Hutch: Before and After

Over a year ago, Peter and I bought a hutch at Salvation Army and refinished it, but for some reason, we never blogged about it and it’s been floating around in my head ever since. This happened so long ago that I actually had to dig my old computer out of a closet to get the pictures to write this post, but we figured if we were going to write about it, then we ought to do it justice. Right? Right! Maybe this will refresh your memory.

Okay, so around the time that Peter and I found the hutch, our kitchen/dining area was looking a little pathetic. Since we’re taking a trip down memory lane, I’ll show you our bare and messy mess. (Yes, messy mess is a technical term–in case you were wondering.)

Pretty bleak, huh? If you’re too depressed to go, I understand, but for those of you who can muscle through, look at the huge blank wall and giant stack of stuff on the desk against it. Peter and I saw the hutch and decided that we needed to hide some of our clutter.

The best part about this project is that we were so ridiculously clueless about refinishing furniture. (Not that we’re oh-so-knowledgeable now, but I do feel like we have learned a thing or two.) The buffet had a really glossy coat over it so we knew that we needed to sand it down, but considering that we were just painting over it, we did get a little over zealous with the sanding.

We thought that in order to paint something properly, we would have to strip the old paint entirely. Please don’t laugh at us. We really were clueless. After sanding, we primed the hutch with Kilz and painted the whole thing brown. I tried to clean the hardware. I think this mixture was vinegar, salt, and flour, but even after soaking in this ick, the hardware still looked gross so we spray painted it silver.

The insides of the drawers were also gross.

So we lined them with a shelf liner that we found at Target.

Finally, we replaced some of the drawer tracks, so that the drawers would function.

Here’s the after.

Painting

The best thing about painting is that when you rip off huge sections of paint because you decide you hate taping and think that maybe your tape will stay put through two separate coats of paint, you can always re-paint.

After spending what seemed like hours with some tweezers trying to pull off bits of tape that were left behind, I’m beginning to think that I should become one of those people who has a really steady hand and doesn’t need to tape things off. Thoughts? For those of you who missed it, check out this great post about painting by Making It Lovely.

Happy weekend!

Tax Tools

We’re taking a break from the bathroom to work on our taxes tonight. This is the first year that I have to file on my own. Luckily, I have my dad to help, but seriously why didn’t anyone ever tell me that you’re supposed to save all of these receipts? I thought I was being responsible by shredding them! This is not common knowledge amongst those of us who have been claimed our whole lives!! Now, I’m searching through old credit card archives and tearing the house apart looking for anything and everything that I might have forgotten to shred.

With this newfound realization that I’m supposed to keep this paperwork, Peter and I decided to buy a filing cabinet and a new shredder. Apparently all of that great shredding that I did all year killed ours. (Can you sense the bitterness?) After visiting store after store only to learn that filing cabinets and shredders are both *really* expensive, we headed over to our neighborhood Goodwill. And lo and behold, we found both of these things for a total of $24.

We actually saw the guy wheeling this filing cabinet out onto the floor and chased him down. I think we terrified him.

(The sticker on the filing cabinet was there when we bought it. It was not an accessory that I chose.)

I was skeptical about buying a used shredder. I reasoned that someone probably donated it because it didn’t work, but Peter found one that someone had jammed paper into and didn’t feel like fixing. He patiently removed the jam and found an outlet to test it out. All the while I was shifting back and forth impatiently like an angry teen out shopping with her mother. He’s pretty great for putting up with me–and for other reasons as well!

I like our filing cabinet but I think I want to jazz it up a little bit. The boxes below are my inspiration, but I’m generally a neutral kinda gal who likes smaller pops of color.

{Little Green Notebook}

What do you guys think? I brought home a few swatches to get an idea of the shade of blue that I want to paint them, but so far I’m not loving any of them.

So, should I paint it blue, paint it grey (because that is always an option), leave it as is, or find a new idea all together? I know this one is already thinking long and hard to figure out a solution.

A little P.S.–If next year will be your first year filing taxes on your own, I am warning you save everything!

Bathroom Makeover: Chapter Two (Shades of Grey)

I will warn you that this may be one of those epic books that has about 700 chapters. Hopefully not. I mentioned yesterday that taking off the door to the linen closet (To be clear, I’m not talking about the actual bathroom door. I’m open to a lot of things but no bathroom door is definitely not one of them!) was a huge turning point for us. It instantly went from a giant unconquerable task to something that we could manage one step at a time. Why did we think it was such a turning point? See for yourselves.

Before:

After:

Doesn’t that feel a million times more open?  Imagine Peter and me sitting on our bed a about midnight on a Friday night. I say, “It’s just so cramped in there. That door gets in the way.” And then Peter exclaiming, “Let’s just rip it off!!” Here’s an action shot just for fun.

Unfortunately, removing the door left us with huge slits and holes in our door frame from where the hinges used to be.

The holes can be easily patched using wood filler. I put some in each hole, making sure to pack it into the small crevices in the back.

After letting the wood filler dry for about 24 hours, I sanded off the excess, and then repeated the process. If I was going to do this over again I would have put an insane amount of wood filler over the hole so that when I sanded it I wouldn’t have to add any extra. The reason being that making wet wood filler attach to dried wood filler is much more difficult than when it is all wet. I ended up battling the bits that were falling right off onto the floor.

When the holes were patched and the door was off for a few days, Peter and I couldn’t bare to look at the awful wall color any longer. For some reason, the linen closet was painted a terrible yellow color. You’d really have to see it to understand just how bad it was. I’ve attached a photo below but it really doesn’t do the color justice. If you want to get an idea imagine urine mixed with whipping cream and then covered it with high glass paint. It was really that bad!

Anyone who knows me well knows that grey is my absolute favorite color. (I remember asking a friend of mine if it was OK to paint my entire house in different shades of grey. The short answer is no but I still believe I could make it work.) After a trip to Home Depot, we brought home a few paint swatches and taped them inside the closet to get a better idea of what the paint would look like.

Wondering what we chose? You’ll have to come back to find out, but since I forgot to take pictures when we first removed the door, the after photo at the top will give you a sneak peak of what’s to come.

What’s going on in your bathrooms? Many of you are probably following Meg’s bathroom reno. Heather wrote in yesterday saying that she has an embarrassing bathroom as well. Does anyone else have anything to share? Or does anyone else just want to help me encourage Heather to post her bathroom photos? (Misery loves company.)

Righting Wrongs

I just got back from a business trip in Chicago. Is it just me or does work become a million times crazier around the holiday? Either way, in this time of sparse writing I’ve managed to fix a few of my mistakes. Do you remember about a month ago when I got really excited about spray painting and forgot to clean the wine rack before I painted it and got spray paint all over my jeans?

I’m happy to say that I remedied both of these situations without spending any extra money. The wine rack was really easy. I simply sanded down the surfaces to ensure that I removed any dust. After sanding, I wiped it down to ensure that I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes. In case you forgot, here’s what it looked like before:

Pretty gross, huh? And here it is now:

And just so you can admire how wonderfully dust free this really is, here are a few more:

Secondly, I managed to remove almost all of the spray paint from my jeans!! Before I give you the details, I’d like to make the disclaimer that I don’t know very much about stain removal so I’d only try this with clothing that you would otherwise be forced to throw away (or condemn to a life of “painting clothes”). After staring at my jeans in disbelief for a good twenty minutes, I brought them inside and began to route through the laundry cupboard. I realized that Shout wasn’t going to cut it for this job so I turned to the internet.  A quick Google search later, I was sitting in the bathroom with hairspray and hand sanitizer. Several people on various websites swore it would get spray paint out of clothes. So I applied, rubbed and rinsed, and applied, rubbed and rinsed some more. I just knew that this was some fabulous little secret that would shock Peter with its dramatic results but after trying again and again, I still had bright red jeans. I slumped down in the bathroom, sure that my jeans were ruined forever when my eyes met the nail polish remover. This was an act of desperation but as I poured (with a heavy hand) the nail polish remover on to my jeans and scrubbed, I saw a difference. I knew they’d improved but honestly I was too afraid to wash them because it seemed like the final step that could set the stain and officially banish my jeans from the outside world. So they sat on the washer, got pushed onto the floor, and finally weeks later I put tons of Shout onto them and threw them into the wash. And guess what? They’re near perfect. There is one tiny red spot where there had originally been a quarter size stain but they’re completely work appropriate again! (Yes, we have a very casual dress code.)