The Day I Found A Use For My Hairdryer

I have two x chromosomes, so I own a hair dryer. I don't use it very often, atleast on my hair. Maybe 5 times total in the 4 years that I have owned it.

Remember that 49 cent end table I found at Sally's??

Yeah, that one. The one covered in frickin' contact paper???
HAHA, I won! With a spray bottle of vinegar and the aforementioned hair dryer, there is not a strip of contact paper left on it!!!!!

See:
It's on my floor instead.

If I didn't hate that carpet so much,
I would be more careful about stuff
like this!

I spent about an hour previously picking and picking at it, getting a teensy frustrated. I was surfing the web, found the hint about the hair dryer and voila.... exposed laminate.

Damn. I hate laminate. I sanded the bejezzus out of it, took it to the basement and sprayed the hell out of it.

I'm poor and lazy, and thought I'd try out the spray paint from the dollar store. I figure, if I'm gonna guinea pig, it's going to be on the furniture that cost me less than two quarters. I didn't think it looked too bad after the first coat. My current coffee table has a similar finish to it. I'm excited about doing that next!

After 2 coats, not too bad :)

A few strategically placed blue lotus, some sealer and I'm happy :)

The shadows are bit weird. That's the basement for ya.

Woohoo, she'll be in my living room tonight!!!!

Till then...

Furniture

We moved into the apartment in October of 2007. There was a fair amount of furniture left here, none of it in fabulous condition, it ranged from just downright icky to I can live with it. Seeing as every single piece of furniture we own is either hand-me-down/garage sale/thrift store most of this stuff fit right in! (I take that back, I do have some brand new items, 4 shelf/basket thingies I bought at Family Dollar and put together, but other than that...) We gave away about half and kept the rest. D and I ended up using the bedroom set (gave away the mattresses... I have a thing about that) the rest of it ended up stashed and I haven't thought of it till about 2 weeks ago. I ended up with:

• 3 kitchen chairs - paint covered, icky
• 1 picture frame (19x23) beat-up stained wood
• bedroom set (2 dressers, mirror, beat-up nightstand)
• filing cabinet
• 2 large dresser mirrors
• organ bench

 The bedroom set we used right away, that was in the best shape. The best of the 3 chairs (dark wood stained, no cushion) we've been using as my desk chair. Everything else got stuffed in either the attic or the girl's closet. So, 2 weeks ago I ventured into my attic,armed with nothing but a flashlight and a whip and pulled down the chairs that I promptly  named Thing 1 and Thing 2. They are very similar to my kitchen chairs so when I got the urge to paint them I decided to guinea pig on Things 1&2. (They came out gorgeous!! But that's another post).

Since pulling all my goodies out of the attic and various other hidey holes it has all been piled in the corner of my middle room. Picture if you will all my sewing/candle making/painting/beading paraphernalia in one scary pile and  it has been driving me CRAZY. Out of the blue I remembered the filing cabinet in the girl's closet and I rejoiced!  In the course of getting the filing cabinet I came across the frame and the mirrors so that turned into getting some of my stuff organized (1 filing cabinet is not enough) and painting the frame black and figuring out where I'm hanging the mirror!

I have been going crazy at http://www.blockposters.com/ and do not have the money to buy as many frames as I now need. Luckily the frame is the perfect size for one of the pictures I printed for the kitchen. So I slapped some black paint on her and here she is:

The picture was lovingly snagged from Dianne Sylvan's Deviant Art. Not only one of my favorite authors but one of my favorite artists!!

I'm thinking the mirror is going to end up in the bathroom, so that'll end up painted blue. I'm thinking of making up a vanity thing for the bathroom and I think that mirror would be perfect.

I am dead sexy in my jammies!! And no, I do not have enough pictures on my fridge!

Trust me, it will end up in my B&A eventually. Maybe I'll even dress up for that picture!

Till then...

B & A #1

Here's the monster that started my furniture painting craze:

Bunk bed ladder scavenged from my Mother's basement.

I was blog-jumping and found this at Apartment Therapy. Since my kitchen is just a tad larger than a bread box and cabinet space is not very accommodating I thought I'd try it.  I wasn't comfortable with hanging it from the ceiling so...

There it is, all shiny and perty, hanging from the door to the basement. Instead of the traditional chain, I braided some hemp string and hung her up. I still haven't gotten to the store to get s-hooks so for right now she's just a very large, very perty towel rack:

No, it's not a Halloween thing, my "theme" is black cats & kitchen witches.

I have absolutely no intention of ever hanging this from the ceiling, so I'm debating on whether or not to get screw in hooks or stick with s-hooks. I flip-flop on this atleast 3 times a day. Whenever I make up my mind I'll get the hooks and finish the project. At this rate, I'll be able to pay for them with my social security check!

The black on the ladder looked so nice and apparently was contagious, it spread to 6 kitchen chairs (complete with recovered seats), 2 shelves, an organ bench (which now resides in my entranceway) and quite possibly will continue to spread to every single piece of  wooden furniture in my apartment. Stencils will follow, I guarantee it. My guinea pig on that will be the trunk in my bedroom.

That'll find it's way to a Before and After sooner or later.

Till then...

Lotus Stencil

I can never find any stencils I really like, and since I can barely draw realistic stick figures, I had to do something about it. I started out easy, not alot of detail, I am (insert impending doom music) working with sharp poky things here. I found a lotus here. (I love this website. I've found at least 42 tattoos that I must get), cut it out of my blank stencil and wound up with this:

I tried it out on some scrap wood, and then did this:

I've had the candy box propped up on a small shelf I have in my room:

Closeup:

Can you tell I'm a pyro? The "wineglass" tea-light holders are from the Dollar Tree(!!!)

I want to paint my bedroom furniture black and stencil this lotus on with a dark blue so it's rather muted. I kinda stole that idea from another blog (Pushing Furniture, the blog responsible for sending me on this home improvement fugue state LOL) I'm going to stagger/alternate that lotus and this stencil:

snagged from google image search.

Since I've stashed the headboard in the attic (which D has not noticed, we're going on day 3, any bets on how long it takes for him to notice?) that leaves 3 dressers, 2 nightstands, 1 shelf and the hand-me-down prefab trunk/box/thingie. That project is a few weekends away.

Till then...