Monthly Archives

August 2016

What I’ve Learned Finishing Furniture

Hello all! I hope your week is off to a great start! I’ve been busy busy busy with school starting a few weeks back, but now I’m ready to get into the routine of school being in full swing and I’m ready to start thinking fall!

I’ve been out in my garage working away on tons of projects out in the garage, and if you follow along on Instagram, you might have seen the early stages of this dresser I’m about to show y’all on my IG Story. This dresser turned out even cuter than I thought it might, and so I wanted to share with you guys some of the process and tips I use, now that I have more than a project or two under my belt.

Okay, so this is how this little guy turned out. So cute, right? I didn’t take a picture when I first started, because I’m so forgetful when it comes to that kind of stuff, but it was dark green. Like 90’s dark green. Gross.

The first thing I did was strip all the paint off the dresser. Using a good paint stripper is not for the faint of heart, since it smells, and I burnt my arms a couple of times, but it is essential in removing old paint more quickly.

What I couldn’t take off with the paint stripper, I took my sander to. This took a while, but prepping the entire thing helps the end result. Once I finished sanding, I wiped the entire thing down with Mineral Spirits to clean it off.

See those cute little scallops on the bottom? Adorable. Anyway, once it was all clean, I primed the entire thing. Even though chalk paint claims to be prep-free, I have found that it saves paint to prime first, as well as makes it last longer. After I primed, I sanded everything down with a 220 grit sandpaper. This is super fine, and eliminates brush strokes. I do it super lightly and super quickly to make sure I don’t sand off the primer completely.

I painted the frame with Annie Sloan Old White, and the drawers with a local handmade chalk paint (sorry I don’t have the color for it). I lightly sanded everything down again, and on the drawers, I sanded a bit longer to expose some of the primer. That happened kind of accidentally, but I ended up loving it!

Here’s a closeup of how the drawers turned out. I love them! After I finished painting, I gave everything a coat of Annie Sloan Clear Wax. This sweet little dresser was a super fun project, and it turned out even better than I imagined.

Now, this piece won’t be staying with me. I’ve been working hard gathering materials and working on projects like this one because I am going to be a vendor at the upcoming Vintage Market Days! I love this event so much, and this will be my first time as a vendor! Here’s a link directly to the Facebook event. It’s in Waxahachie, which is just south of Dallas. If you’re going to be in the Dallas – Fort Worth area that weekend, you’ll have to stop by. This event is going to be amazing, and if you’re in the area, I would love to meet you! This dresser and many others will be headed to my booth, and I cannot wait to show y’all more!

That’s all for today friends! Have a fabulous day!

August 29, 2016 by Fawn Rumfield

Room Tours

Our Dining Room: A Blank Slate

Whoooooie! This month has been busy! Progress at the new house is going super slow, and we’re not even remodeling anything! I can’t imagine how slow things will be when we actually buy our own house. We have been busy busy busy with summer ending and school starting back up. It has taken me forever to unpack all the things (still not finished), and actually putting rooms together is taking longer than I thought it would. But, this is my favorite process, even if it does take forever, so I can’t complain too much.

Today I want to share with you guys where our dining room is currently. I have to preface this by telling you that it’s unfinished, but if you read the title of this post you probably already knew that. I just recently got curtains hung, which was a whole hassle in itself. I originally bought curtains from Target, which would have been perfect but they were too short and they were sold out of the length I needed. So those got returned. Then I bought some online from JCPenney, and although the length was good, I didn’t like the texture (silky was not what I was going for when I envisioned a calming, farmhouse feel), so those got returned. Then I waited a week until I had a chance to make the drive up to IKEA, and I finally got the perfect curtains. Third time’s the charm, I should have known.

Okay, so these are the curtains I bought from IKEA and they are perfect. Plus they were the cheapest of the three pair I bought, so I was definitely stoked about that. Now that I have the curtains hung, I feel like I’m in a place to start decorating. It’s a perfectly blank slate which currently looks like this:

We have an open concept floor plan at our new house, and it really isn’t very big, so the dining room is really more of a nook in the main living area. It also has two large windows that take up most of the entire wall space here.

On the right hand side is the kitchen, and this picture is taken from the main living area. We have our little coffee station set up, and that’s about it. Honestly, I kind of like the bare look. Obviously that won’t be staying, but since I have little wall space here, it will never look super cluttered in here.

The curtains are a little bit long, as you can see here. I know some people are a fan of the puddle look, and at this point, I’m really not sure about it. I know it’ll stay this way for a while out of sheer laziness, but I might eventually get around to hemming them.

In the background here you can see our little coffee cart. I have an idea on what I want to put on the wall above that, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet either. It’s about the process y’all.

We actually have been eating here much more frequently than we ever did at our old home. I don’t really know why that is, since we had the same table and chairs (which I madeover here). This space is light and bright, and I certainly couldn’t be upset with that. For now I’m enjoying the process of putting this together slowly but surely.

The tabletop will probably be left blank until I’m ready to start decorating for fall. But since I have a whole house to put together before then, I am in no rush for fall decorating this year. I hope you enjoyed this little mini tour of our unfinished dining room. Well, that’s all for today friends. Have a fabulous day!

August 18, 2016 by Fawn Rumfield

Uncategorized

Back to School: Favorite Accessory

It’s back to school for me this week! Of course I’ve been working on my classroom for weeks, and if you follow along on Instagram, you may have seen a story that I posted there of my classroom. This past weekend I got to meet all my new firsties for this upcoming school year and their families. I am so excited for this upcoming year in first grade. Today is my first official day of school, and I can not tell you just how excited I am! Even though I’ve been teaching for a few years now, I still get that jittery excitement waiting for the first day to arrive and now it’s here! I know it’s going to be a great year.

Even as teachers, we like to plan our outfits for the first day (or at least I do). This year, I am sporting my brand new wood wrist watch which I am obsessed with! This summer I have seen on social media many people wearing these super cool watches, and I loved them. So when JORD Wood Watches reached out to me, I was super excited. I’d been a long time admirer of their watches and now I am a proud owner of one! Looking at the pictures online, I was super impressed, but it is even prettier in person.

I chose the Zebrawood and Maple watch from their Fieldcrest series, and I could not be more pleased. It is so unique, and it really is the perfect accessory for back-to-school. I was drawn to the pretty wood tones of this watch. What’s cool about these is that while they’re all very unique watches, this particular watch fits my personal style so well! When it arrived in it’s beautiful packaging, it was already sized to my wrist! How awesome is that?! I have pretty small wrists, and usually have to have some links taken out of whatever watch I’m wearing. With this, I didn’t have to do that, since it was fitted just for me.

Now, here’s where this gets even better. I love this watch so much and I know you will too, so I am hosting a giveaway! If you click here, you can be entered to win a $75 credit to their shop! But it gets better. Just for entering, you will receive a $20 coupon code!!! So there’s no losers here at all! How stinking cool is that? The contest will be open until August 17th at 11:59pm. They have tons of great women’s watches to choose from as well as men’s watches if you’re looking for a unique gift idea. I know y’all are going to want to check that out!

Now, I should be off, since I do have a lot to do, being the first day of school and all. I have a feeling I will be wearing my new watch pretty frequently this school year. Well, that’s all for today friends. Have a fabulous day!

Jord Wood Watches kindly sent me this beautiful watch, but all opinions are my own.

Womens Wooden Watches

August 10, 2016 by Fawn Rumfield

DIY Projects, Furniture Makeover

Annie Sloan: One Year Later

Hey y’all! Phew. The past few weeks have been CA-RAZY. With moving into the new house two weeks ago, and setting up my classroom, and Ethan being in and out of town for work, things have been hectic to say the least. Today is the first day we’ve had internet at our house. Like, we had to go to McDonald’s to pay bills last week. So that was a low point.

Things are starting to feel a tiny bit more settled now finally, and I can’t wait to share with you guys more of the house! Today I want to talk about something I think a lot of people have had questions about. How well does chalk paint hold up? Since I’ve been setting everything up at the new house, I’ve been inspecting and reworking all the things we had in our previous home.

About a year ago, I gave our living room coffee and end table a little makeover. I used Annie Sloan chalk paint, which I’ve used for several other projects throughout our home. I love this paint, and I’ve talked about great it is, but I’ve never had much experience with the paint over a long period of time. Now, our coffee table is the hub of the living room. We’re pretty casual, so this table gets a lot of wear from putting our feet up on the table. We also eat off this table and write on it. It’s basically a work horse.

I’m not being paid by anyone to tell you this, but I have to say, after about a year or so, the top of this table needed a second coat.

The edges of the table top started to wear down (and not from the distressing I intentionally added), and it was starting to look a little more shabby than I was wanting.

In about twenty minutes, I just slapped on a quick top coat of the paint in the Old White color. I didn’t even tape off where I had painted the gray stripes. Just a quick and painless coat of paint, and wax a few hours later.

With this specific project, it doesn’t bother me that I had to do a second coat. With something bigger and more time consuming, it might be a little bit more annoying. Now, there may be people who are better at applying the wax than I am, which could protect the paint better. I’m a novice at this stuff, but that’s my experience. This will in no way prevent me from continuing to use chalk paint in the future. I love the stuff! But, with something bigger, I might look into another solution in the future. We’ll see.

Have you ever had issues with this in the past? If so, I’d love to hear about how you solved them! I know that this has been a quick and simple post, but I wanted to pop in and share what I’ve been up to! Well, that’s all for today friends! Have a fabulous day!

August 2, 2016 by Fawn Rumfield