Home Archives - Page 10 of 17 - Spoonful of Imagination

Hello Pot

June 3, 2013 By Erica Deuel 6 Comments

What do you think of when you read that title? An earth toned flower pot repainted in a sizzling purple with a greeting for guests as they walk up to my front door? Yes, that’s exactly what I thought too! Glad we are on the same page.

I’ve always thought it was odd that when people come to your front door-they wipe their feet on the normal welcome greeting. I decided to go a different direction. It was really simple and I want to show you how you can make one of your own. But maybe a “Hello” pot isn’t what you are looking for. You could go with a “Love” Pot, “Happy” Pot, “Peace” Pot. Again, we are talking flower pots, stick with me people.

After I got my flower pots and taped off the area I didn’t want to paint, I was ready to add some color to these dull pots. I decided to go with purple because ~~it’s my favorite color~~ I thought it would look pretty with the gray/dark tones in the rock on my house. It took a couple of different coats of paint till I found the right shade of purple I wanted. That is the beauty with paint-you can keep covering it up with a new color if you don’t like it at first!

Once I liked the color of my flower pots, I printed off an oval from google images and cut it out. I taped the edges of the paper to my pot and spray painted the inside a nice creme color. Note: the spray paint will stick to the pot now that it is going on top of the acrylic paint and not just trying to stick to the pot instead.

I then used some black acrylic paint and free-handed “hello” into the center of the oval. I really liked the look, but decided it was too coloring in the lines for my taste. I wanted to rough it up some, so I used 60 grit sandpaper and sanded over the whole pot (including my hello design).

This might sound crazy, but I used a wood gray stain next on my pots. I painted the whole pot with the stain, and then started rubbing it off right away. I love how it stuck to the unpainted part of the pot. It made it kind of seem iridescent. It added a slight color, but still shows through to the natural finish of the pot.

My last step was to spray the entire pots with a shiny clear finish. This step made them look more finished. I love how just a little paint and time totally changed the look of these cheap flower pots. They add a sense of warmth, color, and sweet welcoming touch to my front porch that reflects us better than the brown clay pots. Now, if I can only keep these flowers alive, so I don’t have to plant my burlap flowers in these new pots!

I think the purple looks really good with the rock on our house. It blends in nicely, but adds a fun color pop as well. These pots help accent the purple in our wreath too. I spruced up the wreath I made for our last front door and will be sharing more of those details tomorrow, so I hope you will come back to check it out!

Note: The winner of the Mohawk Home rug is A. Bearchell!! Congrats friend! I will be in touch!

Repurpose Old Kitchen Chairs

May 31, 2013 By Erica Deuel 56 Comments

As we were preparing for our move, I was in major purge mode. I was sending things to Goodwill and the dump like it was my job. My old kitchen chairs were on the “Do Not Move” list. I was determined not to let them make the cut. My husband, Matt, kept shooting this one down. Every time I’d move them to the get-rid-of-area, he’d scoot them back. I’d take them to the carport to haul away and he’d slip them into his office.

One Saturday, I started working on my new craft desk. I look over and I see Matt pulling out the kitchen chairs. My heart lept, “Ah finally he’s getting rid of these things!” Then he started tinkering. I have been asking him to make me a bench for years. When he pulled this thing together I was stunned. Not only did he repurpose our old kitchen chairs but I think he created something really special – the bench I had always wanted.

I wanted to share with you the basics of how he did it, so you can repurpose some chairs of your own!

Matt started by removing the cushions from the chairs. As with most of the projects we do, our little helpers wanted to give us a hand.

We then lined up the three chairs that were in the best shape. In order to have arm rests on the ends of the bench, we used the two arm chairs that traditionally sit at the end of the table. Matt removed one arm from each chair to “open up” the bench.

He then squared up the chairs. Our chairs have a nice square front, whereas they have a bit of a funky curve in the back. I know a lot of chairs have more rounded legs and features that could make it difficult for the chairs to sit flush together. This is where you will need to do a little problem solving and get creative. Susan from FrouFruGal created a Chair Bench with her husband. Her tutorial inspired Matt and they have some great steps on squaring up and connecting the chairs.

Using wood glue and C-Clamps Matt attached the front legs together. Once the legs were glued he then sunk a few deck screws into the legs for more support.

C-Clamp Tip: To get the most out of your C-Clamp connections you want them to be really tight. This however can create some indentations in your wood from the clamps. To avoid scuffing up your projects, use some scrap wood or even slip some thick cardboard in between your clamps and your project.

We decided this bench was going to go in the foyer at our new house. Inside the foyer you see our stair case with the black wrought iron stair spindles. Instead of going with the silver bars on the chairs we wanted them to be black to tie in with the staircase. While the glue was setting on the legs we used painters tape to wrap a portion of the chairs and spray painted the rods.

We had some Pine 1×4’s laying around from other projects that we used for the bench. Matt measured them to hang over the front edge by one inch and over the side by two inches.

He used deck screws and screwed the boards directly into the chair frame. If you want the screws to disappear from your design, make sure to sink them in a little deeper than the surface of the wood. Depending on the power of your drill and softness of the wood this may be easy. However, if you pre-drill your screw holes with a small drill bit, this helps in sinking the screws deeper.

As you can see, Matt also cut a small notch in one of the boards so that it could fit around the arm rest.

Because the front legs were square they were easy to attach and secure. As I mentioned, the backs of the chairs and the legs have some curve in their design. We knew the bench boards would provide support for the whole piece by securing the chairs together even more. Regardless, Matt wasn’t satisfied with the back having no other attached support. (Can you tell he’s a perfectionist?) He created two pieces like the one you see below to add some reinforcement in the gaps. Again, they were secured with deck screws into the frames of the chairs.

Once all the boards were attached, he went back and filled the screw holes with carpenter’s wood filler.

To help age the chairs and bring out the rustic look we love so much, we sanded around the chairs and worked to scuff up the edges.

Finally, using some of our Disney Cool Marine paint, Matt painted the bench boards to complete the project.

As I said, I was stunned with the results. These chairs were on the way out. Matt not only saved them, he earned them a spot right by the front door!

I decorated them with some of my pillows and placed three baskets underneath. This is the “Drop Spot” for the kids as they come and go from the house. It’s been incredibly helpful getting them to have a pair of tennis shoes and sandals in these baskets. Rather than wrestling them to go back upstairs and find shoes, this helps us to get out of the door faster in the mornings.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

My Craft Desk {a special furniture revamp}

May 24, 2013 By Erica Deuel 2 Comments

Do you ever buy things…like big things…pieces of furniture, not knowing where they are going to go? It seems like a piece of furniture should be a big purchase that requires lots of thought and consideration before buying. It usually isn’t for me. When I find something that I like for a good deal I usually buy it (assuming that by the time I refinish it I’ll have a use for it).

That is the story of this desk and chair. I really fell in love with the chair more but for the pair only being $30 together, I knew I wanted it. They weren’t always so pretty though. When we got them home they were a nice dirty, ugly brown. I saw the potential though.

I want to quickly show you how I revamped this piece of furniture, so you too can find an old ugly piece of furniture and give it new life.

My first step in revamping old furniture is to remove all the hardware and give it a nice Clorox bath. I like to know that any germs, dirt, or dust on that piece came from me or my family.

The next step is to sand it down. Although the desk is real wood, the top of my desk is some kind of laminate/coated wood. I went ahead and sanded it too with a piece of 60-Grit sandpaper, since it had dried paint, pen, and glue stuck to it. Sandpaper Tip: The lower the number the rougher the grit. 40-60 = stripping. 80-120 = general use. 150+ = fine tuning and finishing. Change out your sandpaper based on your project stage. I often use 60 at the beginning to strip down and rough up my pieces. I then move to 100+ for smoothing and finishing.

After everything was sanded, I primed it with a nice coat of Kilz. Since I was using Kilz paint, I could have skipped sanding my piece (for my paint to stick) except that I wanted to create a nice even base for my paint. There was a lot of discoloration in the wood. Sanding it helped to give everything a more even start to then prime and paint.

I didn’t know what to do with the top, since it was not real wood. Around this time I was thinking this was going to be my craft desk at our new house. I decided to not paint it because of how this desk was intended to be used. I knew as a craft desk that it would get scratched and things would get stuck to it quite often. The original laminate covering would wear better versus a coat of paint on top of the laminate. I then used left over paint from Reagan’s dresser makeover to paint the rest of the desk. My color is Disney Paint’s Pluto’s Paws.

I then layed out the stencil I had bought (Learn how to use the stencil over here: a colorful stool).

Using Disney’s Cool Marine, I started filling in the stencil and was then forced to decide how much of my new color I wanted to be on the desk. The answer would decided which way I used my stencil as you can see in the picture below.

I stared at those two wider drawers for the longest time, trying to decide which one I liked better. I struggled to decide. I’m not usually a “yellow” fan, so I opted for the design on the right that featured more of the Cool Marine. I really liked the look of the design on the left though, so I used that technique on the middle drawer. I like how the mix all looks together.

I think it’s important to realize that everything doesn’t have to be exactly the same so it “matches”, and different things together can really be beautiful.

I then sanded the edges of my drawers and desk. I wanted the desk to look more rustic. I was going to be staining this piece to tone down the brightness of the yellow a bit and knew the rough edges would help to hold the stain’s color better.

My stencil job is not perfect as paint smeared under parts of the stencil where it was not supposed to. I think the sanded edges go with that “imperfect” look better. It kind of makes the whole piece imperfect and rustic with charm.

I like to paint the back of my projects to have an area that I can test things out. On this project, there were a couple different stains I was thinking about using. I tested a gray stain out on the back and didn’t like it so I went with Early American by Minwax.

I think the wood color stain compliments the warm yellow color better than the cool gray would have done.

I went ahead and stained the top laminate as well. I don’t think it changed the color much, but it did give the desk back its shine (that I had sanded off during the cleaning and stripping process). After my stain was dry, the last step was changing out the hardware! This is an old desk and I couldn’t find hardware that fit the exact width of my horizontal holes. I used carpenter’s wood filler to fill one hole then drilled a new hole to line up with my new hardware. It was a couple of extra steps but totally worth it. The newer slick handles allow for the stencil to be the major eye catcher rather than the old handles. I also used three different handles on this piece and I love how they all look good together but are different.

My new desk was then done! I simply had to move and set it up! Although I didn’t totally know how it would fit in our new house, I knew I could use this piece. I love how it turned out and it is perfect in the corner of our bedroom. (a.k.a. my new area for creating!)

I have found a few of my favorite things to help decorate this area.

One of my favorite pillows I have made.
A new, sweet reminder embroidered hoop art that I made right before we moved. I also really like how I can use my Ikea hanger as an old school (before Pinterest) memo inspiration board.
The week we moved in, we found this bird’s nest with three little eggs just a few feet off our deck. We got to watch the birds hatch, feed, and learn to fly away that first week we were here. It was such a special and exciting time as a family discovering our new place and experiencing joy together in our new house. It is one of my first memories in making this house our home, and I love the reminder of sweet family moments the nest brings.
Scrap sewing pieces and an awesome light that I won from Red Head Can Decorate.
Fun metal tin to hide my paperwork, receipts, and patterns.
Vintage playing cards from my favorite childhood movie that helped inspire my blog’s name.

This area is not done. I have to hang up some of my organizers and figure out a shelf system I like. I’m making progress though and was so excited to share with you a new piece and place that will help me bring lots of creations back here to show you!

Thank you so much for stopping by! I am excited to show you next week the piece my husband was making over simultaneously as I was working on this one!

Spray Paint Ikea Furniture

May 22, 2013 By Erica Deuel 1 Comment

Did you know you can spray paint Ikea furniture? I figured you could with the right spray paint, but I never had till Reagan’s bedroom makeover.

As we were planning her room, I knew she needed a toddler bed. I loved J’s old bed, but the blue was not going to go with Reagan’s theme. I wanted a rustic, darker color to help tone down the bright colors in her room. I also wanted it to look metallic as I was adding natural type elements in her room for the decor. I stumbled across my new favorite spray paint in this search.

This is not a sponsored post. I just really fell in love with this product and wanted to share it with you. I have never used a textured type spray paint. It is so forgiving! Usually when you spray paint and you spray it too “thick” is can dry with a dripped or spotted look. With this product, it just added more of a texture, and I loved it! I will show you more of what I mean further down. I used this exact color and finish on Reagan’s bed, and it was perfect!

The first thing I did for this bed transformation was take the bed apart it give it a good cleaning. I simply wiped it down with Clorox wipes to get rid of the dirt and grime from all the years the boys used it.

After the bed was clean. I started spraying some base light coats. I wanted the bed to have a complete covering of all the blue. As I sprayed, with this hammered texture spray from Rustoleum, I started to notice that the really “wet” spots got the best texture look as you can see below.

Doesn’t that look cool!? I love it and have found my new addiction. I also used this spray paint on a tall lamp in Reagan’s room. It’s such a fun quick thrill to spray something and give it a new look and life. Every item in my house better watch out now.

One thing that was hard for me was to not rush this project. This was a big item to spray paint and there were lots of sides and edges to cover and between each coat of spray, I had to wait till it was fully dry, before I could flip it and spray the other side. Once I thought it was almost done, I was out of spray paint and almost just quit because I was ready to put it back together and move on to the next project, but I was patient. I went and bought another can of spray paint. I think this project took 3 1/2 cans of paint. That cost was much less than buying Reagan a new bed.

Once it was completely dry and all the coats were complete, we moved the pieces to her room. We put the bed back together in her room to keep it easier to maneuver through the house.

Once the bed was put back together, the bed transformation was done! I set it up with her cute comforter and pillows and we all fell in love with it!

The bed has not chipped at all and it is wearing incredibly well. I am so glad to know you can spray paint Ikea furniture! What a good trick to remember! One of my favorite moments was when J first saw the freshly painted bed. I was so afraid he’d be upset about us “ruining” and giving away his bed. He looked at it and said, “Wow mommy! I like Rea-Rea’s new bed!” It didn’t even register that it was his old bed – transformation success!

What about you? Have you spray painted anything lately? Have you tried using texture spray paints?

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