requested that day off and we set aside the 3 day weekend to get it done. My plan was Friday night, remove the furniture. Saturday, get the ceiling done. Sunday, get the floor done. Then come Monday, put the furniture all back and enjoy! Um...well...it really didn't work out that way but I'll talk about that later.

This is our bedroom before we started working but after we emptied it of all furniture.



You can't really tell it here but the carpet is the grossest thing you could ever imagine. It was a light cream color originally, here you can see it's pretty much a disgusting color of brown. Suffice it to say, carpet and dogs just don't get along and I will NEVER have carpet in my home again. So, step one...remove the popcorn ceiling...
Um...yeah...that's a lot of ceiling. But, I went to Home Depot to get the paint I wanted to use on it afterward and also looked for any type of scraper to make it easier. Lo and Behold! They had the most wonderful device made just for scraping ceilings. It is a scraper with a metal box shape surrounding it. You attach a bag to it and the stuff from the ceiling falls into the bag for easy pick up. I really didn't care about making a mess per se because we were just using the carpet for a gigantic drop cloth, but it did make things nicer.



After a little practice and trial and error we finally got the hang of it. The trick is to lightly spray the ceiling with water before you scrape each section. Then the scraper needs to be held as flatly as possible to the ceiling. This is our trial ceiling because not many people will see it. I learned quite a bit so now when I tackle the rest of my house I will do a better job. As it is, I'm not unhappy with it, but it's not as even as I would have liked. We started scraping off all of the texture and then realized that it actually looked better to leave some texture on it, thus not removing it all. Oh well, like I said this was our trial ceiling. Now when I get to my living room ceiling I think we can make it look fabulous...and even!

The vanity area is done, now on to the rest of the room!

The ceiling is finished and scraped off. I've taped off the crown molding at the top and I'm ready to paint.

Ah! So much better! I painted it the same color as our bathroom ceiling, which is actually a shade or 2 lighter than our bedroom walls. It really pops now with the bright white trim, the brown walls, and the tan ceiling. OK..we got the ceiling done on Saturday with time to spare! Woo Hoo...so we decided to tackle the next step, removing the carpet.

Uh-oh...I was thinking there was concrete under the carpet. We weren't so lucky. Instead was the old formica type tile under it. Oh well, it won't be that bad, right?

Sunday morning we got up and went to my parents for breakfast (an every Sunday thing for us). Then we went home and started on the floor. Scraping up the tile. OMG! What a pain in the buttinsky! I had the pry bar and a hammer and Hot Rod had this air tool scraper thing my dad lent us. Off to work we went. Scraping, and scraping, and scraping, and scraping, and scraping...

Some of the tiles popped right up (meaning we couldn't have just left them because they would have torn loose and then the wood would have come loose too). Some of the tiles were stuck down so tight it took forever to get them up. But, get them up we did. Unfortunately, this process took almost all day. Between scraping up the floor, removing the carpet tack and all the nails and then cleaning it afterwards, there was not much time left on Sunday. So much for my grand plan to be done by the end of the day. No such luck.

What we did get done was the very hardest thing to do, the starting piece from the bathroom into the bedroom. First we had to tile the step up from the bathroom to the bedroom. It had been covered in carpet. So, out to the barn to find the left over tile from the bathroom and then cut the pieces we need. Hot Rod was figuring out where to place them, leaned back and broke one of them. Ugh! Back to the barn to cut another piece. Then he glued them down so he would know where to lay the threshold piece. Apparently that piece is the key to the entire floor. If it's not right the entire floor won't be right. That entire process (tile to laying the first row of wood) took about 3 hours. By the time we got that first row done it was well after 7:00 pm and we had been bent over and on our knees all day. We got a few more rows done (a total of 6) and then called it a night. When you get too tired you make mistakes and that is not a good thing. So, time to call it a night and start again the next day. Like I said, my plan to be done by Monday didn't work out so well.

So, off to bed we went (by the way we put our mattress and box spring on the floor in the living room throughout the process, so we did have a place to sleep at least during all this!) Monday morning, time to get up and working! We had to finish the floor today. We both had to be back at work on Tuesday so it was important we finish it today! Our son-in-law came over to help and I just can't express enough how much we appreciated and NEEDED his help. I was the designated glue girl, I did all the glue work. A-Man cut the wood and handed them to Hot Rod and then Hot Rod laid the floor down.

Halfway done and looking good!

The floor is finished! Isn't it just amazing! We finished by 6:00 on Monday night. But, we still couldn't move the furniture back in. We had to let the glue sit for 24 hours.

The floor does look incredible though and I love, love, loved it! Then, I moved the furniture back in and the love kinda went away. I just didn't like it anymore. Between the dark wood floor, my dark furniture, the brown walls, the tan ceiling the brown curtains...UGH...all there was is brown, brown, and more brown. I considered it all and just kind of cried. I mean all that work and I wasn't happy. Painting the walls would have been a very easy fix but Hot Rod was adamant that he didn't want to do that. Unfortunately for me, I had just painted the walls not even 6 months ago. So, what to do? Next option, paint the furniture. Another resounding "Oh Hell No" from Hot Rod on that one. Why is it that men get an opinion on their bedroom anyway? When did they make that rule? I would like to argue with that one myself. So, what to do, what to do? Next best thing, bring another color in the room with a rug, curtains, etc. So, I actually took Hot Rod with me to Target and we first found a rug we liked.
It has this really serene color of blue along with the tans and browns. PERFECT! It would match what I already had that I couldn't change and also bring in a light and airy color. Then we went and got curtains to match!
Ah! So much better. After those 2 things everything just fell into place and it went from a nightmare of brown to the tranquil bedroom of my dreams!

I painted the vanity in Heirloom White from Rustoleum. It really brightened up the area tremendously (and got at least one brown thing out of the room! ha ha ha)

I went to Jo-Anns and bought this material to recover the chair and vanity bench. The blue matches the blue from the curtains and the rug perfectly. It also has the browns and tans in there too...an added bonus. Changing the chair cover was so simple and really made a difference.

One view of the room completed.

Then I went back to Target and bought a couple of pillows in the blue color and a blue throw to go on the end of the bed. I already had the brown and cream color pillows and together they all look great. Hot Rod did make a few comments such as "Do we really need that many throw pillows on the bed"...to which I replied "Oh you're probably right, I should get a few more huh?" Silly man!

Then, I had to go to Lowes to find a replacement for the door handle and the light fixture in the vanity area. I really wanted to get one just like above the sink in the bathroom and I even bought one like that but it didn't turn out and I had to return it and get something different. But, what I did find was these matching lamp shades to replace the you got it, brown ones! Aren't they pretty? And the blue was exactly the same. I chanced this one thinking if they didn't match I could just return them because I didn't take the curtain in the store at Lowes like I did at Jo-Anns. I was so pleased that they matched perfectly!

The view looking into the bathroom

Now back to the vanity light. So, I got the light I wanted and had Hot Rod take down the tacky shiny brass one that was there before. Another oh crap moment! Apparently the electrical box was not centered on the wall so my beautiful new light would not work. It would have been way off to the side. So, I took it back and just got another vanity strip light but in a burnished bronze instead of tacky brass. Hot Rod had to do some creative southern engineering to even make this one work but he managed and got it hung just fine. I need to touch up the paint around the edges because this one has a slightly smaller frame so the old paint (green) is showing through in a few spots. You can't really tell from here but it's there and I still need to fix it.

So, there you have it! My new bedroom. I have to say, I'm totally in love with it now.

Now on to the next project...replacing the tile in the hall bathroom tub. Oh the joys of redoing our homes, one project at a time!

Hope this inspired you to tackle a few of your home decor makeovers too. Beauty is just a project away...