Top Decoration

I am so happy to be able to say that this project is complete!

But, if I said that the painting portion was "easy", I would be lying.

Nothing easy or quick about it, but in the end, totally and completely worth it.


Let's go back to the beginning and remember where this project started...

In my never ending desire for change, I needed to find an answer for where I could use the top of my hutch that previously sat in my kitchen. After owning it for 10 years, I decided that I wanted to use the base as a stand-alone sideboard between our family room and kitchen.

The answer came in the form of creating an armoire in Ellison's room, using her existing dresser as the base and placing the top of my hutch on her dresser.

The look of the two pieces together certainly wasn't pretty, but I couldn't beat the functionality of the overall piece...

Originally, the hutch came with glass doors. Perfect for displaying all of our stemware and dishes in our kitchen, but not so pretty when I turned it into my "linen closet"...

I'm sure that eventually this will hold more of Ellison's ever growing wardrobe, but for now, all of the kids' clean bedding is in one out of the way and easy to store space. I just needed a way to conceal it all from view...

The glass in the doors was held in place by these...

and I noticed that the thickness of the glass seemed pretty close to the thickness of beaded board. Lucky for me, we had just enough beaded board (left over from a previous project out in the garage) to cut and place in each door of the hutch, and insert into the door of the existing dresser.

Seriously - I love it when that happens!

We measured and cut the beaded board using the glass as our template...

and then put each panel into place.

This part was easy!

Perfect!

Everything tucked away behind closed doors.



On to the painting...

I put two coats of primer on the hutch and one coat on the dresser. I figured that the closer the two pieces were to having the same color of base coat, the easier it would be to paint the whole piece overall. It was definitely the right choice. I let the primer coats dry overnight before moving onto painting.

The first coat of paint took 3 solid hours to put on. There are so many nooks and crannies, angles and grooves that it just made for a long process. There was no way around it.

The second coat took two hours and I was hoping (*hoping-hoping*) that I wouldn't have to do a third.

Will and I took a good, hard look at it after the second coat had dried and were pleased with the results!

Out of two old pieces of furniture, we now have one brand new piece of furniture...

We removed the original hardware from the hutch doors and added the same knobs that were on the dresser. We sprayed all of the knobs and pulls with a few coats of "Candy Pink" spray paint and now this "new" piece of furniture feels right at home in our little girl's room...

I love the idea of Ellison having a vanity in her bedroom. A spot where she can look in the mirror, brush her hair, put in her clips and bows and be a girly-girl. I think the space between the hutch and the dresser makes for a perfect vanity...

We are so happy that:

1. The project was a success.
(We both had our fair share of doubt)

2. We were able to save a piece that was no longer usable for us in the way that it had been intended, and instead of getting rid of it, fashioned it into something new that we will be able to use for many years to come.

Like I said, it was a lot of work in the painting department, but absolutely worth it.

Sometimes thinking outside of the box can result in some of your best project ideas!


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P.S. I am posting this at:

Between Naps On The Porch, Motivate Me Monday,
Just Something I Whipped Up, DIY Day,
Get Your Craft On, Trash To Treasure, Tip Me Tuesday, Tackle It Tuesday,
Talented Tuesday, DIY Project Parade, "Power Of Paint" Party,
"Show Me The Progress" Party, "Be Inspired" Link Party,
Transformation Thursday, Thrifty Thursday,
100 Ideas Under $100, Get Your Craft On Thursday,
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Furniture Feature Friday, Frugalicious Friday, Show And Tell,
Creative Cats, Inspired Rooms, Saturday Nite Special,
Shop The House Sunday,

Definition:

Wardrobe - (noun) - A tall piece of furniture that provides storage space for clothes; has a door and rails or hooks for hanging clothes.

Or if we were French, we would call it an armoire.

Either way, I'm tired of calling this new-to-me piece of furniture
"Ellison's dresser-hutch thing".

So let's go with armoire.


Yesterday wasn't quite as productive as I had hoped. Painting furniture with a three year old running around is stressful (at best). Luckily, Ellison got to go play with some of her little girlfriend's for a few hours (Thank You, Kelly!) and I was able to get on one good, solid coat of paint. So, progress is slow and steady. But even though it took way longer than I had hoped it would, I think it's looking great...

Today I'll put on the second coat of paint and hope (with fingers crossed tightly) that it will be good enough not to require a third coat. We'll see.

That's just my impatience talking. I cannot wait to get the knobs back on it and call the project complete!


Thanks for all of your encouragement and kind words from yesterday's post!

Like I've said before...

you guys are the best cheerleader's!

This is day 2 of my current project, and convincing Will that it would actually be successful in the end took a whole lot of smooth talking.

The idea came to me during the holidays last year. I wanted the hutch in my kitchen to be moved because it made for a slightly cramped feeling in our eat-in-kitchen, but there isn't another spot that we could have put it in our home.

So my crazy idea was born out of my desire for change, and Will's absolute refusal to not have to store any furniture out in his shop.

Thanks to my ability to think outside of the box, I got two new pieces of furniture from two old pieces of furniture.

The base of our hutch is now sitting in our family room right next to our kitchen, acting as a buffet and I love it! Can't wait to get some fresh paint on it!

The top of my hutch is now in...


Ellison's room.


Really!

And it looks like this...

Stay with me on this one. I know it doesn't look great right now, but hang on...

Ellison's dresser is the kind that acted as our changing table when she was a baby, but those days are now long gone. That extra drawer on top caused a bit of trouble in making this idea work, but we came up with a solution to keep the top of the hutch supported so that it could sit on top of her dresser. Will built an "L" shaped support to fit directly under the hutch so that once painted, it would visually be a smooth transition from one piece of furniture to the next.


The doors on top used to have glass in them, but we replaced that with left over beaded board that came from a previous project. I am storing all of the kids' bed linens up there, so having closed off doors is a must...

I love my hutch and getting rid of it is something that I'm not ready to do. Not only is it a great, solid piece of furniture, but it was one of the first pieces that Will and I bought after we got married. It has sentimental value to me. Luckily, I still think it's just as pretty as it was the day we bought it. But it has moved from house to house, through four different moves, and in certain areas it definitely shows it. A good coat of paint will have it looking brand new...

By day's end yesterday I had put two coats of primer on the top to even out the colors...

Will and I are heading to Home Depot as soon as I hit "publish" on this post and I'll bring home a gallon of fresh, crisp, white paint. Once the painting is done I'm going to give it a surprise pop of color to help further tie the two pieces of furniture together, and reinforce the girly-girl feeling of Ellison's room.


Don't tell Will, but I had my own secret doubts about this project. I so badly wanted it to work, but I wasn't certain that it would. The last thing I wanted to happen was to end the project with a massive piece of furniture that clearly looked like a crazy idea gone bad.

But I have to say...I think it's going to work!

Even with just the primer on we can already see what it's going to look like in the end.

I'll keep you updated on the progress.


And keep your fingers crossed for me that,

in the end, it all turns out just like I hoped!

I have had a lot of questions about how I painted the scallops in Ellison's bedroom, so I decided to do a tutorial.

Two things you should know first:

1. I do not at all claim that this is the easiest way of going about painting scallops!
This is just my way!
If any of you have an easier, more efficient system, by all means...share your knowledge!

2. I apologize in advance for the pictures of my process. They were taken at night under terrible lighting, but this is all I've got!
The reason they were taken at night is because that is when I do my painting. Yep - that's my secret! With three small kids running around, it is pretty much impossible to get any kind of painting done during the day, so once everyone is tucked soundly in their beds, that's when my paint brushes come out!
In the case of Ellison's bedroom, I had her in her pack-n-play in my bedroom so that I could get her room done!

Whatever works, right?

Now that my disclaimer is out of the way, onto the how-to...

You will need:

a level (a long one),

a pencil (or something to mark on your walls),

a saucer (or a round object that fits the size that you want your scallops to be),

and painters tape

First, I used the painter's tape to create a center line on the saucer. The top edge of the tape divides the saucer exactly in half. This is important because...

...the points where the tape wraps around the back are the marks that you will use to line up your scallops. If you haven't created perfect half-circles your scallops will look "off".

...and here...

Once I had traced my saucer all the way around the room, I grabbed my paintbrush and filled them in with the pink...

And then...did it again.
It needed two coats...

It was A LOT of work, but when it comes to kids rooms, I'm more of a "Go big, or go home!" kind of person, so doing this was completely worth it to me!

Once they were done I felt like they were good, but....missing something.

So each scallop got a polka-dot above each point...

I did the polka-dots by using one of these...

...in the absolute smallest size I could find. I wanted the dots to be dainty and petite.

A little helpful tip about these pouncers:

Swirl. Don't dab! And make sure that you swirl a complete circle.

Trust me on this one!
It will save you the frustration and agony of having to wipe fresh dots off your walls for re-do's!

I love how the scallops and polka-dots turned out!


So much, in fact, that many months later I decided to add more...

I needed something to draw your eyes up when you walked into the room...

I love polka-dots. She loves polka-dots!

It was a natural choice!

I did these dots using a sponge pouncer (or whatever they are really called) as well, but in a much larger diameter. And the same goes for these...make sure to do a full swirl! That's the secret to achieving a perfect circle!

And that's it!

If I left something out, let me know! I would be happy to answer any questions!

Oh - and if anyone goes for it (a couple of you have already told me you're ready to do it right now), come back and let me know! I would love to see your pictures!

Good luck and happy painting!





P.S. The colors in her room are by Behr.
The pink is called Primrose Bouquet #PPL-43
The green is called Palm Breeze #420E-2