show-and-tell projects

Months ago we picked up a couple of pieces of real cheap furniture to use for Ginny's room. Dressers are few and far between out here in my small, University student packed, little Montana town. I'd been looking for a low and long dresser so it could double as a changing table. When I walked in to a small little rummage sale my UV housing was having, I snatched it up as fast as I could at $10. It was big and in semi-good condition. It was ugly as heck, smelled a bit like smoke and had burn marks all over it. It was perfect! Everyone thought I was crazy when I snatched it up so fast and excited. Guess they'd never tried to find a used dresser in this town!

It sat and sat until I finally found time to paint it, inside my tiny little 3rd bedroom. I didn't want to do much sanding, but I really needed to get rid of the smoke smell, so I used some really good, smoke blocking primer and primed the heck out of the inside and out. Then I painted it black, because I'm still on my black furniture kick. I think black furniture looks good with every season, and makes anything else look nice and well put together! The most expensive part was spending $13 on these handles at Lowes. I wouldn't have even spent that much on handles, but the holes in the drawers were in really weird spots for a standard drawer pull, and I wasn't in the mood to patch up and re-drill holes. Overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out, and it gave me so much more storage space to hold all of Ginny's adorable little things!

My second item of furniture is the crib. We were driving down the road and Dirk thought he saw a dresser among a big pile of furniture with a "FREE" sign. We made a quick U-turn and I went and found a crib in beautiful condition that seemed very sturdy and still had all the hardware. We shoved Hayden's car seat over as far as it would go, put down the back seats and put it in the back of our car. I used about 5 1/2 cans of black spray paint, and very carefully painted it. When I start spray painting something, I always wonder what I got myself in to, because spray paint looks terrible and cheap when you first get started. But if you keep going and are patient with your layering, spray paint can really turn out great! Even my opinionated little brother (who thought I was ridiculous for even trying) was very impressed! I love how it turned out. Looks like it was factory painted. While looking up the manual online to make sure I correctly put the crib together, I discovered it is a high-end designer crib that originally retails for around $500-600! And I found it on the side of the road for free :)
I stored all kinds of junk under the crib and I was tired of looking at it, so I quickly sewed up this crib skirt the other day. I hope to some day get around to putting some cute stitched embellishments on it, but for now it's doing a good job hiding my junk!

I don't think I ever posted a picture of the quilt I spend forever making! It really wouldn't have taken so long if I didn't get confined to my bed with the flu for a week in the middle of working on it. I still plan to have some cute stitching done with a long-arm quilter, around the brown border, but for now it will do. There's a couple things I'd change if I did it again, but over all, I love it and am so proud of it! I love that it's girly, yet not over-the-top.
Some more random furniture re-do's... I picked up this table, new-in-box from Goodwill for $3. It was an overstock item from the dorm room collections from Target, and had a hideous design on the top. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it at the time, but decided it was the perfect victim for my first try at Mod-Podge-ing furniture! I'd seen this done a bit around blogland, but never had a piece of furniture I was brave enough to try it on. I used one of my favorite fabric patterns from Alexander Henry, and used a lot of Mod-Podge to glue it on, then a lot more over the top to seal it, and make it very hard and furniture-like. I love the result. I was tempted to paint the base black, but that's a bit too much effort for me right now! The table is actually quite sturdy and has a very heavy base, and is the perfect size for a small corner... I wish I would have picked up a few more while they were available!

And my last little show-and-tell project is this chair. I found it in a dumpster pile this summer while we were out on a long walk, and I dragged it all the way home! It was in perfect stable condition, just ugly, covered in crayon, and the cushion had been peed on. I tossed the cushion right away and there the ugly thing sat for months. While I was waiting for my dresser paint to dry, I decided to give it a coat of it's own. I stapled on about 3 times as much padding as a chair like this would normally have (hey, I'm hurting these days!), and then spent about 3 hours trying to decide which piece of my fabric stash was going to get used for the seat. I decided to cut up a dress I had made 5 years ago for my sister's wedding and haven't worn since. This was the first cute pattern fabric I've ever bought and I've loved it ever since. I think it's what helped start my fabric collection!


So there's a few things that have been keeping me busy. I will hopefully have some more projects to share in the near future... hopefully before Ginny comes!