The Dining Table Chronicles Vol. 3

Right now the dining table is looking like dark walnuty goodness. I had to put four coats of stain on it because the top looked stripey, it still does (especially in the photo) but it looks much much better. Actually it looks good. I am giving the stain a couple days to fully dry and I am going to spend some time dusting the apartment before I apply poly. Next time I post about the table it will be done and I will give a full how-to on the whole process.

In other news, because I am restless and have a million different projects I want to tackle I am already started on the next one. Here's a hint

Sit On It

s the table re-finishing project moves along I can't help but think about how badly I want some new chairs to go with it, and of course how I would like to (re)decorate the whole dining/office area. I am dreaming after these beauties but unfortunately being fun-employed means I don't have enough pennies to buy these =[

They are of course the Eiffel Tower Wire Chairs if you happen to have four sitting around your house that you want to donate to charity me then I will think you are the most awesome person in the world and I want to raid your house for whatever other awesome treasures you have but until then I will just be oogling over them through my computer screen and thinking how good they would look with my table every time I walk to the kitchen.

Up next on my wish list is a card catalog, I have been looking for an awesomely priced one for years with no luck but I am hopeful. I especially like how they used this card catalog to store the booze–perfect for my dining/office area. I mean drinking is appropriate while dining and it is sometimes necessary while doing homework.

Image via apartment therapy

So there you go, what my greedy consumerist mind is coveting right now. I am insatiable I tell ya....JK (sorry for typing JK but it seemed appropriate)

The Dining Table Chronicles Vol. 2

have been sanding the table like a crazy person. Actually, I think that sanding the table has in many ways kept me from becoming a crazy person. School has been really stressful and I have literally been dreaming about my projects, but the little relief I have is when I work on the table. It gives me a chance to step away from my work, let my thoughts marinate, and get re-energized for homework. I really wanted to work on this project alone but since I was sanding by hand I felt limited and really like I lacked the strength and power to fully sand down a few spots on the table so I had to bring in Patrick to sand for about an hour or two. I was so grateful to have him help because the stain was not coming out and I had sanded for several hours and seemed to not make a dent but Patrick came in and almost sanded through the table, I had to keep a close eye on him and he actually over sanded in a spot but hopefully no one notices.

The Dining Table Chronicles vol. 1

ecently I wrote about how I ruined something that I got from Patrick's parents and unfortunately I have to tell you that I have ruined more than one thing. Well, I guess I didn't ruin the dining table but I didn't make it much better. Let me start from the beginning, we got a table that belonged to Patrick's grandmother, the table was awesome but at nearly 100 years old the finish had seen better days. We (mostly Patrick) sanded the table as best we could but at the time we were cold because it was in the middle of winter and we were in a rush because we were working on it at Patrick's parents house and we needed to go home (with the table) we ended up getting rid of the old cracked stain and then washing it with some black paint, it looked pretty good but we used a really crappy sealer and that has not held up. In the year and a half since we redid the table, the table has gotten cup rings and scuffs and it looks baaaad and this table deserves to look good.

On my first day of school, June 18th, I got busy applying the first coat of stripper. I started small and did one panel of the table top at a time. This project is going to be slow going and I am not planning on completing it until my last day of school, August 8th, so look forward to a few progress posts. Oh, and in case you are curious as to why I am planning on taking so long to finish this project it is because I am busy with school and don't have tons of time to commit to it and because I get impatient and bored with things and that usually leads to half-assed crappy projects so I am hoping that by working on it for just a little bit every few days that I will not get tired of inhaling stripper and will make for a beautiful finished table.

 I forgot to take a proper before shot but at least here you can see half of the before and half of in-progress

The stripper is working its magic

Halfway through stripping the top

Restoring a Sewing Box

 

few years ago I got this awesome sewing box from Patrick's parents, I loved that I finally had a place to store all my sewing supplies but I was not a fan of the reddish stain that it had so Patrick and I spray painted it light blue. What a mistake. I was not super crazy about the blue because it was too blue and I like a blue with a little green AND we tried spray painting in Arcata. For those of you who have never been to the lovely town of Arcata, CA let me fill you in– it is a tiny town located in Humboldt County on the Northern California coast. It is almost always foggy, damp, and cold...this is not the place you want to be spray painting. But, that is where we were living and I wanted the box painted so we tried. and failed. The paint was peeling and crackled and looked HORRIBLE. I was sad that I had ruined the box but I left it alone until a few days ago. Something got into me and I decided that I had to rectify the wrong I had committed so I whipped out the stripper and got to work. I stripped. I sanded. I stained. Stained. And stained some more. Three coats of poly later and I was ready to tackle the inside. I mod podged some fabric scraps on the inside and finally the project was finished. I am soo happy that I made this box beautiful again, especially because while I was working on it I noticed a tag taped to the bottom saying that it was made by a student of Garfield High in 1952!

Typographic Embroidery

y no means would I consider myself a skilled embroiderer but I love it anyway. As a ridiculously impatient person I would never have guessed that I would enjoy embroidering as much as I do; it calms me and I can get lost in it for hours and hours. Here is how I embroidered my header:
1. Iron the fabric– I used some scrap muslin that I had and it was ridiculously wrinkled from spending the past six months in my scrap box.
2. I printed out my design and then traced it with my fabric marker.
3. First I made some vertical stitches to give more volume to my embroidery.
4. I filled in the letters using a simple straight stitch. For this design I chose to make a gradient because I didn't have enough of one color to fill in the entire word so I got crafty and decided to use three! I think that the end result turned out pretty good, definitely not as good as some other embroidery I have seen, but I can see the progress I have made, heck I can see progress in this particular project, just look at the "v" and the "y" the "y" looks a lot better to me.

Really that is all there is to it, this was the simplest embroidery project I have ever attempted and I can't wait to start my next project.