The “Wing It” Bench

I came across this bench at an estate sale a WHILE ago. It looked like a disaster, but it was such a sturdy little thing I couldn’t pass it up. It came home with me and there it sat for months, like over 12 of them. Finally a few weeks ago I started on the sanding process. It was definitely a process.

It was surprising how easily the stain and the majority of the ugly blotches came out. It was a terrible stain job too, sloppy and so thick you couldn’t see any of the wood grain. After I finished the sanding, it sat in the garage for a few more weeks because I still had no clue what to do with it.

Inspiration came from digging through all of the random paint and stain cans that I’ve acquired from the Home Depot Oops Paint section.

I had some reddish weatherproofing wood treatment that I’d been wanting to use. Ironic since I hated the red that was on the bench originally. It would have been too gaudy to make the whole thing red, so I went with just the legs. There was also a new stencil that hadn’t been used yet, so now was as good a time as any…

A little distressing, some regular polyurethane and it was finished. It was fun to go into a project and just wing it.

Vintage Phone Table Redo

So I found this little table by the side of the road. IDespite my mom’s objections, I picked it up. I thought with a little TLC it could be adorable. As you’ll see from the pictures, it was covered in about 25 different layers and colors of paint. It was wobbly and it was sad.

The first picture shows it in all of its peely glory. In the second one, I had already painted the legs with a brown base boat and peeled off A LOT of the paint already. What’s left is what I couldn’t get off aka it was too much work.

Ignore my feet please!

I glued the joints to make it a bit more sturdy, and because I didn’t have clamps at the time,  I used bungees. Yay for improvising.

So my laziness cost me in the long run. After the base coat, you could still clearly see the chunky old paint showing through. So I had to go back and peel it off and paint over it again. Don’t cut corners!

It was my plan to distress it when I was done, so I thought it might be kinda cool to add some gold between the brown and blue to add a little sparkly effect. There wasn’t a science to it, just slapped some on there before the blue coat.

Once I finished with the final blue layer and the distressing, I wasn’t really satisfied. It needed a little something else. I’ve been in love with this stencil table over at Domestic Imperfection and it gave me an idea…

Tada! A few coats of polycrylic and it was finished.

I think it’s perfect! I use it as a little hallway table with candles and a picture. The lighting is terrible though, so getting a good picture is near impossible. That’s what’s great about blogs, you see other people’s great ideas and make them your own!