A few months ago our family room was beginning to feel cramped, messy and boring. Though I had ways for my family to put away blankets and toys, they were not following my well thought out plan. The basket meant for folded blankets was crammed with toys or shoes kids didn’t want to put away and became just another object taking space. Our coffee table, while great for putting up our feet, lacked much use beyond that and stood in the middle of the room horrible and brown, so so brown.
A professor of mine once said, during his lecture on strengthening relationships, that if you have a problem with something your spouse is doing, you may see it as his/her problem, when in reality it is your problem. Your problem, because most likely your spouse doesn’t care or is blissfully unaware that something is an issue for you. This is how I was beginning to feel about our messy family room. It was my problem and if it was my problem I was in a position to fix it.
The professor went on to suggest there was a solution found in the way you chose to look at the problem. For example one husband dropped his dirty socks on the floor every day and no matter how much his wife asked him to put them in the laundry he continued to leave them on the floor. The husband, while truly wanting to please his wife constantly forgot because he was so anxious to get into the shower after his long day and the laundry basket was on the other side of the room. Once the wife understood more of the story she in turn decided change her approach, because in the end she just wanted the socks off the floor and he wanted to take a shower. She decided to move the laundry basket just outside the bathroom and with the ease of laundry access, never had socks on the floor again.
I constantly look back to this story when I am trying to solve a behavior, sometimes it is easier to move the basket than it is to convince someone to change what they value. In my case, my kids valued “cleaning” up the floor as quickly as possible, more than they valued actually putting the toys away. So I changed my approach. I began to search for a chest that could double as a coffee table, but had blanket storage. I placed the collect-all-basket in a hard to reach place and made room for a few puzzles and games inside our TV console. Before you know it, the family room was back and though toys and books and random shoes still made their way into the room, there is no easy place to stash them. Clean up has become much more straight forward.
Here is the journey of my storage chest that started out looking like a little girls fingernail polish station, guessing from the princess cards and bubblegum pink puddles on top…I could be wrong. 🙂 The change was exciting, adding a pop of color to this very brown room was just what was needed, I love propping my feet up and admiring the stencil work. In the end, it was my problem, but with a beautiful solution.
The chest was in rough shape, but it fit the qualifications of internal storage and I loved the wood work on the outside. I thought that with enough washing and sanding I would be able to remove the pink goo.
I was wrong. After dedicated sanding there was still a bit of a residue. I had wanted to have a wood tone on the top and add color to the bottom. I considered painting the whole thing, but I love to see a bit of wood grain. At this point I changed my design and decided I would stencil it, to draw attention away from the pink wood, if still visible after staining. I also roughed up the surface of the bottom portion to prep it for primer.
I like to prime pieces that I am going to paint for two reasons. One it really helps the paint stick to a roughed up lacquered surface and two…
… it helps you see the gaps between the wood joints. At this point, I let the primer dry and then come through with caulk and fill in all the edges and cracks. Caulk is the secret to transforming a piece from looking amateur to professional. That and a good quality paint to give a nice hard finish. Caulk is also not difficult to use correctly once you know a few tricks (I will be posting on that soon).
Apply the paint of your choice. I picked Glidden Satin from Home Depot, the original shade was True Turquoise. When painting furniture I like to get the paint samples. One or two sample sizes are often plenty to complete a piece and then I don’t have large amounts of random colors filling my space. I also feel more at ease with branching out to different colors or picking the shade that is just right for each item. This chest took less than one sample can.
In all honesty, I picked out the color and then worked on a different project. By the time I got back to finishing this I didn’t like the color any more –I know I was a bit shocked myself that I changed my mind so quickly. I added some trim paint ( Glidden, Satin, Raffia Cream) from our basement remodel and mixed until I had a shade I liked.
Here you have the finished piece and I guess I could have kept it this way (except for the pink stain on top that still showed through and the fact that this piece is totally boring! I knew I would be adding some character, but needed to let it dry.
Once the paint was dry, I sanded the edges of the feet and along the wood trim to give a little character. Then I came through with walnut stain and stained the wood so it would stick out a bit. If you ever go too far and don’t like the amount sanded off, simply repaint the section you want unroughed (that’s not a word, but you get the idea).
Stenciling furniture is much easier than stenciling a wall because it is smaller and in this case it was not on a wall with all the blood running from my arms. That was tough, I actually really liked this. It went fast and added great color and texture to my room. It also did a great job tricking the eye so you couldn’t really see the pink stain.
To keep the stencil in place while you work, spray with glue adhesive. I highly recommend Elmer’s glue because they are just better. I made the mistake of using the dollar store brand because I had run out of Elmer’s and I spent a long time scraping the horrible glue from the top of the storage chest. Just spray with Elmer’s spray let it dry a minute or two then lay down on the surface.
I like to use my trusty cheap brushes, they work really well for many jobs, including stenciling. Now the trick to getting a good stencil look and not many big blobs of paint on the other side is to keep very little paint on your brush at a time. Just enough paint to get the color on. Use a tapping motion and avoid strokes of paint as those pull the paint under the stencil.
And now for the moment of truth, how well did this section take? Wait a minute or two for the paint to dry just a bit to avoid a string of wet paint accidentally dripping in the wrong place.
It looks good, I’m happy.
Some sections didn’t fair as well. If you are a perfectionist like I am, a razor blade is an easy way to clean up any edges where the paint came through too thick. When stenciling a wall you can simply touch up with the contrasting wall color, no need to scrape it off.
When finished, I put on an outdoor/indoor lacquer to hold up to the wear and tear of a family all putting their feet up, after all, this is one of it’s jobs now. It has held of beautifully and protects from scratches as well and it holds a ton of blankets.
Until next time. Happy building, reusing, refinishing, recycling. Post below on your awesome home solutions and have a great week. Remember to subscribe for the latest projects at This Homemade Home or follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter – whatever you want. 🙂
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