Productive Day

Accomplished today:

-three loads laundry;
-vacuuming upstairs;
-paint touch ups on armoire;
-two three coats of paint on a dresser;
-one pot chili;
-one loaf insanely delicious beer bread (made with one bottle of Rickard's Honeybrown (341ml);
-one pan vegan brownies (made with 1 cup applesauce instead of 1 cup oil).

The house smells deeeelish.

A Little Slow On the Uptake Sometimes

I just realised that the screws for the pulls were meant to be installed from the outside of the armoire, so they weren't too short. *rolls eyes*

These were the cheapest metal pulls I could find and I absolutely adore them. I was amused to discover that they're the same pulls as that on the door to the dungeon!

Orange

Saturday's projects weren't the biggest chunk of my weekend, believe it or not.

I was really, really sick of the white melamine armoire that graces my entrance:



It's been the first thing I see when arriving at home for five years (it was a pantry for 4 and a bit and is now my entrance closet). I decided it was time to do something fun with it and figured that since it'll probably not make the move to Manitoba with me and I will therefore not have to live with it for more than eight or so months,I would paint it a fun colour: orange.

My initial plan was to reface the whole thing with beadboard, but I could have bought a new armoire for the cost of those materials. Instead, I decided to go with paintable vinyl wallpaper. I used that material in my old house, so I knew what to expect with it. My budget was 50$ and I spent 65$ at Réno-Dépôt on Thursday evening. That's okay, there's tons of paint left and I have another item that could use brightening up!

I decided to add some mouldings to the door, mostly so I could use one my favourite toys:



The poor thing has been so neglected since I moved and has sat all alone in the dungeon for seven months!

I wallpapered the armoire Thursday and Friday evenings, got to work on mouldings on Saturday and started to paint, finished painting on Sunday, let everything cure on Monday, and reattached the doors today. I need to touch up the paint a bit and add the pulls. I have the pulls, but the screws are too short and I didn't feel like braving the dungeon tonight to get longer ones.

I'm not thrilled with the way the mouldings turned out (the wood was infuriatingly brittle), but a couple of coats of paint hides a multitude of sins. At any rate, this is so much more welcoming than white:

Table results

Forgot to post my pics of my newly revived kitchen table!



It doesn't look quite that good in real life as the stains are still very much present, but it is a vast improvement. I am quite pleased.

Operation: Table

I've been wanting to refinish my kitchen table for, oh, five years now. *sheepish grin*

A friend/former boss gave me the table and while I've probably spent more refinishing materials (about 50$) than the table's worth, I can't see any point to buying a new table because this one's just perfect for the space.

At any rate, I woke up this morning and decided that today was going to be the day! I was just itching to work with my hands after a long fall spent glued to a computer. Tonight, I am exhausted and incredibly sore, showing just how much further I need to go to be fully recovered. But I'm half-way there (I hope)--the table and chairs are stripped!

I had the stripper at home, so I just had to dash over to the home store to get the rest of the supplies this morning and then I was able to start a little past ten. I worked until about 6, including two stops for food and one excursion back to the home store to get more stripper. This job required a lot more stripper than I would have expected!

This is what the table top looked like at the beginning:



The issue there is, of course, the big black water marks. I decided to focus on the table top first and see how close I could get to restoring it before I bothered to strip the rest.

After stripping:



Better, but barely.

After applying bleach (table's wet):



A further improvement.

After sanding:



Okay, not fantastic, but not bad. I planned to sit the chairs on the table to strip them, so I didn't go any further with the table top, knowing it would get a pounding.

Even though I'd bought stripping gloves, they were almost useless by the end. I thought my left hand was cold, then I couldn't feel anything, so I pulled it out of the glove to find my fingers red and raw. OUCH!!! They're fine now, no pain, so no major damage was done, but still!!! I learned that stripping of the furniture kind should only be done in full body armour!!! I had my sleeves rolled up for a spell and I kept on getting little flecks on my arms. OUCH!!! The worst was the glob that hit me in the corner of the mouth. That left a mark that I hope will be gone by Monday. :-S

Tomorrow will be sanding to smooth out any rough spots, then I will use the time left to begin rubbing oil into the wood. The final step after that will be a second coat of oil buffed in with 0000 steel wool. Based on how much time it took me to strip the table and chairs today, I'm not expecting to be done tomorrow, but that's okay. At least, I'm done with the messy and painful part!

I've missed this so much, the working with my hands thing. You just know your day was seized when there's a knot between your scapula and your arms are spotted with little acid burns and you've got a bruise on your elbow and a scratch on your wrist and you're trembling with fatigue. These are truly the best days of a life.