Many Projects

I have been working on so many projects these days. Maybe I'm nesting early? :) The first project was the dresser below. I am terrible at taking before pictures. You'll have to just picture a brown, drab dresser, highly laquered with stickers and a missing handle. I decided on a pale yellow and replaced the hardware with silver ones. I also had to replace drawer

stops on about half of the drawers. It turned out great! Between the paint and the hardware (which is quite pricey, and I picked the least expensive!) it turned out to be a $50 makeover. Not too cheap, but better than buying a brand new dresser, and I enjoyed it. Now we'll have room for the girls clothing and the new baby clothes.

The next project I started on was a complete waste of time so there are no pictures. We have a metal frame bunk bed that is bright blue in the girls room and I wanted to paint it the same color as the dresser BUT with spray paint. Prefilled spray paint cans only come in a BRIGHT yellow. I've never seen a subtle one ever. Sherwin Williams will fill spray paint cans with your paint color of choice, however, they charge $12 per can, plus the cost of the paint. I found this out AFTER I already started stripping the bunk bed. (Which was tedious and odorous and abandoned after a small section took me several hours.) I ended up just buying some blue spray paint to fix my mistake and the end result is that the bunk bed is still blue. :)

My next project went much better. James' family has an old pendulum cradle they used for all the babies in their family. I don't want to put the baby in the same room as the girls right away, so this seemed like a good solution. The way it looked was a different story. As pictured below, it was an ugly brown and had lots of dings and scrapes on it, along with missing wheels. The original plan was to use leftover paint from the dresser, but there wasn't enough of that so I spray painted it white. It turned out great and it was fast and easy. James helped me make new supports for the wheels (we added some blocks to the bottom) because the wood is not

very good quality - it's plywood - and couldn't support wheels on one side because of years of use and the wood had split. I am currently working on a mattress pad and bumper pads. It will be cute. This project was cheaper - about $20 for spray paint and new wheels.

Curtains are expensive. If you get a lining and good quality fabric it really adds up fast! They do look a lot better than blankets over the windows though! I made these for the girls room because they go to bed a lot sooner than the sun and have a hard time if it's too light.

For our wedding, James' mother gave us a beautiful quilt. I decided maybe two months ago to make some pillow shams to match. Janice had plenty of fabric left over so I was able to match it perfectly. They certainly have flaws, but they turned out nice. The only problem is that the quilt is faded and these are bright. Maybe a few washes in the washing machine will tone it down.

This is the last project I've completed - it was the first of them all. The rocking chair came from my Great Aunt Lois who passed away right before James and I were married. I'm not sure who else in my extended family it belonged to, but it really is a pretty chair. I wish I knew how old it was. I didn't want to refinish the stain. I love the worn look and know that I wouldn't be able to recreate that. The seat cover, however, had some holes in it and puffed dust into the air every time you sat in it. I found a yard of upholstery fabric at a discount fabric store in Draper for $3 and began the process of taking apart the old cover. The inside is an old box springs that was in ok shape. The padding had to go. I replaced it with foam from Joanns. After that, I just carefully took the cover apart to use as a pattern for the new cover. There were some setbacks along the way - the foam I bought was thicker than the old padding so I needed to add some length to the cover in the front of the chair. The end result turned out alright and now I'm not worried about bugs or asbestos every time we sit in it. The flash washed out the fabric a bit, it's actually a deeper pink. Sorry if I've bored you with all my projects! I've enjoyed working on them for the most part, with some frustration here and there. :) I have several more, though I think they're all sewing projects, to get done before the babe comes.