Let the Rennovations BEGIN

(Let me just preface this by saying I'm NOT crafty. My scrapbook looks like a 12 year old did it. I cut corners. I don't often take the time to do things right. I spill. I make a mess. No reason to put any credence in what I have to say about home renovation. You may just silently laugh to yourself if you wish--I'll never know.)

When you're home all day you start to notice all the things wrong with your house. This leads to A LOT of cleaning.

But when that's done you start to think constantly about how you can make your home a better place. A cooler place. The "updates" you could make if funds were endless. Of course they're not so you start to brainstorm about what you could do on a shoestring...and thanks to HGTV, the internet, and lowes and home depot there are tons of ideas out there.

This has happened to me. Lots of plans in my head. Painting our bedroom blue and putting up crown molding. Re-covering a nasty bedroom chair. Getting a sewing machine and making a new duvet cover. Stripes in the bathroom in two shades of brown. Painting baseboards. New cabinet hardware in the kitchen. New light fixtures that aren't brass. And the list goes on and on and ON....

One of my first obsessions was with antiquing our kitchen cabinets. According to the internets this involves painting a surface white and then applying a coat of tinted glaze on top--then you wipe the glaze off to make it all worn and weathered and what not--cool right?? I wanted to try the technique out before begging my mom to paint her cabinets (did I mention we're renters) so I tried it out on a side table we had lying around (luckily we have tons of furniture in our house that has been inherited over the years---who knows where it came from but no one really cares if you mess it up).

I'm pretty excited about how the table turned out

The brush strokes on the top are FAR from perfect but that's kind of what I like about it...

Cory though my table was pretty amazing as well but maybe not the best for the kitchen. I decided to forgo the cabinet idea for awhile and redo an old dresser the same way. I'm thinking we can put this antiquey white furniture in our guest room and fix up the paint and color scheme to match--it'll be awesome.

How to make over a dresser in antique white, by Amber:

1. Find a dresser in a gross color that no one will care about if you ruin. Salmon--color of the year 1995-perfect!!!!


2. Get yourself some stripper (SOME stripper, not A stripper silly).

3. Take the dresser downstairs to the garage during naptime. Do this quietly or you'll regret it.
4. Try to take the hardware off. If some of them don't come off given that you're not too adept with the screwdriver, it's all good, that can be dealt with later. (see picture above)
5. The directions say you need to wear gloves while stripping stuff--you have no gloves..oh well, just wash your hands before your skin starts dissolving if you spill, ok?
6. Before you start, make sure you are appropriately dressed for this kind of work--probably not a good idea to be wearing your nicest jeans when dealing with paint and chemicals.... oops...


7. After a battle with the child proof cap pour some stripper in a metal tray


8. Take a brush and paint the dresser with the stripper. After a few minutes the paint will start to get all bubbly and stuff.

9. Then you simply scrape the old paint off--easy right??

Probably--but for me, I've done this several times and there is still a lot of paint on there--I guess waiting a few hours because you're child woke up before you finish scraping stuff off is not the best idea. Plus I may need to get some more stripper, but it's a work in progress...TO BE CONTINUED