SPRAY PAINT UPCYCLE - METAL FISH

I'm a firm believer that anything can look better with a quick coat of black or white glossy spray paint.  Take these fish for example.  I found them at Ross and they were a good deal and I'm always drawn to things with great texture.  I decided that painting them white would change them completely and give me a some fairly large pieces of wall art at a reasonable price for our beach cottage.

The original green finish was glossy and very hard, so even after attempting to scratch them up with sandpaper to prepare them for painting -  I knew primer was a must.   I used a white spray primer followed by a white high gloss spray paint.  (By the way, I had initially considered keeping the eyes black so I covered them with blue painter's tape.  I quickly decided they looked creepy that way so I painted them white).

I think these work well in the bedroom with the blue quilt.  The quilt has an aged "tea-stained" look to it and some white accessories in the room lighten the look up a bit.   In addition, the yellow nightstand is kind of whimsical and fun, so why not hang some big high-gloss white fish on the wall too!

 

For more beach cottage posts see my Beach Cottage page.

CHAIR UPCYCLE - DRIFTWOOD PAINT TECHNIQUE

 

 

On this post, you'll find more fun with furniture while decorating our beach cottage.  I got this chair along with two others just like it off of Craig's List.  I got all three for $40!  woo-hoo!  They were originally going to be a part of an eclectic mix of chairs for a dining room table, but I soon realized finding eight chairs of similar height, in styles that would work together, and could also be easily re-upholstered was harder than I expected.  The back up plan was to use a couple of these chairs in bedrooms as extra seating.

Before

First things first - sanding, sanding and more sanding.  My orbital sander got a lot of the work done with 80 grit sandpaper. 

 

The sander had it's limitations and the dark stain remained in the nooks and crannies.  Out came the Dremel and I made use of these three tools to get the rest of the stain off.

 

With the stain off, I probably should have gone back over the chairs with 120 grit sandpaper to smooth out the surface before painting.  However, at that point I was done with the idea of sanding.  The surface felt a little rough but I convinced myself it added to the character.

 

When I started I didn't have a plan, but I knew I wanted to get a finish that resembled drift wood.  I bought a small can of driftwood stain, but it wasn't what I expected when I tested it out. (It was much more brown with a little bit of a milky look to it, and seemed like it would take a lot of coats to get the effect I wanted.).   Ultimately, I came up with this plan for my driftwood effect.

• First coat of paint - A light coat of Sherwin William's #7030 Anew Gray.  This is a nice taupey gray.

• Second coat of paint - Just a light dry brushing of Sherwin William's #7028 Incredible White.  I like that this gave the finish some depth, without being too bright white.

• Final step of sanding - This step was key to the final effect.  I sanded the edges and some other select areas to expose some of the warm wood color underneath.  This tied in nicely with the seat that I reupholstered in a natural color linen fabric.

 

 

One of the chairs found a home in the master bedroom...

 

I did the same finish on the frame for the photograph over the bed...

 

 

The other chair sits in the yellow bedroom...

 

 

Pretty big change from the dark espresso brown stain and the microfiber seat, huh?  Not bad for chairs that only cost us less than $15 a piece!

 

For more beach cottage posts see my Beach Cottage page.

BARN WOOD DIVE FLAG

My husband and I are divers.  I saw a couple examples of these types of signs on pinterest and I thought this would be perfect for our beach cottage.  We already had scraps of barn wood leftover from our other projects, so finding a piece of wood for this project was easy.  You could use new wood, but the texture of the barn wood provides for a wonderful distressed look and I love the weathered gray patina.  In my eyes - every piece of old barn wood is it's own piece of art.  This particular piece was quarter sawn oak.  The saw marks, the aged texture of the wood, and the big crack on the side took this project to another level.

I started by adding screw eyes to the top of the board.  I thought this was a neat way to hang it so I copied the idea from one that I saw online.

I white-washed the board with some white acrylic craft paint.  I say white-washed because I added some water to the paint and applied a thin coat to the front of the board.  I made a point of not going all the way to the edges and leaving some of the board exposed.  I proceeded to continue to add thinned-down light layers of paint until I achieved the look I wanted.


Once this dried, I applied a template of the dive sign I had created on graph paper.  The paper was applied with temporary adhesive.  (I used Krylon's brand purchased at Hobby Lobby).  Make sure you use TEMPORARY adhesive - you need to pull this stuff off later.  The purpose is for this to be a sort of stencil.

 

Next I cut along the line of the stripe and removed the outer pieces.  Now I had a guide to apply the red paint to maintain the white stripe down the middle of the board.

Now I was ready to apply the red paint to the board.  I used a red acrylic craft paint I had on hand.  I grabbed a paper plate to help me dry brush the paint onto the board.  A small amount of paint was applied to the brush and then most of the paint was removed by brushing it on the back of the paper plate.  This enabled me to have a "light and airy" look to the red of the dive flag and the texture of the board allowed the white paint of the base to show through.  (If you try this with new wood it will be harder to get this affect).

An important note - I did not apply the red paint all the way to the edge of the paper as I did not want a clear and distinctive line.  I used the paper as a guide only and opted for a more weathered line on the stripe.

The paper was removed after I finished with the red paint.  Once the paint dried it looked OK, but I was much happier with the piece after weathering it with sandpaper and exposing the some of the barn wood underneath the paint.  To do this I ran sandpaper over the edges as well as over the face of the wood.

The final step was covering it with a coat of mat spray polyurethane.  I wanted to seal it, but I didn't want it to be shiny.

Here it is on the wall of our beach cottage. I think it turned out well :o)

UPDATE 7-21-2014

 

I decided to sand and weather this piece a little more.  The red seemed a little too bright and overpowering in the room.  I'm considering another round of sanding to lighten up the red even further, but I definitely like it better now, so I will live with it for awhile and think about it.

If you are interested in a general overview of some DISTRESSING TECHNIQUES, see my post here which covers the use of SANDPAPER, CANDLEWAX and VASELINE.

 

For more beach cottage posts see my Beach Cottage page.

BEACH COTTAGE SIGN

So. . . my husband and I have purchased a beach cottage in Florida and I have had a blast furnishing and decorating.  I took it as a "given" that all vacation homes require a fun name.  With our love of diving, combined with my love of turtles - the name just had to have "turtle" in it.  We eventually settled on "Turtle Cove".  This post is my first of many to come regarding some of the fun projects I worked on.


The Turtle Cove sign was created from a simple wood plaque from Hobby Lobby.  The distressing technique involves candle wax.   The candle wax technique is simple - apply candlewax and then paint over it.  Wherever you have applied the wax you will easily be able to remove the paint and expose the base color.

I started by staining the plaque with a dark gel stain applied with a cotton rag (old t-shirt rag).  So...dark brown will be my base color.

Dark Gel Stain

Next, after picking out a font and creating a paper print-out that would fit on the length of the piece - I adhered it with Krylon temporary spray adhesive. The key here is TEMPORARY adhesive.  You will eventually want to peal all this off.  I purchased mine at Hobby Lobby.



Temporary Adhesive

Then I started cutting out the letters with an x-acto knife  The letters were easily removed because the adhesive was only temporary.  What I ended up with was a sort of stencil for the letters adhered to the wood plaque.

Cut around letters with an x-acto knife.

I rubbed candlewax inside the stenciled out lettered areas. Keep in mind, how much you apply will affect the final look of your project.  If you leave more of the base uncovered from wax - the paint will adhere to these places, and only the waxed areas will enable you remove the paint to easily reveal the stained base. 


Apply candlewax to the lettered areas

Once all the letters were waxed over - I pealed off the paper.   From the photo you can see the letter shaped wax.  I also ran the candle along the edges and corners of the plaque for some distressing to expose the stained wood in those areas as well.

Remove the paper around the waxed areas


Paint was applied directly over the entire piece.  I applied just one heavier coat.  I typically recommend two thin coats when doing any painting, but for this project - I think the one heavier coat was OK because I was going to distress the piece anyway.  The paint color I used was a Valspar satin paint sample from Lowe's - with a custom color of Sherwin William's #6470 Waterscape.  I chose this over #6212 Quietude (used elsewhere in the room).  Waterscape is a brighter aqua that provides for a more distinctive contrast with the darker stain.  Once painted, you could still easily see the wax letter outlines underneath the paint. 



Apply paint

A note on paint - I buy the Lowe's paint samples for paint because I can have a custom color mixed for $3 - a great deal.  This is perfect when only small amounts of paint are required, and works out well if you are OK with the satin paint finish (that is the finish for these types of samples).  I own a Sherwin Williams fan deck so that is why I go with the SW colors.



I cut very tiny pieces of sandpaper and carefully removed the paint from the areas of the waxed letters.  In hindsight - I could have refrained from putting so much wax on the lettered areas. More of the paint would have remained adhered, and it would have provided for a slightly different effect.  I had to carefully leave some of the blue paint on the lettered areas as it would have very easily been scraped off with the sandpaper.  This turned out to be OK since I knew I was putting a polyurethane over it.

Remove paint from waxed areas

It is possible to just take a big piece of sandpaper and rub across the entire board - but I was going for a particular effect.  I had to be careful not to remove too much of the blue paint from the letters since I had applied so much wax.  After the letters were taken care of - I distressed the corners/edges and some other areas with sandpaper.  Note - the sandpaper gets "gooped-up" with paint and wax, but that is expected with this type of technique.


Finished piece after additional distressing

Once I was satisfied with the distressing, I applied a couple coats of satin polyurethane.  The plaque took it's place of honor over the front door of our cottage.  My good friend commented that it looked like I carved the letters into the wood.  Maybe I'll have to break out my Dremel and try that someday on another project - hmmmmmm...

 

 (I made the BEACH sign as well in the photo above.  It was inspired by one I saw online at Ballard Designs - another post for another day)...

 

If you are interested in a general overview of some DISTRESSING TECHNIQUES, see my post here which covers the use of SANDPAPER, CANDLEWAX and VASELINE.

 

For more beach cottage posts see my Beach Cottage page.