These Two Hands

Today I was in one of those sort of slow, sad moods where just walking forward feels like it takes too much energy. Where it feels like if someone looks crossways at me I’ll burst into tears. From experience I know that when that mood hits, I need to either take a nap right away or get immersed in a project.

Well, napping was out. I have a toddler and she does not sleep.

So I gradually cranked up my whirlwind and got a bunch of small stuff done around the house. I took down some of the previous owner’s old metal curtain rods – we aren’t into window treatments so they were naked and looked junky. I cleared out the cabinet under the sink, scrubbed and reorganized everything. I hit a couple of the drawers in random cabinets that we’d never emptied out after the previous owners, and managed to fill a big construction bag with random clutter and old trash. I spray-painted three of the scratched, rusted, once-greyish-brown kitchen floor vent registers bright white and it immediately made the kitchen look cleaner (and the nasty old registers now look brand new!)

And then I saw these:

And there was my project. (As you can tell from the sander already in place, I had to force myself to stop mid-sand and take a “before” picture. I’m getting better at this. Slowly).

We use this corner for taking our shoes on and off as we come in from the garage, so the chair is a must – but soooo chipped and ugly! The table is a nice, solid wood one, just not our style at all. Again, necessary until we feel like springing for a brand new occasional table ourselves. (Which, for Sofía’s play room? I don’t think so.) Along with tons of other things, these were both left here by the previous owners. I’ve kind of been meaning to paint them both for ages, but it’s hard to find the time for silly little aesthetic changes like these sometimes.

The carpet itself will have to wait til another day. But in the mean time, I can spruce up, update, and force-match the furniture, can’t I?

Of course I can.

I used up the tail ends of five (5!) bottles of white spray paint I found in the basement in the process. Then I gave everything just one or two top coats with my trim paint, and upholstered the chair with a scrap I had in my stash. Cost = $0. Happiness = great.

I went and started dinner one happy, re-energized camper.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Crafts, House, before & after, frugality&(free)cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.