Sunday, February 11, 2007

My kitchen table

There's a story told in my husband's family about the time that my 
husband's brother tried to swat a fly, and wound up breaking a window instead.
My father-in-law, rather than getting angry, took this as a golden opportunity
to build the fireplace that he had always wanted in that spot instead. 

I had my own "fireplace moment" just a few weeks ago.

I was working on a small painting project in the kitchen. I got a can of primer out of the carport, set it on some newspaper on the kitchen table, and got to work. After finishing, I decided to take a little nap.

When I woke up, I discovered that the can had a hole on the bottom, and had leaked primer ALL OVER the kitchen table.

At that moment, I realized I had three choices. I could (a) cry; (b) spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the mess; or (c) take this as the opportunity I had been waiting for to paint the table.

Obviously, I chose option C.

After priming the table, I chose some of the paint we already had -- in this case, a very light yellow. Then, I used a stencil to put the ivy border on... (check out the action shot!)




After that dried, I took a much darker yellow paint, mixed it half and half with water, and brushed that all over the table. After a minute or so, I wiped up most of it. It was still rather blotchy, so I took my sponge and, praying that it would NOT remove the stencil I had just done, washed off most of the dark yellow wash. The result is a very old looking table.



A closer look, but you still can't really see what it looks like.


Anyway, it was a fun project, and gave new life to a very old table!

5 comments:

Margaret said...

OH!

You ARE the WOMAN!!!!

Wow! The table looks fantastic!


Thank you for sharing!!!

Ouiz said...

You are so sweet, suburbancowgirl! You know I love you!!!!

Next time you come visit, you and I will sit at the table, have a hot cup of tea, and you can show me all of your HISTORY STUFF!!!!

Beth said...

WOW! You and your husband are so good at those things. Very creative!!! And a good reminder to look at something we might consider a major annoyance as an opportunity to create something beautiful! Thank you!

Cay Gibson said...

That is beautiful!!!
You have real talent there. :)

Ouiz said...

Thank you both! As I said, I had had a picture in my "control journal" for years now about a painted table, and I kept telling myself, "someday... someday I will do this..."

Well, I finally got the kick that I needed to get started! (as if the marker marks on the table weren't enough! sheesh...)

What really thrills me, though, is that my husband keeps coming through saying, "honey, that table is REALLY beautiful!"

*all smiles*