Something special is on its way at STP Haus!!!!

16

September 19, 2012 by stpaulhaus

Don’t get your hopes up…it is not a bouncing bundle of joy, but it is just as cute…

Ok, not quite as cute as a live human infant. It is supposed to be arriving any day now from Amazon. Can’t wait. This is the first step in continuing the dining room remodel. I am been so uncomfortable waiting for the past week and gitty with anticipation. I don’t think that is why my ankles are swollen– think that might be from standing and squatting in the same position for a long period of time working on this…

This is an old dresser that has been out at the farm for about 184278 million years. My dad had it in his room when he was a kid and I am unsure of its story from prior to that. Well someone decided it was a good idea to paint over this once lovely solid oak dresser with at least 4 layers of paint from what I can see. White, hunter green, cream, then white again. (Slaps hand to forehead) People, please stop and think intently for days, perhaps even months, before you decide to paint a perfectly good piece of 100-year-old solid wood furniture. Strip one piece of furniture and you will never paint furniture again…trust me. I am not totally against paint, I am just against it on perfectly good antiques that are solid wood. Paint plywood, fiberboard, and laminate furniture to your heart’s content. I have heard horror stories across the blogosphere of people who spent 100s of hours stripping, sanding, and refinishing orignal molding and woodwork to return them to the original grandeur. They don’t make stuff like they used to so don’t cover it up people. I will climb down from my soap box now. Back to the dresser…

I am reverting back to my old ways and forgot to take before photos, so I don’t have one… And actually it was half stripped anyway by my sister many years ago who had given it a good solid effort but aborted the project for something more fun like pulling out all of your nose hairs individually with a tweezers. I promise to get you some picture of the process from here on out. I literally followed the directions on the can word for word for stripping the paint off. I used a chemical product made by Zinsser called Magic Strip. Worked pretty well for me. For all the environmentally cautious individuals out there I would recommend looking into one of those heat gun strippers. I hear they work pretty well if you get a good quality one and they don’t require any chemicals. I don’t have the time, the money or the patience for that, so I just used some nice and unhealthy, ozone depleting, and water polluting chemicals. I completely blame the person that painted it for global warming. Actually, Magic Strip is biodegradable so it has that going for it.

I think I might be back to actually getting stuff done around here, because I had time to do this:

I love them. Remember what they looked like when I found them for $5 each at an antique shop…

I sprayed them with a coat of primer and several very thin layers of ‘antique brass’ by Rustoleum for $12. I went back and forth about whether to paint them antique brass or oil-rubbed bronze, but ultimately I thought the oil-rubbed bronze was just too dark and modern looking…plus it is ‘the new black’ and I like to dance to the beat of a different drum. The sconces didn’t have all the attachment parts, so I had to make a trip to John’s Antiques to get the extra stuff that I needed for $6. I had Adrian help me install them because, if you remember, electricity scares me. I have done sconces by myself before but not while also balancing 15 feet in the air on a ladder over very steep stairs–which also scares me. We picked up the bulbs from Menards for $3, but i am considering getting something a little more ‘authentic’ looking. So for a grand total of $21 we were able to replace these old-new sconces:

with these new-old ones:

🙂 What do you think? I knew not painting behind the old light fixture was a bad idea. Don’t judge me!!!  I am planning on repainting this hallway with a satin paint anyway–I just painted it last winter and it is already scuffed and scrapped up. I should have painted it in satin right away, but I thought I would try eggshell and see what happened.  Aw well.  Add it to the list I guess.

Anyone else tackling furniture refinishing and painting light fixtures? Or am I the only one with fumes going to my head?  Anyone want to buy the old sconces from me?  Name your price.  They actually are pretty nice, but they just don’t go with the style of the house.  I think I will most likely put them on craigslist and try to recoup some of the cost for the new ones.  On a completely separate note, does anyone else think it is a little odd for these to just start blooming now in the middle of September?