Show me off: Fab transformations!

Well hello there! This week is positively flying by -- crazy! I can’t believe it’s almost the weekend already.

It’s time to show off a few more of you lovelies out there in blogland! I’ve received so many emails highlighting some incredible projects, and this post is all about taking the not-so-glamorous befores to fabulous afters!

First off, Myra at My Blessed Life found a gorgeous Craigslist vanity for her foyer:

It wasn’t in the best shape though, so she sanded it down and painted it a beeeautiiful lime green!:

Yes, I said LIME. Isn’t that stunning? I just love that color. (It’s a Home Depot color match to Huntington Green by Benjamin Moore.) 

She styled it wonderfully…perfection!:

You can see more about this transformation on Myra’s site.

Sara (what a fantastic name, really) at It’s Good to be Queen (love THAT name too!) was a little over the finish and wear on their kitchen table and chairs:

But they had fantastic lines, didn’t they? So in a weekend she transformed it into this:

The power of paint never ceases to amaze me. Seriously. AND Sara is my hero because she has three kids and was able to accomplish this in just a few days! You can see the process she used here.

Lisa at Got Good Love had a hand me down kitchen table that was also in a honey finish:

Because it was solid maple, they were able to sand it down and stain the set a lovely dark expresso color:

Sigh – I’m such a sucker for a dark stain…love it! (Lisa has not blogged about this project but she can probably answer any questions if you visit her site here.

Erica at Making a Home Sweet Home took an old bathroom cabinet:

And gave it new life with white paint and some super cute fabric:

She lined the back of the cabinet as well as the back of the mirror – LOVE it! You can see how Erica did this one by visiting her here.

Amanda over at Craft it Unique has a studio with dark 70’s paneling, and she was trying to figure out a way to brighten up the space. She took the door:

(This is the other side of the door.)

And did a really fun and creative treatment to dress it up:

Isn’t that TOO fun? I absolutely love it!! You can see how Amanda painted the door here.

And finally, Jessica at My Quarter Life Crisis transformed their whole family room by taking their fireplace:

And amping it up just a smidge. Or a whole heckuva lot:

But you know what? I (believe) the only change is the painted brick. Isn’t that amazing? I stared at the before and afters forever, trying to pinpoint what else was different, because it looked so…well…different. :)

Her fabulous accessorizing sure doesn’t hurt either! Fabulous! You can see more of her before and after here.

I loved all of these projects – the possibilities are endless with a quart of paint and some imagination of what could be.

Got a room redo or project you want me to highlight? Send me an email (simplehomeinteriordesign (at) gmail (dot) com) with links and pictures and put “Show Me Off” in the subject line!

How to paint cabinets

First of all, I must thank you for your sweet comments on my kitchen island redo. :) We love it so very much! I promised a how-to on the painting of the cabinets, so here we go…

As I mentioned, it took me almost two and half years to attack this project. Now I know why.  :)

Nahhh…it wasn’t that bad.

No really, it was.

You folks who have painted ALL of your kitchen cabinets have a special place in DIY heaven reserved just for you. Seriously.

I started with this:

Once I got the new butcher block counter on, I was all hyped up to get the whole island DONE already. So I plopped down on the floor, took off the doors and pulled out the drawers and started sanding away with my little power sander.

BIG mistake. Oh for all that is good, it created a massive mess. HUGE. And after two sanding sheets and 15 minutes, I had only gotten close to bare wood in a few spots:

After you sand, it’s all misleading because the film it creates makes it look like the finish is actually coming off. Well, it’s not. It’s just spitting dust everywhere:

Sheesh.

Anyway, I gave up on the sander. I wiped the layers of dust away and started priming. I used the B.I.N. primer from Zinsser:I’ve used it before and always hear great things about it. It’s shellac-based -- I have no idea what that means, but all that matters is each coat dries in 45 minutes: 

They had me at 45 minutes. Really, I have zero patience for waiting for primer to cure. NONE. (By the way, I had to run EVERY pan through the dishwasher and clean the insides of the cabinets to get all the dust from the sander off. Fun times!)

I did two coats of primer, then four coats of black, (I always use Black Suede from Behr) sanding between each with my 3M sanding pad:

I usually use the sanding blocks, but I’m kind of loving this foamy pad thing.

I think one of most important parts of painting furniture is letting each coat of paint cure, and sanding well between each coat:

You can use a tack cloth to wipe it down, but they give me the HEEBS. So sticky and just gross. Uck. So I use the tried and true wet paper towels and wet rags:

And my very fancy paint trays for painting:

:) Nothin’ but the best!

Because I didn’t have the primer tinted (I plan to use it for other projects as well), I had to do four coats of black.

It was after I painted the trim that I realized I had the same primer, tinted black, in the basement.

AWESOME.

For the doors, I used the process I should have started with from the beginning. I cleaned each one with a TSP spray:

Then just primed with my tinted primer.

NO SANDING MAKES ME HAPPY.

Well, at least one less sanding – I did light sandings between each coat, like I mentioned. Two coats primer, three coats black, sanding between each.

I did the grooves with my Purdy brush first, then a foam roller to do the rest of the cabs:

Because I wasn’t as diligent with my sanding as I should have been, you can see spots in the corners where I used a brush first:

But really…do I care? NO I do not. Like I’ve said before, no one would ever notice it. And if they did, I’d give them a cookie. Then I’d kick ‘em out for noticing.

I kid, I kid!!

I finished the whole thing off with a water-based polycrylic:

I usually use a polyurethane, which is oil-based, but I wanted the water-based for other projects. Regular poly can yellow, which is fine for black and over a dark stain, but not good for lighter painted projects. I quite liked this stuff – it seems to protect just as well, but time will tell.

You need to do a light sanding before your first coats of poly, and then sand lightly between each one. I use foam brushes to apply it.

I chose the satin version and it was WAY glossier than I thought it would be. Be careful with the sheen – you don’t want it to be TOO glossy. Remember glossy shows any imperfections. Flat sheens help to hide them. :)

Oh yeah, and NO, I did not paint inside the doors:

It would really make them look more custom, I know. But that extra hour of work was better spent on another project. Or eating. Sleeping. Anything other than painting. ;)

Was it hard? Not at all. Time consuming? Yes.

When I do projects, I like to be able to stop, clean up everything, and put it all back together when I’m done for the day.

It drove me batty to have the doors and drawers all over the place for two days. But that’s just my thing – if you go into it knowing your kitchen is going to be a hot mess for a few days, you’ll be golden.

Was it worth it? HECK yeah!

Before:

After:  

 

(Sorry for the crappy evening picture!)

Notice the fall stuff is coming out? You know what that means – the basement decrapification is DONE!! Actually, the whole house is pretty much free of STUFF.

And it feels ahhhmazing!

I hope this helps those of you who are thinking about painting your bathroom or kitchen cabinets! It can be done – with a little bit of patience and a whole lot of primer. :)

 

P.S. Oh yeah…GUESS WHAT?

I am so stinking excited -- next week I’m going to see the new Nate Berkus show, courtesy of my friend Rhoda!! Whoohoo!!! I am so thrilled to take a trip to NYC with some of my favorite bloggy girls – some I’ve already met, some I haven’t.

Email me if you live near NYC and you can meet us out there! :) If you’re going, holla at me!

Remember

Almost exactly nine years ago, my husband took me to New York City for my first visit. I had a feeling about the city – even though I had never been there. I just knew I would fall in love with it.

And I fell…hard.

I always say I must have been a New Yorker in a past life. :) It felt like home to me, from the very first trip.

That last week in August nine years ago, we took the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty, climbed to the top and my husband snapped this shot:

It is still so eerie to me that you can barely make out the twin towers in the background. Two weeks later they were gone.

If you’ve read this blog for long,  you know we visit the city whenever we possibly can. I’ve been so fortunate to visit twice this summer – the last trip with a couple of my girlfriends. I took them to see Ground Zero, and we decided to visit the Ground Zero Museum.

It was so incredibly powerful, terrifying, humbling, inspiring and well done, I wanted to share some of the photos I took with you. I’ll let them speak for themselves:

  

            

      

Heartbreaking.

And yet at the same time, I was so filled up with LOVE. I couldn’t help but cry and cry and cry.

I know it gets harder every year to remember, but we can’t forget. We can’t forget the pain we felt, the devastation, the sorrow, the love.

When you didn’t know a stranger, because we were all hurting the same way. We can’t forget that desire to want to do anything…anything…to help.

The feeling of being so proud to be an American, you could just burst.

Out of my hundreds of beautiful pictures of New York City, my favorite isn’t a picture of Times Square, the park or the views from the Empire State Building. My favorite picture was taken on a trip about two years after September 11th, when the area around Ground Zero was filled with handwritten notes on the temporary walls from people from all over the country and the world:

Amen.

This weekend, fly your flag high!

God Bless America!