The Red Lion

Here he is, in all of his glory, I give you The Red Lion.

I got this piece for a steal off of craigslist. The previous owner had spray painted it red, with gold spots and super glued fabric over it's missing drawers. It had 4 holes for knobs, but 2 were filled by gold buttons that were super glued in the hole, and the other 2 had crystal knobs.
Personally, the red, gold, crystal, and flower fabric was a little too much for me. However what I do love about this is the storage space. It was exactly what I needed for a blanket/game/storage/pantry/junk wardrobe.

So first thing I did was get rid of the fabric. Now I have seen many restored furniture that used this fabric trick of covering missing drawers. This is a great trick if you dont have the wood working skills or tools needed to replace the drawer runners with shelves. However my dad is a wonderful and patient father, who is both brilliant and a great teacher. With his help we ripped out the old drawer runners and replaced them with shelves. This gives the allusion that the piece was never intended to have drawers!

Here he is, gutted. We took the doors off, and sanded him down getting ready to paint. Also something that you dont see in the pictures is that the inside was also spray painted gold...

Sorry the lighting is bad in this picture... I should start using a camera that isn't my iPhone... However what you see in this picture is it all painted! I used a Nutmeg for the bottom and the top, and Yellow Gerbera in the middle. 

Let me just say... if the question is "does it need another coat?" the answer is almost always YES! After the second coat of yellow i was ready to redo the whole thing. I hated it, but after the third coat I was immediately comforted. It looked great and clean. 

A little too clean for my taste.. so I roughed it up some :P

Here he is completed! It really is amazing what a little distressing can do. It did wonders to bring out the details. Another thing that we did was get rid of the 4 holes and drilled new ones for handles instead of knobs. Personally with doors that big, they needed more than a little knob

A big thank you to both my mom and my dad for all their help with this!

Mantel made Headboard

Many of my stories could start out with... "This one time at a yard sale I found a (insert object)." But only because yard sales are great, and also because they are cheap.

So... this one time at a yard sale I found a mantel. When we pulled up it was the first thing that I noticed. I turned to my friend Kayla (my regular yard sale pal) and said "Want, Mantel." Only because the english language fails me every time I get excited. I jumped out of the car, bee lined towards it, slapped my hand on it and said "Headboard." Now, this yard sale was a serious business and had a price tag on the mantel for 25 dollars. However, the owner happened to be standing right beside me and responded with "That's a great idea, I'll give it to you for 10!" and I said "Deal."

25 minutes, 5 bruises, and 2 scratches on my car later we were driving away with it.
Beautiful no?

 And just look at that detail...

First step: paint it blue. I am on a really big blue kick right now. Mainly just robin egg blue, but this Liquid Blue from home depot hit the spot.

Next we used a crackle treatment with gray over the blue. Then using sand paper took a lot of the gray off to give it an aged look. We finished with a few coats of glaze to seal the paint.

Here is a close up on the details! The crackle technique did not work too well, most of what you see was done with light brush stroaks and fine sand paper. 

Heres how it looks when its mounted to my bed. Before this my bed was just on a metal frame that I got at the matrice store.

I'm not completely sure what I am going to do above the mantel. I just got some old window panes, so be on the look out for a project with those!
Any ideas for above the mantel? or neat things to do with window frames?

A Little Fabric Goes a Long Way

Forgive the lack of before pictures, but this was my first ever DIY project. :)

Yard sales have become my new favorite saturday morning activity. I love rolling out of bed, throwing on clothes, and leaving the house at 6:50 with friends in hopes of good finds. We laugh too hard, use too much gas, and afterward we eat too much at Finch's Diner.

One morning I found these great chairs. They were filthy and a little rickety, but they were a steal! All they needed was a good cleaning (with A LOT of goof-off and elbow grease), and fresh fabric.

They have a great stain, with fun details. I love the backs, they reminded me of harps. The fabric I got at Joann Fabric on sale. I used a staple gun to attach the fabric, and a extra pair of hands to pull it tight. The corners took a little while to figure out, but once we got a good system down it was a pretty quick DIY project.

These are going to be great chairs for the kitchen table (that is... when we get one :P).

Here is what I am working on right now:

This post will come later, But its a great piece that needs a lot of love. Its missing two drawers on the bottom so I am trying to find a better alternative than gluing fabric to it, which is how I found it.

Tracy Dare

Away We Go

I am not a writer. In fact I am quite the opposite. I LOVE mathematics: advanced algebra, Euclidean geometry, analysis, combinatorics, etc. I am about to graduate from North Carolina State University with a double major in Mathematics and Mathematics Education. So I find myself at a crossroads. Here I am a baby 22-year-old about to be kicked out of my comfy college life into the real world. I, like all of my other fellow 22-year-olds, am broke and have no idea what I want to do with my life, but that is another blog story.

One week ago from today I moved into my first apartment that does not feel like a college dorm. Last night I made dinner (heating up a frozen chicken pot pie) and this place felt like home. I live with my beautiful roommate Allison, and my silly dog Adelaide. Moving into this place, we had nothing more than bedroom furniture and a big screen TV. In attempt to decorate this home I have started yard sale-ing, goodwill hunting, and blog searching trying to find cheap ways to decorate. So here it is, a blog about DIY projects. A little something to remember this terrifying stage in my life. Maybe this can even be a way to overcome my fear of people reading what I write. Either way, it will be a catalog of neat finds, projects, and silly fun.

Away we go!