On the Mend?

Hi there.

Things have been a bit weird for me lately. My level of motivation to do pretty much anything has been in the single digits. Very low, single digits.

But yesterday, I am proud to say, I FINALLY finished something.

Back in July, I painted one of the dining room chairs I bought right before we left Maryland. It didn’t turn out so well.

Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. It was awful.

Looks-wise, it was okay. But it had WAY too much wax on it.

You can sort of see what I mean in the second shot. Not the overabundance of wax, just the ugliness.

The chair has been sitting since July. Waiting for me to strip the layers of wax off and re-apply more wax. More-sparingly this time.

I stripped and added a second coat of graphite-colored Annie Sloan Chalk Paint (ASCP) to most of the chair over the course of a couple of evenings last week. The red is primer red. The graphite still wasn’t dark enough for me (ASCP doesn’t come in black). So I topped the graphite off with some ebony-colored wood stain.

Yesterday I added the clear wax over the graphite and then a layer of clear wax followed by dark wax over the red.

I think the chair looks much better.

But I am not sure all of that effort was worth it to achieve black with ASCP.

I think I’ll use a different type of black paint on the next chair. I’ll stick with the primer red ASCP for the red bits, though.

The chair does go much better with the table now. Although the table legs are a bit shinier than the chair, so I may want to add some poly or something over the paint.

The pie safe I bought a while back is still that hideous sea-foam green. You did catch what I said about lack of motivation, right?

I want to finish the chairs first. Then that will be painted. I was thinking red for that, too. But, as Janet of The Empty Nest, my personal chalk paint consultant, warned, it takes many coats of red to really cover a piece. And since ASCP is a tad on the expensive side, I am re-thinking my color choice.

Wanna know what else I have been up to? Besides work, that is, which is very time-consuming, but not-so-interesting to blog about.

I went to an auction last weekend.

I came away with a few good finds. And some not-so-good stuff. I bought this piece of pottery which looked good from a distance, but hideous close up. And a box of stuff filled with old glasses and canning jars in addition to the BBQ set (tongs and brush) that I really wanted. The box also had a cool, old, small-but-deep cast-iron frying pan in it, too. Which sort of made up for the glass stuff, which I so do not need. Thrift store here we come.

I also bought some cool, old costume jewelry, which I have no idea what to do with. I mean, I have a very good friend who I think would probably have fun with some of the stuff. So I could ship it off to her. I bought it thinking I could re-sell it for a little profit. But I have absolutely no idea what, or if, the stuff is really worth.

So, friend (you know who you are), if you don’t think getting a bunch of old, mismatched costume jewelry is tacky, it may be coming your way.

Oh, and Friday night I took the girls to the town Christmas parade.

I had no idea how crowded it would be (very!). I took my camera along, but couldn’t get close enough to the action to get decent pictures because of the girls.

Although I must say, I was quite proud of how well the girls behaved.

Really. Main Street was packed. Not just with people, but with pets. AND a very loud parade. With marching bands. And noisy vehicles. And horses. Plus at least one dancing cow (I love Chick-fil-A) and not one, but TWO, dancing frogs (Sweet Frog yogurt).

And my girls just sat through it all. Mostly. On the few occasions they did get up, I just had to point and they sat back down.

Amazing. My girls have come such a long way since becoming townies.

So that’s what we have been up to. Today’s project is to decorate the house for Christmas.

If I have any hope of getting that done today, I need to stop this blogging and get busy.

Now.

But, before I go, any thoughts on that chair?