Hope all of you Mom's out there had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday! It was my first with Kalia, which of course made a special day even more special. Kalia helped her Daddy and her furry brother cook and clean for me yesterday and gave me a nice break!
We took a nice bike ride down to our Y and played on their play ground too. Kalia makes it okay for me to be a little kid at those places and not look like a complete weirdo anymore!
It was a great and special day. Motherhood is the most amazing adventure, and I wouldn't change anything for the world. Okay, enough mushiness, onto the project part of the post!
My parents gave me this old beat up trunk when I was pregnant with Kalia :
Apparently they thought that I had a ton of free time on my hands between growing a baby and literally building Kalia's nursery, so they thought they'd give me something to do. Actually, my Dad made a comment about knowing I had zero free time to work on it, but he thought I'd like it anyways. He was right. But it needed a lot of work!
First up, we took off that gross top. I'm pretty sure that thing has been on there for at least 20 years, and with us kids, it had seen much better days!
Then because the laminate top layer was chipping, we attempted to peel / scrape it off with a paint scrapper.
We did as best we could with that, and eventually just sanded it down until it was smooth. The problem with what was left was that it was glued on, so we left ding marks on it where we tried to get it off. I decided we weren't stripping the whole thing at that point, and just went the sanding method. Whatever came off easily, we scraped off, and if it was stuck, it just got sanded down.
When we were done, we were left with this :
I wood filled and did a white stain on one side to test it out. I knew this was a bit brighter than we really wanted, so I went back and added a colored stain on top of the white stain. I believe this is called pickeling, but I'm not positive.
We still had to do something about that top too. We took batting, folded it over itself to give it more cushion, and stapled it onto the top.
And then went around and stapled the fabric on, folding the corners like you would a present.
After it was all said and done, here's the trunk in its new home, our bedroom.
A few detail shots :
And one last one of my cutie showing her approval while talking on the phone to her Daddy. She's too young for a cell phone, I know!!
So what do you guys think? Are you a fan of the pickeling effect, or would something a little bit cleaner have suited your style better? For me, I thought I needed to add to the character of the piece by updating it, but not trying to make it look too new. I'll show how this ties in with our Master Bedroom before too long!
Happy Monday!
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We took a nice bike ride down to our Y and played on their play ground too. Kalia makes it okay for me to be a little kid at those places and not look like a complete weirdo anymore!
It was a great and special day. Motherhood is the most amazing adventure, and I wouldn't change anything for the world. Okay, enough mushiness, onto the project part of the post!
My parents gave me this old beat up trunk when I was pregnant with Kalia :
Apparently they thought that I had a ton of free time on my hands between growing a baby and literally building Kalia's nursery, so they thought they'd give me something to do. Actually, my Dad made a comment about knowing I had zero free time to work on it, but he thought I'd like it anyways. He was right. But it needed a lot of work!
First up, we took off that gross top. I'm pretty sure that thing has been on there for at least 20 years, and with us kids, it had seen much better days!
Then because the laminate top layer was chipping, we attempted to peel / scrape it off with a paint scrapper.
We did as best we could with that, and eventually just sanded it down until it was smooth. The problem with what was left was that it was glued on, so we left ding marks on it where we tried to get it off. I decided we weren't stripping the whole thing at that point, and just went the sanding method. Whatever came off easily, we scraped off, and if it was stuck, it just got sanded down.
When we were done, we were left with this :
I wood filled and did a white stain on one side to test it out. I knew this was a bit brighter than we really wanted, so I went back and added a colored stain on top of the white stain. I believe this is called pickeling, but I'm not positive.
We still had to do something about that top too. We took batting, folded it over itself to give it more cushion, and stapled it onto the top.
And then went around and stapled the fabric on, folding the corners like you would a present.
After it was all said and done, here's the trunk in its new home, our bedroom.
A few detail shots :
And one last one of my cutie showing her approval while talking on the phone to her Daddy. She's too young for a cell phone, I know!!
So what do you guys think? Are you a fan of the pickeling effect, or would something a little bit cleaner have suited your style better? For me, I thought I needed to add to the character of the piece by updating it, but not trying to make it look too new. I'll show how this ties in with our Master Bedroom before too long!
Happy Monday!
I'm linking to the parties in my sidebar!
Love it! Very nice :) You have so much energy. . .I hope to get a few projects done once school lets out in 2 weeks. . .I only have to come to your blog for the inspiration!
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