AHHH I can't think of what to title this one
I was going to change that title, but I really couldn't think of anything and it gives you a look a what I'm really like. Most of my documents are titled with long abstract names that I like to call joke titles. For my personal files I usually keep them like that, but the ones I have to turn in for school or something (had to turn in for school. Past tense. I'm not in school anymore) I change (changed) to something more more academically correct.
Once though, it was late and I was rushing to finish an assignment (yes, I procrastinated on writing it until the last minute). Usually, I never read what I've written, I don't like rereading my writing because then I inevitably end up rewriting and changing things and it takes a long time and I've already written what I've written so why rewrite it (that's terrible advice no one follow that). Anyhow, I finished what I was writing, saved my document, and hit submit failing to realize I had submitted my work with my joke title (I don't remember what it was or what the assignment was for but it was a rather degrading title to the world of academia and particularly the class I was taking). Luckily, my prof was super chill with the whole situation and let me resubmit the assignment with the actual academic title that I meant to title it with.
The moral of the story is, it's alright (or ‘all right’ an English teacher got on me about that one time) to come up with wacky titles for things but just don't turn them in that way.
Which in this case is exactly what I'm doing.
So it seems there's no moral here at all.
Right. Now the main content of this post, and since there's no title you've got no idea what's to come.
Supplies:
An item of furniture that needs redid (In this case I have a laminate filing cabinet)
Side note: does anyone else have trouble spelling the word cabinet? For some reason it just confuses me so much. There's so many more sounds in there than there are letters and it doesn't make sense how it's pronounced at all. End side note
This amazing Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Water Based Primer For All Surfaces (seriously when they say all, they mean all. It will not come off my skin. Nail polish, pish I use all surface primer while I'm painting and my nails have never looked better. I'll never have to go to the salon again)
someone hire me as an advertiser thanks, bye
Paint (depending on how big the piece is you can get away with a sample can from the paint store)
A foam brush
A roller brush
Some beads and twine (optional; I just didn't like the fact that the handles on the drawers were cheap and plastic so I deemed them in need of replacement. Alternately, you could just spray paint the originals a new color)
A tool box for removing (and then rescrewing) screws (also optional depending on what the furniture piece being painted is)
I didn't get a picture of all my supplies before I started the whole ordeal (I really should fire my camera guy). But here we've got the shot of the filing cabinet (ehem we'll call it a nightstand from now on) in it's original state...
The full size image to appreciate it in all it's awfulness. Ok, look away and we'll transform it into something beautiful, or at least less horrendous.
To start off, decide exactly how much of the piece you want to redo. I could easily have taken this whole thing apart so that I just had boards to paint and thus make the whole thing look super professional and intentional. However, I didn't really care to do that so I just took the bottom drawer out, top door off, removed the handles and other hardware (screws, magnetic clippy things, and anything else I didn't want covered in paint).
Unless you feel that your grass needs recoloring, I would also suggest laying some cardboard, plastic, an old sheet, or all your school papers out underneath to catch the paint. Place everything on your desired grass protection medium. I was only able to find two boxes in our recycling bin, which I mutilated and laid out like so.
I used simple green to clean all the dust off the individual pieces so that the primer could go on a smooth surface. Turns out that wasn't super necessary as I did this whole project outside and stuff kept blowing into my paint job...
I've never spray painted anything before but the primer (I bought the spray on kind because it was less expensive than the big bucket and I didn't need a ton) made me feel like a professional graffiti artist. I highly recommend it as it was a lot of fun and not illegal.
Personally, I think it looks a lot better already. I could have left it just like that and been happy (just kidding). It was fairly windy and I think I got almost as much primer on me as I did on the nightstand. It also didn't go on super evenly. There were nice white spots and then some thin ones where the "wood" color was vaguely visible. It looked like a cloud.
Basically, none of that matters because it's all going to be covered in paint anyway
I didn't bother painting inside the bottom hole as no one is going to see the inside of that anyway. I also didn't paint inside the drawer mainly because I just didn't want to. The top door had two sides and I did make sure to get both as well as all the edges.
That had to dry for a mere half hour before I could apply the paint but with the wind I think it only took like five minutes.
Now the paint...
I ventured into ACE Hardware to buy all (or so I thought) of the stuff I needed for this a few days before starting the project. I picked out my paint color in much the same way as I pick out what I'm going to eat at a restaurant. I had a few of those cool paint swatch things that they have lined up on a wall in the store, that I couldn't decide between. Then I just waited for someone to ask me if I needed help with paint and I said "yes" and made a snap decision on the color I wanted. The lady at the counter, however, didn't give me the paint swatch back with the color I had chosen (she didn't even put a dab of paint on the top of the can) so by the time I got home I had forgotten what color I'd chosen.
It felt like Christmas when I opened that paint can (make sure you have a can opener. Not a can opener can opener, but one of those paint can opener things that look like a mini hay hook). The color that greeted me was, as per usual, not the color I remembered buying, but paint always looks different in the can than it does once it's on the project.
It's a seafoam greenish color. I don't remember what it was even called because she didn't give me the color sample back
Ok, these are the supplies I used (minus the roller brush which seems to never show up in any of these pictures. Those pictures must have been lost in the transition or something... It's not like they never got taken because what cameraman wouldn't get those). I would highly recommend a larger foam brush as mine was a hair on the tiny side. However, it did work really well for the edges and little details.
(There's that roller brush. Honestly, I sometimes surprise myself with what I have and haven’t taken pictures of when I go through all the editing) I poured out some of the paint into a paint tray and THiS HapPEnEd!!! I guess that's why we stir paint before using it
It didn't change the color too much so I guess it's not that important after all
Slather the whole piece in paint. I ended up using two coats and since I was impatient I don't think I let the first one dry quite long enough before applying the second coat. But it was windy and stuff was drying pretty quickly and I was afraid it would rain so I was rushing a little bit.
There was some damage at the bottom of the nightstand. Some of the laminate covering had chipped off the composite wood underneath and there were a few cracks. I fixed these the same way my previous landlady and her friends fixed the nail holes tacks, and other blemishes on my bedroom wall; just slap a ton of paint on in hopes that it'll all look the same at the end. Of course, I wasn't expecting this to turn out the same as everything else but the damaged part would be nestled cozily in my carpet so no one will ever see the discrepancies in the paint job (unlike they would show up on a wall). Actually, I can see why they did it. It's just fun to put a lot of paint on things, and it was a basement, so I suppose I should forgive them for that.
*Hang on a second while I climb out on my roof to shout "I forgive you" in the direction of my old apartment... I doubt they heard that but it feels good to get that off my chest.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, back to the project.
Here in Coeur d'Alene we've had these swarms of gnats swarming (they don't swarm really, they just lazily float/fly around in giant clouds). Anyhow, these gosh darned bugs kept landing on my fresh paint aNd GetTiNg sTucK. Now there's nothing worse than having a project ruined by GNATS. I didn't mind so much on the primer layer (it was going to be covered by paint), or the first coat (I would just put more paint on top of that), but the final coat. See the issue here was the ones that got stuck had to be wiped off when the paint was dry, and when you wiped them off they'd get squished, and when they got squished they left a trail of guts and whatever else gnats are made of, and that would leave a yellow stain on the project. I'm sure you see the problem.
And that was only two of them... Also if you look closely at the bottom you can see some of the damage I mentioned earlier.
Maybe gnats have yellow blood... What are your thoughts on this.
P.S. Please don't report me, these bugs were literally committing suicide by flying into wet paint. It was not my fault they died.
Anyhow, I was worried it was going to rains so as soon as everything was dry enough to touch I moved it into my garage to finish drying. It was at this point that I remembered the door had two sides. I didn't want to wash all the brushes and stuff just to have to re-dirty them for that little piece (and I'd already put the cardboard back in the recycling and cleaned everything else up). This being the case, I very quickly swipped some paint on it (definitely not waiting long enough between coats one and two).
It worked out slightly perfect though, so I took that as a good sign to never change my way of painting
I think it's very important to put a signature on every work of art you create. While this isn't necessarily a work of art, per say, I still felt the need to autograph it. Plus whoever ends up getting this in years will have a nice surprise when they repaint it.
At this point if you don't look something like this I'd say you're doing this project thing wrong. Go try again.
A utility sink is the preferred way of cleaning paint out of brushes but if you don't have access to that a downstairs bathroom sink works just as well.
This post is getting really long and complicated and if you're still here, bless your heart. If I lost you way back there due to extreme boredom, I don't hold that against you.
For the handles I had this fantastic idea to use some thick twine and beads threaded on with knots and stuff and it would be beautiful. With head high and heart light I set out to the thrift stores to locate these supplies which I didn't think would be too hard to come by.
Oh and on my way out the door I saw this in the front yard and all I could think is "Guys come quick, someone murdered a box in my front yard."
It’s spooky season and everyone else in the neighborhood is putting up Halloween decorations and I just felt like our house was being left out. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else or if I'm suffering from severe sleep deprivation, but I think it's hilarious
Get it? It's like one of those outlines they do of dead people in murder movies and TV shows. Only it looks like a box so it's a murdered box. Could you imagine police spray painting a body to leave the outline of it on the street (that's not what they do, but that's what I thought of).
Back on track though.
If, like me, you didn't get your paint sample back you can take your own into the store and not look crazy doing it. Be sure it's so tiny only you can see it.
NO thrift stores had what I wanted, so I broke down and went to the death trap that is Michaels (I love and hate that store. I love it because they have everything, but I hate it because they have everything I never even knew I needed), only THEY DIDN'T HAVE WHAT I WANTED THERE EITHER. I was really annoyed guys. I wanted to finish this thing in a day because I had to work tomorrow and if I take more than a day on a project I lose interest in it. Also I wanted to take finished pictures of it outside and it wasn't supposed to be sunny the rest of the week.
Anyhow, I spent a really long time in the bead isle trying to find beads with holes that weren't microscopic. I nearly gave up but then remembered I wanted to have this done today.
This is what I ended up with a whole nine dollars later…
Then the holes weren't big enough and it took a long time to get the cord worked through the beads. I used a combination of hot gluing the end into a tip and then trimming that so I could yank it through. Again, that pesky cameraman didn't get any pictures of that. Honestly, it was a bit of a mess. Once I got that working I just threaded all the beads on in the order I wanted them to be in for both handles.
A literal hour later I finally managed this masterpiece.
At the back I just tied knots and hot glued the ends down to keep them from fraying.
And with that, my work was done. Almost.
All that's left to do is to put back everything you took off in the beginning. Be sure and pay attention as you take the stuff off so you can put it back exactly how it was. Otherwise it doesn't work and you have to retry again and again until everything lines up how it's supposed to.
Aaaaaannnnnndddd...
Just like that it's all done and you've got a fantastic nightstand!!!
Thanks for making it this far with me. <3
