Having Fun With Paint

So I REALLY like Mercury Glass but I can't afford it, so I thought I would have some fun playing around with some paint to get the same look for cheap!! I found plenty of different ideas on different blogs, and it seems that everyone was using Looking Glass paint on the inside of a vase or candle stick, so I did the same, after 5 coats had dried, I sprayed a little vinegar and water solution on the paint, took a cotton ball and dabbed to remove a little of the paint. I wasn't super happy with the look, I thought it was too 1 dimensional so I took some copper metallic acrylic paint, added a tiny bit of water and swirled it around the inside and let it dry, this is what I ended up with, and I do like it a lot.

Table Redo with Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations

Ok so this took me a while to do and post about, because this house is one big project, and I find that I work on what my 3 little boys will let me work on each day, so sometimes I'm working on the floor or table because they are otherwise occupied and they don't care what I am doing (during the baby's nap) or sometimes they need me to be by them so I work on little projects I can do in the toy room or tv room and still be near them. This table didn't turn out as I had hoped, but it will do and I think once my walls aren't bare it will all come together.
So I started with this very boring table that we have had for years, I wanted to stain it a beautiful dark mahogany, I thought it would be a breeze because I have worked with this stain on furniture before, and I love how it turns out.

So I started off deglossing the whole table and then sanded it down really good. I filled the ugly cracks and blemishes with wood filler then sanded it down one more time, I used a Minwax wood conditioner over the whole table because I really wanted a uniform look. Then it was time to stain. Staining can be messy, but in general it is pretty darn easy......apply, wait 5-15 minutes, then wipe off. WELL.......This time it wasn't so easy, it was a big FAT FAIL!!! The wood stained so terribly blotchy that there was no way to fix it, and believe me I tried anyway, I tried to do a few more coats, I tried to add more stain to only the light splotchy areas, I even tried to blend it all together by using a glaze, NOTHING!!


It just seemed to get worse. I realized that I was going to have to paint, then I got a bright idea.......My husband HATES the look of painted cabinets and I've been wanting to redo our cabinets (imagine ugly brown that has been worn down and scratched and the previous owner tried to hide the wear and scratches with a mismatched reddish brown marker) but we don't have money to buy new and he wont paint, so we as of now they stay ugly.... So (back to my bright idea) I decided that I would try the Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations on my table so my husband could see that painted wood is not as bad as he thinks...
So following the instructions for redoing cabinets, I went to town on my table.
The end result in my opinion was only OK I guess I was expecting a richer color and more depth once I put the glaze on. Oh well, it will work for now. (click here for tutorial on Upholstered Chairs)

I had a ton of the cabinet transformation paint left over from my table so I thought I might as well keep going... This time I tried it on an actual cabinet, our bathroom vanity needs to be replaced but we don't have the $$$ right now so why not transform it right??? Well I am so glad I did because I think it turned out much better than the table did. Maybe that is why it is called "Cabinet Transformations" and not "Table Transformations" (sorry about the messy picture, I wasn't planning on this being a before pic)




I think I may have gotten a little closer to convincing my husband that painting the old cabinets wont turn out so awful after all.

FIXING DESTROYED WALLS

EVIL EVIL WALLPAPER!!!


I know I know people say wallpaper is back in style, and I don't doubt it, I actually really love the look of some of the new wallpaper, however, I am posting about old wallpaper that has been up for over 20 years and painted over at least 10 years, what a NIGHTMARE!!! I haven't posted any new tutorials for a long time, because I have spent all my "work time" on these dumb walls. It took me 4 days to remove painted over wallpaper from a small wall behind my door.

Believe me, I tried everything, scoring the paper, using vinegar, DIFF, and I even tried to thin the paint and scrape it off before trying to take the paper off. I did not try to steam it off because of the paint barrier, and I didn't try to use Downy because in my experience with wallpaper (yes I have de-wallpapered an entire house before) Downy doesn't work any better than vinegar. After getting the wallpaper off a quarter size at a time, my walls were absolutely destroyed!!! I wanted to cry, I thought I would just wallpaper over it but my husband hasn't jumped on the new wallpaper band wagon yet ( I might be able to get away with an accent wall or something), so I was either going to have to fix the walls by myself and then be satisfied with visible flaws (because there was no way to get it all patched and looking smooth) or get new drywall. Well remember we are working with an extremely tight budget so getting new drywall was out of the question. I made my way over to the ONLY wallpaper store I have been able to find in the Columbus area to find some wallpaper my husband would be okay with......I found out the store was going out of business in a few weeks so everything was on sale. The problem was I quickly found out why they are going out of business, the only wallpaper they had looked like the wallpaper I was tearing down or wall paper I could find at my grandmother's house, it was terrible!!! I was super bummed and felt defeated, the sales lady was really working hard to sale something to me so just as I was about to leave she said, "Well why don't you line your walls and start fresh??""!!!!!!!! I did a 180!!! I had never heard of liner but after she explained it to me I was sold!!! So i lightly patched and sanded all the flaws in my walls, then I hung the wall liner just like wallpaper. Now the instructions did not say to do this, but i put 2 or 3 layers of spakling over the seam and then sanded it down!!

I was in love before I even painted the wall, it already looked so much better, so smooth, so clean!!! I then used a latex paint with primer over the liner, I still had to do 3 coats, because the liner soaks the paint in differently than my other walls. The only problem I have now is that this is an old house, now the lined walls look cleaner, crisper, and better than the walls I didn't line, I have an itch to do all the walls in the house, but luckily we are walking on subfloors right now, so I am distracted by other projects!!!


The first 2 pictures on this post are of the walls in my bathroom and the nook in my kitchen, the AFTER pics are still to come because we are still working on those areas!!!