Monday, August 22, 2011

whitewash.

As promised in my post from earlier today, I have pictures of the furniture we stained for Chloe's room. Originally, our plan was to paint the dresser and nightstand white, but while we were at Home Depot we saw a white stain that we really liked instead. The color was called "White Wash Pickling", whatever that means! It was just a tad lighter than white paint, which would let the grain of the wood show through. Our hope was that the stain would have a slight antique effect, which solid white paint wouldn't accomplish.


I bought Chloe a Rast dresser from Ikea on Saturday. I love this dresser because it's cheap (less than $35!), it's only 27 inches tall which is perfect for a 5-year-old, and it's basically a blank canvas just begging for some lovin'!


The other piece of furniture we stained is a nightstand that I found on Craigslist for around $20 and immediately knew it had potential to be a rock star.


We set up shop by laying some butcher paper down on the driveway, and setting out all the drawers.


Tony started brushing the stain onto the dresser while I tackled the nightstand. After the first coat, the dresser was already starting to look pretty good.


The nightstand, on the other hand, was another story. The wood was much older than the Ikea dresser, and it just wasn't absorbing the stain very well. After the first coat, I was starting to panic a little!


Tony kept reassuring me that after the second coat, it would look much better. Luckily, he was right! Both pieces turned out really nice once we applied two coats and let them dry.


You can see in these close-up pictures how visible the wood grain is, which is exactly the look we were hoping for.



I think they look very cute, so fingers crossed that they pass the Chloe-test!


Update: Chloe informed me tonight that her new pieces of furniture are "the best things in the whole world." Score!

 

it's (almost) moving time.

In preparation for our big move to Gig Harbor next Saturday, Tony and I took a truck over to my place in Ballard to pack up as many of my things as possible so that we won’t have to make multiple trips next weekend.

Tony described filling up the back of truck as "playing a big game of Tetris". I'm great at Tetris, but not so great at packing, so I left most of that up to him! Believe or not, this picture shows almost all of my belongings! The only things missing are my bed, dresser, and TV which we’ll grab next weekend.


We hauled everything back to Tony’s place in Puyallup so that we could transfer it into a trailer along with most of Tony’s things.


The whole process went pretty smoothly, thanks to this little helper...


...who was very quick to strike a pose once she spotted the camera!


Can’t forget to pack the bicycle!


Or to pack Chloe!


It was a scorching 86 degrees out, and we were all exhausted by the time we were done. I definitely could have used a nap!

But these two weren’t too exhausted to show off their Top Model skills for the camera:


Chloe already has the "smize" down, Tyra would be proud!



Later that night, Tony and I stained some furniture for Chloe’s room, which I’ll talk about in my next post. To be continued...!