Milk Paint Furniture Project

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My neighbors were selling a bedroom set this summer that I absolutely fell in love with!  The finish wasn't my personal preference but the overall style of the headboard and footboard were right up my ally.  The set was for a queen bed but since we don't have a queen size bed in our house, I painted this set for someone else.

There were these strange wood balls on the top of the headboard and footboard - those would definitely be coming off :)

It was great that all of these pieces of molding had been layered to give the headboard and footboard a great profile.

 And the absolute best part was that the bed had already been distressed.  The idea of painting this bed really got my blood pumping because I knew glaze would pick up all of these little distressed marks and the vertical planks of the headboard and footboard and really make them pop.

 Here's the footboard...

 And a matching dresser with one drawer and a shelf inside the double doors.

The first step was to remove the balls.  Brent used a pipe wrench to twist them and loosen them up.

 In their place, he made simple caps and pinned them with air gun.

 I was going to use General Finishes Milk Paint for this project, which means you don't need to sand your finish before applying the paint.  The old finish had such a thick. shiny finish that I chose to sand the set before applying the milk paint.  I just didn't want to take any chances with chipping paint. This step was likely unnecessary but it gave me a little extra insurance.

I was really conflicted at this stage because the headboard was so beautiful in it's natural wood state.  A coat of walnut stain would have been gorgeous but I could also see it as the antique white that my brain was envisioning.

 After sanding, I wiped the piece with denatured alcohol to prepare it for paint.

 This is the General Finishes Antique White Milk Paint that I used.  Sometimes I only put one coat of paint on, depending on what I want the finished project to look like.  For this piece I wanted a nice solid color to start with before glazing so I did two coats of the milk paint.

After the two coats of milk paint, I began the glazing process.  I couldn't take any pictures because I was home alone and my hands get really dirty while glazing so I didn't want to be fumbling around with my camera.  Basically, I diluted my glaze slightly with water to give me a little more drying time as this was a large piece to glaze.  I worked in sections, for example, I would do one side of each leg, then I would do three vertical sections of the face of the headboard/footboard.  Working in smaller sections allows you to better control the finished project because you don't have to work as quickly.

In the photo below, the footboard has been glazed in front.  The headboard behind it only has the two coats of milk paint.  You can see how the glaze makes the vertical lines pop out and you notice the small molding details a bit better with the glaze.

 After glazing, I applied a few coats of a protective polyurethane to prevent chipping and it gives the piece a nice gloss.

 Here is the finished bed, including side rails.

 And here's the small matching side table.

Kids Bedroom Makeover Part 3 - Toy Storage and Curtains

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Spending money isn't my favorite pastime but there is one thing I'm always willing to buy - curtains!  For Emma and Owen's room, I thought I wanted white wood blinds but quickly realized our windows aren't deep enough for standard 2" blinds.  Plus, I was a little worried about the kids yanking on the strings to make them go up or down.  It feels like we are constantly opening and closing curtains in that room for privacy and sunlight so the idea of messing around with blinds wasn't appealing.  So I switched gears towards curtains - something soft with a subtle pattern.

And this is where Target comes in for the win - AGAIN.  I saw these Nate Berkus curtains and instantly knew they were perfect.  Although, I had to order them online so I crossed my fingers that the color would look good with the wall color we had just painted, Revere Pewter.  As a bonus, they were buy 3 get one free so I paid about $17/curtain, which is pretty reasonable.  My heart thudded a bit as I opened the shipment a few days later - but alas, they were a perfect match!

They aren't exactly light blocking curtains, but if they are pulled shut during the day and all of the lights are turned off in the room, it's still dark enough that Owen can get his nap in.

With the curtain selection out of the way, we turned our heads towards the ever growing pile of toys. Now most of the toys are in the kids' old bedroom turned playroom, but I was looking at all of that wasted space under the bunkbeds and knew we could utilize it for storage.

Brent had some old kitchen drawer boxes in his workshop calling my name.  Yeah, I know...who has this kind of stuff just laying around?  We do.  Because you can always figure out a way to re-purpose something so it doesn't end up in a landfill.  Add a set of wheels and we've got rolling toy boxes! And these drawers were pre-finished on the insides so we didn't even have to apply laquer to the insides since that was already done!

Brent added some blocking to the undersides of the drawers and attached the wheels.

At this point, I knew we weren't quite done.  I didn't want the toy boxes to look like boring old flat boxes under the bed, so I asked Brent to cover the boxes with some hardwood flooring out of the attic of our shop.  A friend of ours recently put in new flooring in her home and she let us take the old hardwood flooring that was coming out.  There wasn't enough of it to actually use it as floor in our house but this is the perfect kind of material for smaller projects.

I didn't take any photos of the actual process of attaching the flooring to the boxes, Brent just used a pin nailer to attach the flooring to the box from the inside so there wouldn't be any nail holes visible from the outside.  He mitered the corners and I filled the tiny gaps with wood filler and lightly sanded before priming and painting.

I was trying to pick a shade of green as close to this coffee mug as possible so I chose the shade on the right.  After they were painted, I realized I probably should have chose the one of the left.  It is a liiitttllle bit more green and less yellow.  The rug I ordered with some green in will be here in a few days so I may end up re-painting the toy boxes if the whole rug situation works out.  I'm just feeling like the green I chose is a tiny bit off. 

I glazed the boxes after painting them to pick up all of the horizontal lines.

 The little knobs came off of these old coat hooks we used to have in Emma's bedroom.

 Emma's dolls and their accessories fit great inside of the boxes!

 

So here's how the room is looking at this point.  Lots more projects coming down pipeline in the next few weeks!