Locker Mania

Oh, Goodwill! Just when I'm ready to break up with you , you surprise me with something cool..

I have been a smidge irritated with Goodwill for months now. It seems "they" got wind of the whole "refinishing crappy furniture to look cool again" trend, and "they" have been hiking their prices up so much that I hardly went there anymore.

Lucky for me ( and "them"... I used to be a frequent customer, after all),  my daughter started going for Occupational Therapy at a therapist right behind a Goodwill. So what's a girl to do when she's checked her e-mail  and Facebook  and Pinterest and Offer Up  and Craigslist , and it's still more than half an hour before her child gets done at the OT?  Go browse in Goodwill, of course.

I have been drooling over the industrial style lockers on Pinterest, but whenever I saw any on Craigslist or OfferUp, they were way more than what I was willing to pay. So, great was my excitement when I saw this cabinet there!

I know, it doesn't come close to a real locker, but I was convinced I could work with it. Especially when I saw the price! $14.99 , plus I had my 20% off coupon! SOLD to me!!!

When I got home I soon realized that I would need a lot of paint stripper. The top layer boring white paint was just regular paint, but the original paint was almost like plastic..yuck!

Luckily I was not planning on stripping all of the paint off. The idea was to leave some on, for the layers of peeling paint look.

I recently discovered that Jo-Anne's and Michaels also stock chalk paint.
I got this one at Michaels for $9.99 less 50% with my coupon. Score!!

I painted it on unevenly, with some of the nice, rusted steel parts and some white paint still showing. Sanding with 150 grit sandpaper and applying this wax, gave it a smooth, silky feel.

               

                                                                                     .

                         

I love how it turned out!

Oh ya! And check out the numbers on the "locker " doors!

I also replaced the boring hardware with this . Just a very shiny lock thingy from Lowe's, spray painted black and then painted over with the same paint I used on the cabinet. I didn't worry about the two extra holes from the old hardware. I think it adds to the industrial look.

Had to enlist Hubby's help to add metal castors (ordered on Amazon) at the bottom.

 

I was at first planning on selling this , but now, of course, I can't get myself to part with it.
For the time being, it will serve as my liquor cabinet...

What do you think? Any other ideas for where to use it?

                                                                                     

                                                            Love,

                                                    

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Hi There!
Well, its about time I share the long promised "Breakfast at Tiffany's" dresser...
I saw the little dresser at Goodwill one day, and fell in love with the shape. I knew exactly what I was going to do with it! There was just one smelly problem....it smelled bad! Really bad. I don't know if it was just smoke, or a combination of dampness and smoke, but that smell would not leave...
I took out all the drawers, sprayed it with bleach water, left it in the sun for more than a month, but no improvement. I tried baking soda, vanilla essence, more bleach, more sun, more spraying with the hose...still stank to high heaven.
So, I decided to just try Kilz primer...painted on, not sprayed. It worked! Not a smell ... yay for Kilz!!!
Ater priming, I painted with a sort of seafoam blue I had, and then used my projector to project an image of Audrey Hepburn onto it. The rest was filled in with small brushes and black and grey paint..

Ta Da!!!!

I love love love this look! But I have a confession to make...

It was not my original idea ...I stole this from Deneen at Dreaming in Color . Only she is a real artist, and did not need a projector.

But ever since I saw her sweet little dresser, I knew I wanted to do something like it.

She is very talented, and her blog is choc full of inspiration. Go stop by her blog and tell her I sent you...     ;-)

Do you want to have another look?

 The rounded corners looked sort of retro to me...

 I lined the drawers with wall paper I had.

Hope you liked it!

Happy Thrifting!

Suzanne

xoxo

Linking up with:
Metamorphosis Monday

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Pop Art Side Table

This is a time for celebrating...whether you are religious or not. Most of us associate the Holidays with seeing loved ones, families getting together, having fun, making memories, etc etc. Why then, is everybody so miserable and impatient and stressed out? Isn't this supposed to be a happy time?

I have a theory about that. What makes us miserable this time of year, is expectations. We are told by the media that this time should be and look a certain way. Happy families smiling in the warm glow of crackling fires, perfect little children with cute outfits playing sweetly together, the smell of good food wafting in from the kitchen, loads of presents under a perfectly decorated tree.....
The truth is that most of our realities are very different from that. And so we start to strive for that picture perfect Christmas .. And if we fail, we strive harder, and become unhappy and stressed out. And what was supposed to be a festive time, becomes the time of year with the highest suicide rate, stress and huge credit card bills.
Maybe we should just relax, and appreciate our own reality for what it is.See the blessings in the little things. Appreciate the people that are with us, instead of being resentful for the one's that are not.
 Maybe we can even reach out and be a blessing to someone else....
Maybe this is my advice to myself, since Christmas started to become such a burden  having to spend it without family since my husband and I moved to the US 10 years ago....
Maybe I will take my own advice and just be happy  this Christmas.

ALRIGHTY THEN!  Enough talking...


Check out this ultra cool little side table I painted a while back. I am sooo stoked about it.  I loved doing it so much, I just want to make more. Even though it's not selling. Go figure. Probably not everyone's cup of tea.

My friend bought me this at a garage sale for $3

I painted the body black, and did this Roy Lichtenstein pop art on the front.

I used my trusted projector to do the drawing.

I googled the image. Funny how I always think I have an original idea, but when I start to google it, I discover that some one else has done it already! I found a lot of cool pop art furniture online.

At first I was thinking of putting something humorous in the thought bubble.

Something like: " I wanted Chick-A_Fillet, but it's Sunday..." 

or any of those First World Problems, but I eventually just went with the original saying, which was:" that's the way it was supposed to happen, but now its hopeless!"

Unfortunately I did not take another pic after I wrote the quote in, before I took the table to the consignment store. 

So, there it is! Hope you love it as much as I do!

Happy Thrifting and (Truly) Happy Christmas !

Joining these parties:

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Super Hero to the Rescue

 This post is long overdue...It seems I am only creating, and not blogging these days. I just have so many ideas swirling around in my head, and I want to do all of them now. 
I'm sure you know the feeling.

I found these chairs and table at my local Goodwill a couple of months ago.

I liked the chairs especially. They were sturdy and retro looking. 

I had plans to do something along the lines of what I did to this bench

 in this post , but then I started thinking about all the super hero movies that are out right now, and I got to thinking. "What if I Modge Podged the table and chairs with some super hero fabric?" But, alas, I couldn't find any such material here in the West Valley at that point.

(Of course, about two weeks later, there they were...4 different rolls of Superman and Captain America!)

So, I did the next best thing... I went to the local Comic Store, and bought a few of the older comics that were on sale.

After I primed and sprayed the legs black, I proceeded to decoupage the rest in strips of comics.

It took forever, but I had sooo much fun doing it!.

The middle of the table is chalk board, painted with homemade chalkboard paint.The recipe I used is :

11/2 TBS un-sanded grout

1 cup acrylic paint in the color of your choice.

Remember to prime the chalk board after it is dry, by covering the whole board in white chalk paint, and wiping it off again.

I'm sorry I did not take more pictures of the process....I have no idea why I didn't.

Well, I hope you like it, and are inspired by it.

Happy Thrifting!

Joining These Parties:

Metamorphosis Monday

More the Merrier Monday