Dresser Re-finish!!

Now for the post I know you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats for: My dresser re-finish! While decorating Little Miss's room I realized that she didn't have nearly enough drawer space for all of her clothes. She had a nice big closet but who wants to hang onsies, leggings, jammies, etc. So I went to my vault of antiques (my garage) to see what I could find. I am a huge fan of antiques and my parents had plenty to give me! I found the perfect piece!! It's a dresser that I had in storage forever and it has a unique and very pretty shape to it, along with some nice details. So I decided that it would replace her current changing table and double as her dresser.

Here is the before and after and I will go through the details below:

She was pretty beat up so I knew that this would be an involved, but fun, project. I found a few great ideas on Pinterest and put them all together into my own creation!

I started off with a light sanding of the whole piece. I knew I didn't need to do a lot of sanding because I would be using an oil based primer. I used the Kilz brand:

I used a brush to apply the primer but if I did it again I would definitely use a small roller. The paint goes on much smoother. *Remember that oil based primers and paints don't wash out so just throw away your brush or roller when you're done.*

I had seen an idea on Pinterest, pinned from a blog called Dumped and Discovered. It dealt with the issue of chipped and peeling veneer and what to do if the wood underneath is unrepairable. My piece wasn't that bad but I thought the final product on her blog was so beautiful that I had to try it! She used paintable wallpaper! I thought that the wallpaper would really enhance the unique curved front of my dresser. I went online to Lowes.com and found exactly what I wanted. Martha Stewart paintable wallpaper in damask.

Some paintable wallpapers come with the paste already on them, and you just have to wet it, but this one did not. So I sent The Hubs to Home Depot to pick up some wallpaper paste. I measured each drawer, cut the wallpaper to size, and glued it down. It came out better than I imagined!

 

After the paste was dry I took a screw driver and poked it through the hardware holes. I decided to use the old hardware which had two holes per handle. You can always decide to change the hardware and drill new holes at this stage if needed. After laying down the paintable wallpaper I used one layer of primer over the top. 

I knew that I wanted a shabby chic look to this dresser (because I figured it would be more shabby than chic in the end ;-)) and I didn't want it stark white so I sent The Hubs out to find a shimmery off-white spray paint. I am a huge fan of spray paint but the next time I do a project this big I'll be using a paint sprayer!! Anyway, he found just what I was picturing! It's Rustoleum Metallic in Pearl Mist. It gave it just the shimmer I wanted! *A note about this color. It doesn't give a lot of coverage, it's more of a top coat.*

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I sprayed this all over the dresser and the drawers. I found that on the top and the sides of the dresser, the spray paint did not go on evenly. So instead of doing layer after layer of spray paint I figured that it would look really pretty if I put the paintable wallpaper on those parts of the dresser as well. For the top, since it's an unusual shape, I cut a rectangular piece of wallpaper (that would hang over the front edge) and then used a razor blade to cut it to size. I also used the razor blade on any parts that were hanging over on the drawers and sides of the dresser.

While looking on Pinterest I found another idea that would really add something to this project. The original pin has actually been blocked since then but I loved the idea. So I took the extra paint from painting Little Miss's room and painted the inside of her drawers! It just added that extra spark!

And since I like to everything backwards, I would recommend doing this step BEFORE the paintable wallpaper. Needless to say I had a couple of pink spots on the front that I had to paint over...oops! Hey...I'm learning as I go!

As I said before, I decided to keep the original handles. They were of course that old "vintage" looking brass. So I grabbed my sandpaper, gave them a good scuff, washed them, and sprayed them with a complimentary pink spray paint. I chose Rustoluem Ultra Cover Gloss in Berry Pink:

Before putting the handles on, and putting the dresser back together, I sealed every surface of the drawers with polyurethane. I knew that I wanted this dresser to last! *Just an FYI, this stuff has a very strong smell so I would apply it outside and let it air out for a while before putting it in it's designated spot.* I also put the polyurethane everywhere on the dresser that the drawers would touch/rub.

So there you have it! My very first furniture re-finishing project. This dresser has a little sister (a nightstand) that I will be tackling soon, and will be using as a place for her books and odds and ends.

It really adds something to her room and makes me smile every time I look at it. It's not perfect but it's something that I made and that makes it perfect to me. Her room isn't finished yet but that will be another post when it finally gets done!

I hope that I gave you lots and lots of ideas and would love to see any projects that you're working on! Enjoy!

Halloween Crafts!

I love the holidays! And even more now that I have kids. It's so much fun re-living them through their eyes! So I decided that I had to document this Halloween since I've done it before with the Little Man and now we have Little Miss in the family. I found a couple of great craft ideas on Pinterest (of course!) and now I cant find the pin so I cant give this crafty mom the credit...but I'm sure you've seen them floating around. I did tweak them both a bit though:

 For the Little Man's I used black paint for his hand tree and white paint (on cream colored paper) for his feet ghosts. The eyes and mouth on the ghosts are his fingerprints. Then I used a cup to trace the moon on yellow paper and free-handed the bats. For the life of me I could NOT get the spooky grass to look right. So we employed the drawing skills of The Hubs and he traced the grass onto brown paper. I then stuck everything down with Mod Podge and put a layer over the top.

Little Miss's was a fun one! Have you ever tried to get an 11 month old to stay still while painting their feet and hand?! I chose to make things easy and stuck her in the high chair with snacks. Works every time! On the original pin she made the hand print into another ghost but I wanted to do a pumpkin. So the pumpkin is actually her palm print (much easier than trying to get her fingers flat!). Then I printed out the type, hot glued bows to the ghosts and pumpkin, cut out the boarder, and Mod Podged everything!

We did two more crafts for Halloween this year. One was a banner that I found pinned from a blog called Iheartnaptime.net. I thought it was the PERFECT project to do with the Little Man. There weren't any instructions so I just did it by site. It was a lot of fun to do together!

Attached them with tiny clothes pins to some Halloween ribbon and we were good to go!

The last project that we did I know you've all probably seen on Pinterest. It originally came from a site called Happyclippings.com. We just had to finish off a carton of eggs before we could do it!

Great activity for kids. Little Man had fun painting the bats (and himself!). I didn't have the eyes like in the original pin so I just painted my own on. Then punched holes in the top, strung some ribbon through, and hung them in the doorway leading to the kitchen/family room area. I must say they added that little bit that we were missing in our Halloween decor.

Jack Skellington!

I figured since it's almost Halloween that I would go out of order and post my Halloween costume project!

My four year old decided this year that he wanted to be The Hulk. I wasn't too excited about this costume mostly because he would have to wear a mask for anyone to know what he was. And I knew he would end up refusing to wear it.

When the 1st of October rolled around we broke out the Halloween movies! I, of course, had to watch Hocus Pocus, but CJ became obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas. We watched it at least once a day. So I came up with the brilliant idea to convince him to be Jack Skellington. Luckily it didn't take too much convincing!

Now came the challenge of putting together the costume. I wanted him to be comfortable so I decided against a black suit. While on a shopping trip with my mother-in-law, we spotted a long sleeve black tuxedo t-shirt at The Children's Place. It was PERFECT! I later found a pair of thin black sweatpants at Target to complete the outfit.

Next it was time to decide how I was going to do the pinstriping. I wanted him to be able to wear the two pieces again so I didn't want anything permanent. I was trying to keep the cost down as much as possible on this costume so I searched around the house to see what we had. I came across white duct tape! This would be perfect! I wouldn't have to worry about getting the lines straight and if I messed up I could just peel it off and start again!

So I grabbed my used and abused craft mat, straight edge, razor blade, duct tape, and got started.

I knew the pinstripes would need to be thin so I decided on a quarter inch for each stripe. I laid the tape out on my mat, put on a movie, and started cutting away.

It took a few hours to cut all the strips and lay them on the pants and shirt. I did the pants first because I figured they'd be easier.

Then moved onto the shirt. That took a little longer because of the sleeves. You have to get creative to make it all line up but that's the whole point of the project: creativity!

Here is the final product on my little man. It turned out better than I thought it would!

Now, no Jack Skellington costume would be complete without his famous bat bow tie. I had looked up on the internet a couple of ways to make it and took the parts I liked from each post and put them to use. I sadly don't have any pictures of the process but I'll describe what I did.

I decided to use cardboard (since we have a million boxes from moving) as the base of the bat. I went to Michaels and grabbed 6 small sheets of black felt (I only ended up using 4 though). I wanted the bat head to have more of a 3D feel and was going to grab some batting to stuff into it, but they didn't have any small bags and I only needed a little. I knew I had some cotton balls at home and figured they'd be a good substitute!

With all my supplies collected I set out to put this thing together. I have never done anything like this before so it was a fun challenge!

1. I made a rough sketch of the bat head on the cardboard and cut it out. 
2. Then I traced around the cardboard cutout onto the felt, making sure to leave a lot of space on the edges since I was going to stuff it. 
3. I got out my trusty hot glue gun and glued the felt to the front of the bat head. I had to improvise a lot when doing this and was cutting off excess constantly as I went along. 
4. After I had 3/4 of it glued down (and pulled tight) I stuffed it with two cotton balls that I had pulled apart.
5. I cut a small piece of felt to glue down over the edges on the back to secure them down. 
6. The final touch on the bat head were the eyes. I forgot to grab white felt while I was at Michaels so I just used white construction paper, made some creepy eyes, and glued them on!

Next were the wings. I had to sketch them about three times until I was happy but finally got it right! I used all the steps above to do the wings except I didn't stuff them with anything. After they were all done up in felt I had to figure out how to get the white striping on them. I was going to use a white pen but that didn't work too well. So I decided to fall back on my duct tape method! And here it is:

I will post pictures of my little man all dressed up with makeup after Halloween!

All in all I think my first venture into Halloween costume creating went well! Thank goodness Little Miss's costume didn't need anything made for it! We'll see about next year though ;-)

Here he is on Halloween! And my little Minnie Mouse :-)

 Little Miss would not sit still long enough to get a good picture...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

New House: A "Must Do" Project!

Let me preface this post with an apology. For the first few projects that I post there wont be a whole lot of pictures. I didn't know at the time that I would eventually be writing this blog. But I'm sure you'll get the "picture" as I go along ;-)

So the first thing I do when I move somewhere new is check out the hardware on the doors. I've noticed that everywhere we've lived (the whole two apartments and now our house) that people love to put in that brassy gold colored hardware. REALLY not my style! I've found that changing that finish quickly helps the place feel more like home and more "Me."

There's a super simple fix to this problem without having to run out to Home Depot or Lowes and spending more money than you want:

SPRAY PAINT!!

Spray paint comes in a ton of colors and pretty much every metal looking finish! I really love the Rustoleum brand spray paint because they've got great metal finishes. 

For one of our apartments I decided that I wanted a brushed nickel look. So I grabbed Rustoleum in Matte Nickel and went to town! There are a couple of steps that you need to follow to ensure that the paint sticks well:

1. Once you've removed all of your hardware you want to wash each piece with soap and water to remove any grease or dirt. Pat dry.
2. Next lightly sand every surface that will be painted with a light/medium grit sand paper. You don't need to go crazy with this step, you just want to scuff up the surface so the paint adheres really well.
3. Then you'll need something to prop your hardware up on. I used a cardboard box and poked holes in it so that the hardware could slide into it and stay in an upright position (remember to paint any screws that will be visible on your hardware).
4. Spray away! (Note: wear grungy clothes and take off rings and bracelets). You might even want to invest in some gloves, disposable or reusable, to protect your hands since spray paint is REALLY hard to remove!
5. Let the paint dry and then check every piece at every angle (I've gotten pieces back on my door only to find a big spot that I missed...oops!).

Here is the before and after of the knobs on my kitchen cabinets in my old apartment:

Before: scratched brassy gold mess

 After: a more sophisticated looking brushed nickel

When we moved into our new house in April of this year, the first thing I wanted to tackle was, again, the door hardware. It was even worse in this house than the apartment because they were that brassy gold but then add to that the fact that they were an UGLY lever type handle. Even though I hated the look of them I wasn't about to go out and buy knew ones. 

This time I decided that I wanted to go with a darker finish. So I chose Rustoleum in Oil Rubbed Bronze. I got the idea from this brilliant woman on Pinterest who literally used this spray paint on anything in her house!

I used the same exact steps as before and this is how they came out:

 Before: cheap looking ugly gold lever

After: much more upscale 

This color spray paint actually made me love the handle once it was done! It looks black in the picture but it's more of a dark bronze brown and I absolutely LOVE it! 

I haven't finished all of the hardware in my house yet because it got really hot soon after we moved in and you're not supposed to spray paint in temperatures over 90 degrees I believe. But I got all of the downstairs fixtures done!

Well I hope you've enjoyed my first project post! I have a little bit of a backlog so I'll be posting often for a little while. Thanks for reading!

Welcome!!

Welcome to Imperfectly Perfect! As it says in the "About Me" section, I am a stay at home mom to my two cute kiddos and in my spare time I love to do crafts and different projects around the house. Pinterest is now my favorite website and I pull a lot of inspiration off of there!

This blog is a place to document the different tasks I take on and to share them with all of you, especially all those friends who keep asking me how I do things ;-). I am not a professional at what I do and I do not claim to do anything perfectly, hence Imperfectly Perfect lol. But I love trying new things and getting creative! I've been a perfectionist all my life and I am now learning that things can still be beautiful without being perfect! 

You are welcome to gain your own inspiration from the things that I post and I would love to see the finished product! I hope you all enjoy my little blog as much as I enjoy the posts I'll be making!