How I Met Your Clutter...and made it pretty.

Lately I've been painting upholstery. Didn't know if you knew that. I did it years ago before it became an upcycle trend. After all, a painting is just fabric with paint on it. So on my short drive to drop my son off to school, I always weave through the alleys of Lansdale to see what decluttered gems  my neighbors have been leaving at the curb after weekend clean outs. Recently, I found a treasure in these empire style dining chairs. I just couldn't resist. I had to do the Shabby chickie thing and paint them off white. Because the finish was completely faded, I painted then with a satin cream, paint and primer in-one latex. The dry chairs sucked it right up and the paint laid on perfectly. Because the original fabric was straight out of an episode of The Partridge Family, meaning that it was course gold and green corduroy, I decided that painting over that  was not going to give me the look I wanted. The look I was going for was faded, old world canvas, with a touch of french styling.  Something that looks like it had been in L'apartment dans Paris for quite some time. So I removed the seat from the base, and dug through my scrap fabric box to see what kind of cotton/linen sheet I had hiding within. Sure enough, I came across an old Ralph Lauren cotton bed skirt that I had from years ago, that had gotten wet while in storage and the fabric stained and fell apart in a few places. For some reason I could never part with it even with it's damage, so I had washed it and stored it away in my  bin. It was perfect. As soon as I pulled it out and saw the shirred skirt, I knew exactly how to proceed. I was going to skirt the slip seat of the chair. And paint that fabric as well as the seat.

I removed the seats, and cut the main part (platform) of the fabric and allowed a two inch return to give me room to staple the fabric down. Then I cut off the shirred (gathered) part of the skirt and began stapling that to the underside edge off the seat.

  

Once done, I flipped it and used a sponge roller to apply the latex paint to the seat.

On the skirt, I sprayed Kilz primer so that it would stiffen up the fabric, and the spray helps get in all the folds

where a roller can't.

     Then brushed some cream paint onto the skirt once the primer had dried. Next step, I rubbed in antiquing wax to crevases along the seams, just where dust and dirt would collect naturally over time. Then rubbed antquing over the entire chair, as well as sanding a bit to give the chairs some distressing. The antiquing wax can be very dark, so I only use a little. I rub it in until it begins to blend in and fade a bit, then dry brush on the cream color again over the brown. This creates a layered, more authentic, time-worn look. I chose some stencils I felt would give It a French feel, and sprayed on with brown spray paint.  Once the stenciling dried, I did another round of dry brushing over the letters, again, to make it look older and faded.After that dried, I did a layer of wax over the whole chair including the fabric. It just softened the whole touch of the fabric and the painted chair. You may notice on closer look at the pics, that the skirt on the chairs has a raw edge. I did that on purpose. The bed skirt was too long and hid the beautiful chair legs, so I tore the skirt to cut it down. I liked the deconstructed, faded and worn look of it. It added to its authenticity. I finished them off with shredded silk toile ribbons at the back. This look may not be for everyone, but those who love shabby will just adore it. The beauty of it is in the imperfections. And that suits my style perfectly.

The Time Has Come....finally.

Well, it seems like this is now the end of a long road. We are finally moving into our new store.  It has been a challenging and exhausting journey since May.  And like a long labor that had no epidural, this baby is finally gettin born, and it's about time. And man, did it hurt. But i'm sure the pain will someday be a distant memory (although I know for darn sure i'm never doing this again without some good drugs on hand).  Like so many things in life, some things just can't be rushed. Things take on a life of their own and you just have to ride the crest of the wave until it crashes on the shore, dumping you on the beach with sand in your suit and seashells in your hair.   Then you get up, adjust the boobs and pick out the surf wedgie, and head back to the ocean to watch for the next wave.  And the waves will eventually come.  Thank you to all my lifeguards who kept me from drowning...Rachel, Audrey, Ryan and Lori, my folks and family, and all my other support people.  I love you guys. The Shabby Attic isn't just a shop. It's a haven. It's a retreat. It's an escape,  It's a mission. Let's see where the ocean takes us next.

There is one thing about the power of paint that never ceases to amaze me...it's the ability of it to transform. Everything becomes a canvas. Even a junky old colonial pine coffee table that nobody wanted at auction.

Oh those silly folks who passed by it and couldn't see it's potential. Shame on them, but bonus for me!
So, I paid for this orphan and brought it home, and I knew exactly what to do it with it.  It's a sizeable table, measuring 60w x 29d...so I'm going for a Pottery Barn look, with a butcher block natural top.

Step 1:
Using Zip stripper, we removed the old lacquer from the top and then sanded it down to the natural pine. Make sure and wear a mask! I like Zip because it's effective and can you can start stripping within just a few minutes. Put it on thicker rather than thinner and it really works.

Step 2:
I sanded the piece all over, and removed the old hardware, getting it ready for painting. Once sanded, two coats of black paint and primer were applied, and the distressed along the edges after it dries.

Step 3. Apply two coats of wax, or polyurethane, whichever works for you...I applied wax to keep a lower sheen.

Step 4.: We got some jumbo wheels from Lowe's, which cost about $15each. I also redrilled the holes for new hardware, about $4 each... worthwhile investment for the industrial look.

What difference from BEFORE to AFTER!

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The kitchen that was...then wasn't...and now finally is! PART ONE

PART ONE: 7 DAYS WORK

Having just moved into an apartment where all rooms had been brought up to date except for the kitchen, I was delighted when my landlord told me that I could give this spacious, but ugly space an overhaul.  I mean seriously, I couldn't live with a yellow Formica kitchen with dark cabinets. It felt like a cave and swallowed up the light.

 

And so my game plan was this: off white cabinets with some antiquing, just like the ones I had done last month for a customer of mine. And I was doing my first trial run with a product I had never used before, Rustoleum Countertop (comes in 16 different colors). I was seriously excited!

The Countertop product is about $20, so this made me giggle with frugal glee, knowing I could get a fresh look for so low a price tag. At this point, I had no game plan for the backsplash at all. I assumed I was going to get some sort of glass tile on clearance at Home Depot. ( Now that hindsight is 20/20, I don't know that I would have gone with this countertop paint product, but I will discuss this in depth in part 2 of this blog tomorrow.)

 I started by following the instructions on the back of the can, and sanding the counters down first.  It is critical to get all of the shine off of your counters. If you do not do this, this paint will not bond with the surface! FYI...THIS PRODUCT STINKS BEYOND BELIEF! Do not try this product unless you have appropriate ventilation and a mask. You will feel like you are being given mustard gas. I'm not kidding. If you have asthma, I would not go near it. It made me feel like my lungs were closing. You also absolutely must use a roller to apply the paint to the surface...the paint may look very watery but believe me it adheres very quickly and thickly to the surface once you start rollering. With this product you will have roller marks visible in certain lighting (along with little tiny bubbles that will drive you mad)!  PLEASE be aware of that! This is not meant to be a product that creates a flawless surface!  If you are anal retentive this will make you nuts! I do believe this product is intended to be something you use to buy you a few more years with the old countertops until you get good countertops. Just my opinion (again, I will go into more detail in part 2). the instructions say to apply additional coats within 1 hour or 24 hours. I found this a little confusing...so I added an additional coat within 1 hour. This product dries incredibly fast. BUT DO NOT be deceived!! Don't even dare to put a single thing, even a finger, on this counter for a good 3 or 4 days! At least! you will rip your hair out when you go to put your coffee maker on the counter after 3 days and you discover that it is still soft and it leaves behind mini crop circles!  I did.

But then again, anything is an improvement over what was already there. 

Now, what to do about that backsplash...

I had remembered that I had some leftover embossed wallpaper, paper that can be used to imitate tin or copper when painted. I threw a scrap piece up against that new countertop and I knew it would be perfect. It is at Lowe's for $20 per roll which covers about 25ft by 2 ft. Because a kitchen is an area exposed to a lot of heat and moisture, I decided to spackle on floor adhesive to ensure that the paper would stick on there forever.   NO, I wasn't concerned about using embossed paper for a backsplash because I have used this paper before and it is very thick and durable, especially when painted with a couple coats of enamel spray paint.  QUITE WIPEABLE as long as you don't go crazy nuts with your scowering pad on some cleaning tirade. This paper also hides a multitude of sins, especially since the backsplash had a couple of cracks in it. And it hardly shows any dirt because of the busy pattern.

I spackled, and then rolled the paper on, using the bottom metal strip as a guideline. Then used a razor blade to cut as I went along, cutting around sockets and cabinets. The floor adhesive takes about 15 minutes to really stick so it's flexible if you make mistakes. 

Once finished, it was time to spray....but only after I discovered that I had my pattern mismatched in a section and I had to take an hour to redo it. Ugh!

 I sprayed the whole thing in a nickel finish but found it was not shiny enough like tin, so my second coat was spray Chrome (very shiny silver) which, over the nickel, gave it a more true metallic semi-tarnished look.

Now that the backsplash was looking so good, I just knew something wasn't right about those countertops! They had dried for 4 days and were just too plain and showed every hand print and spec of dust and drop of water! 

So I had a light bulb moment. Paint a faux stone countertop. 

I grabbed my copper and bronze metallic paint glazes (Martha Stewart...$5ea), put some of each on each side of my sponge roller (you can use a plain sea sponge), dabbing it in random patterns, being sure not to overload the sponge with too much paint when reloading.

VOILA! Faux finish and it hides mistakes, dust and roller marks! Let this dry for at least 24hrs.

THEN get surface free of dust and apply a thick coat of semi to high gloss polyurethane with a foam roller. Make sure you get every square inch of your counter top covered with poly.  If you don't, water and heat may damage the faux you just did, either washing it away or fading it out! Let dry for 24hrs! Then apply again! and then I would wait at least a day and a half to two days, maybe more, before putting ANYTHING on the counter.  With the humidity being the way it has been, I would also suggest putting cork feet or mats under the appliances to be sure feet don't stick.  Fyi ...I'm not particularly concerned about having polyurethane as my counter surface because I use cutting boards to do all of my food prep. 

 

TO BE CONTINUED....

PART TWO TOMORROW!

How I painted my kitchen cabinets, paint choices, and how many many mistakes I made during this processs, and how I learned from it...

Night folks!!

My No-Good-Rotten-Very-Bad Day

I guess my son got to see a new side of Mommy today. Let's just call her "Spastic Fit Raging Tantrum" Mommy. Not pretty. After a rough day of feeling emotionally and physically drained after eight weeks now of moving, cleaning, moving again, cleaning, reorganizing, some more moving, and painting, all in scorching heat and working in a hot warehouse, and now feeling like I've been living out "of a suitcase" for the past few weeks, piled on top of personal issues, I think I finally hit bottom. Unloading my truck I slammed my finger and it took Jesus and all the Saints to keep me from swearing in front of my son, only to turn around and start kicking my bumper in frustration like a crackhead. My son looked at me like he saw the real Hulk in the flesh...."Are you okay, Mommy??". Answer, "No".  And then I took a deep breath and apologized for having lost it, and buckled my baby into his seat. Still all the while, he was staring at me like he had seen the devil himself. Then on the car ride home someone cut me off and then blamed me for driving legally, and SFRT Mommy resurfaced and a finger went into the air which thankfully by the time the impulse went from my brain to my hand, was my index finger. "IDIOT!!!!!!!"  I shouted with righteous indignation, pointing into the air. And my son cracked up from the backseat. And then I couldn't help but laugh, too.  What idiots we all are. Wrapped up in our little daily dramas, it is so easy to lose sight of how BLESSED we are. It is a blessing to work hard. It is a blessing to work at all. It is a blessing to have a strong back and legs and arms. It is a blessing to not have any major health issues. It is a blessing to provide for my son. It is a blessing to have him, to have a car to drive, to love what I do for a living, to have a roof over our head, to have so many great and kind people follow this page, and a blessing to inspire and be inspired. I have nothing to complain about. Have a blessed day tomorrow. Sleep well, my friends.

everything you wanted to know about painting chairs but were afraid to ask!

After having completed a set of dining chairs this week, I thought it was good to do a blog post about painting chairs.
Here is my simple advice if you are planning to paint your own dining chairs at home:

1. painting chairs are always more work than you think!
2.  There is a reason why when I tell the girls who work for me that we are painting a set of chairs, they always let out a collective moan.
3. If you want to paint your chairs to be durable there are a lot of steps.
4. be prepared to take the week off from work.
5. find out from your insurance if they cover painting-induced carpal tunnel.
6.  pay someone to paint your chairs. You'll thank me later.

If you read the above sound advice and still want to paint your own chairs, here are steps to take to make the job a little less painful:
1. Sand the snot out of them. Get that shiny finish off...if you don't it will be chippy down the road.
2. I don't care what kind of paint you are using...chalk paint, latex, acrylic.... Spray primer the chairs first. I use Kilz oil-based primer spray.  It coats like a dream and any paint will bond to that.
3. always start painting your chair UPSIDE DOWN doing the legs first...again, you will thank me later.
4. once the legs are painted, flip it right side up. This helps with the stinkin drips, which happen a lot with chairs.
5. Sand between coats! Again, you will thank me. It saves a lot of time when you do the finishing coat.
6. You can check your chairs a hundred times over, and you will still find spots where you missed with paint. Be patient.
7. Also be patient with painting chairs with wrungs. They make you want to rip your hair out.  Trust me.
8.  for a cleaner look for your chairs (after using your primer) use spray paint rather than brush on paint.
9.  When you get done the first chair and you realize how much work they are, give us a call.  We would be glad to finish the other 5 for you ;) .

A Building by Any Other Name...

As many of you know, we are moving our shop. We are not sure where and we have to move soon. There is a deadline for this move. But, if you think I am in a panic about moving, yet not knowing where exactly we are moving to, you would be wrong. Let me explain:

Growing up we moved around a bit, and it was truly painful for me to attempt to make new friends. I would have rather cut my arm off than say hello to someone I didn't know. High school wasn't much better. I hated every minute of it. Unpopular and awkward, I never felt I quite fit in anywhere. I had anxiety. I was emotional. I was insecure. I had bad hair, a back brace, and boys terrified me. I often felt rejected and lonely.  Eventually, after my college years, I grew out of my awkwardness and anxiety and began to find confidence and who I was and my place in the world. I learned to make bricks out of the mud of my past. With practice, I began to build myself from the ground up. I still battled with loneliness and shyness, but managed it by forcing myself out of comfort zones where I hid from life.  I learned to make bricks. Out of the mud. Over and over, until the pillars in myself raised higher and thicker, making me solid throughout. There is a reason why ancient monuments, thousand of years old, still stand. It's because someone took mud and made simple bricks. And every solid structure begins with just one brick. One brick at a time. Until something magnificent is achieved.
So a few years ago when personal crisis in my life tried to knock me down, and my business was at it's lowest, I held fast and creaked and wavered, but I did not crumble. The foundation held. In fact, this building is stronger than ever. Now I've grown reinforced steel girders.
So wherever we land, whatever roof is over our heads, makes no difference. If things are up in the air, I will just land square on my feet. And the building will hold and stand the test of time.

I will keep you all posted!

                                         Ten years ago when I started my business

 

And  now...

BEWARE the pitfalls. And paint buckets.

It has been yet another week of soul searching about my growing business. How can I possibly keep up, what's my next move, why does my store always look crazy (two quarts of paint got tripped over and spilled this week) why isn't my Facebook page more interesting, why do other pages seem to have their crap together and not me????
I had talked today to my stepdaughter about having feelings of jealousy that other business minded people seem to be progressing forward with their businesses in terms of the WOW factor, while I still feel stuck in the stone age. I do not Instagram. I barely Twitter. My website is out of date. I let my Etsy shop shrink. I write hand written receipts and I have a glorified ledger. I am currently not writing a book. I have no scheduled speaking engagements.  But what I concluded at the end of the day is this: I should not look to the right or to the left but focus solely on my own tasks at hand. BEWARE THE PITFALLS of comparing yourself to what other people do!! While it's good to keep an eye on what is trendy, what sells, what new colors are popular, etc, it is dangerous to one's own creativity and growth to look too long over what other's are doing. It's easy to follow trends. But new heights of creativity can only come from doing your own thing. Pinterest is a great example of this "looking" I speak of. While it is great for the occasional look-see, I avoid it for the most part. Because everybody's pin boards start to look alike, and I don't want my stuff to look like everybody else's. I want us to be unique! To do things that nobody has done on the internet. Maybe that makes me not as popular, but at least I know what we create is one-of-a-kind. Just like any flower in the garden, God grows us each in our own unique way, in our own timing, with our own custom-fit goals and achievements. So I will continue to focus on our humble little shop. And see what blossoms out of it.