Monthly Archives: April 2012

Let’s go shopping! Those are probably the three most wonderful words in the world! However, being on a less than spectacular budget means that I’ve got to think outside the box to decorate my home. Every few weeks I venture down to my less than spectacular basement to see what I have to play with. I get bored very quickly seeing the same things day in and day out. So that means that I either have to win the lottery to go shopping every few weeks, or I can climb down those basement stairs to ‘shop’ and find ways to decorate with what I already have on hand. Sometimes that means that I give something ready for the donation pile a new coat of paint to make it look new again. Or I might go and have a look around my husband’s workbench to find inspiration.

So did you figure out what the picture is? Last summer my husband and I were visiting a relative who lives in the country. They have a barn that was storing old farming equipment, so we asked if we could snoop around. (What I remember most from that barn was not what we found, but how terrified I was that I might see snakes!) We didn’t find any snakes, thank goodness, but what we did find would probably not have been given a second look by most folks. For us ‘arsty types’ we knew we hit a jackpot! Yes it was broken and falling apart, but I immediatley thought of how I could decorate it! I’ll share more on that tomorrow!

This weeks homework is to go shopping in your home, basement or barn! It’s FREE! Get some inspiration from magazines, the internet and decorating blogs! Take a walk through your home and see if you can re-create an idea with what you already have.

And you won’t have to deal with line-ups, coupons or angry cashiers. You might have to deal with your husband when he finds out that you’ve gone ‘shopping’ near his workbench, and you’ve made a picture frame out of his screwdrivers. Just blame it on me.

How do you decorate on a budget? What forgotten treasures have you found in your home?

If you’ve never heard of chalk paint (no, not the paint used for elementary school blackboards) then get ready to have your mind blown!  Okay, maybe I’m a little too excited about this recent discovery, but if you’ve been looking for a way to distress a piece of furniture (without spending big bucks for paint) you have to give this a try!  Someday if my wallet has enough wiggle room to allow me to buy the authentic Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, I might change my tune, but for now this is the bees knees!

So you want to make your own chalk paint eh?  Here’s how to do it and what you will need:

- 2 tbsp. of either Gesso, Plaster of Paris (which I use) or Calcium Carbonate

-1 cup of latex paint

-1/4 cup water (maybe less if you want your chalk paint thicker )

*I use an old tupperware container to mix this together

You should be warned that when DIYchalk paint dries, it does not dry smooth.  You will have to sand your piece of furniture to get rid of any coarse, gritty areas.  

The great thing about chalk paint is that you should not have to pre-sand before painting.  Unless your piece of furniture is super shiny, I would recommend a light sand to roughen it up so the paint will adhere.  I noticed that the colour of any latex paint that I use in this mixture always seems to lighten up a bit.  Just something to think about if you decided to give this a try.  Chalk paint also dries really fast, so be warned.  No lollygagging…..is that even a real word? 

I hope that you enjoy this DIY tutorial as much as I did!  And if you don’t like it, then you’ll have some left over Plaster of Paris to give to your husband to fix the holes in the wall that you’ve repeatedly asked him to fix from when you first bought your house six years ago and your still waiting for those holes to be filled.  There, I saved your marriage too!

This table almost didn’t make it.  I was ready to sell it in a garage sale last year and had gotten a few offers for it, but for some reason I just couldn’t part ways with it.  My parents gave it to me when they moved but I didn’t have room for it, so I kept it in the abyss that I like to call my ‘basement’.  The poor thing sat there for a couple years covered in boxes.  I figured I should try to sell it since it wasn’t being used, but when I brought it out to sell it I realized how pretty it was.  It had a few scratches on it, but it had great potential.

Silly me forgot to take before pictures, so this picture from the Bombay Company website will have to do.  This is pretty much what it looked like before, except not so shiny and new.  I blame it on the ‘abyss’.

As mentioned in my previous post I HATE sanding before I paint.  I’m too impatient and once I have an idea in my head I want to do it right away.  I turned to my trusty chalk paint for this project.  I had a gallon of Behr’s Premium Latex paint in basic white hanging around and I used that to mix my chalk paint for the the base coat.  Then I used Art Deco paint in French Grey thinned out with some water just on the high points of the table.  I mixed an antique glaze to roughen it up, then sanded some areas with an 80 grit sand paper by hand.  I also grabbed an old fork and used that to add some scratches.

The top of the table needed some love, so I used vintage music sheets to hide any imperfections.  The music sheets looked to ‘new’ to me, so I brewed a cup of espresso and brushed it on the sheets with a chip brush.  Once those dried I cut them to size and used Modge Podge  to adhere them.  I still need to do a final top coat to seal it, but I’ll get to that later.

The table fits perfectly in my kitchen and I’m so happy that I didn’t sell it!

*side note: it also made me realize that I should clean out my basement more often!

I love side tables.  I also love books.  So it would only make sense that I would need a ‘book’ side table!  I found the table in all its varnished pine glory at a junk shop for a steal.

I originally wanted to strip the varnish and sand the top of the table, but there were way too many scratches and deep gouges. I used vintage book pages to hide the scratches and chose soft, muted colours for the paint.  The paints I used were Para Paints in ‘Citrine’ and ‘Seersucker’.  I made my own chalk paint with these colours so that I wouldn’t have to sand the entire piece before painting.  I hate sanding and I’m impatient, so this technique is perfect for a gal like me!  (I’ll be posting a chalk paint tutorial soon!)  I distressed the edges of the table and used an antiquing glaze to ‘dirty’ it up!

So to re-group, not only did you get to see my latest project, but you learned some important facts about me: I love tables, books, I hate sanding and I’m impatient.  There will be a quiz next week!

A couple weeks ago while wandering around one of my favourite stores, Write Impressions in Uptown Waterloo, I came across rolls and rolls of really pretty wrapping paper which were nice enough to use as wall art.  This San Francisco Map was $5 for the sheet, so I snapped one up and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.  I bought the frame a few months ago from a thrift shop for $10 but I didn’t love the colour.  A coat of Behr Paint in ‘White Fur’ got rid of the gold and really made the map pop.

After I painted the frame and cut the map to size, I used Modge Podge to adhere the map to a piece of cardboard.  It was a quick and easy project….or so I thought until my husband and I tried to hang it on the wall.  It kept sliding off the nails and taking with it chunks of plaster from the wall!  Let’s just say that some ‘special’ words which cannot be repeated were whispered by my husband as he tried to re-wire…….and re-wire the frame.  Thankfully we are still married and the picture is practically superglued to the wall.  Now that’s love people.