Ikea HEMNES Pantry Cabinet: Part II

BEFORE

Hi.

This is my Ikea  HEMNES cabinet-turned-pantry.  You may remember it from such posts as this one from October.

I'd gone back and forth with the idea of painting it for months before I frosted the glass in October;  but once that was done, I was sure, and I was just waiting for a chance to get to it.

Enter Thanksgiving weekend.  I don't celebrate it, myself, but I had five days off of work, and my roommate was out of town for one of those days, so I prepped and painted this thing in about eight hours.

Here's the whole thing after painting.  *drooool*  I LOVE IT.

There was barely any finish on this thing to begin with, so all it took was deglossing and then sanding very lightly to get a good surface for the paint.

The paint itself is a 50/50 mixture of plain black semi-gloss latex and black latex chalkboard paint.  I guess that makes it quarter-gloss?  I don't know.  But the texture and sheen are really nice.  I love a piece of furniture that feels good.

For the first few hours I worked on this, I was listening to Hamilton, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Every time I look at this picture in particular, I get Wait For It stuck in my head all over again.

I almost painted the inside of this unit a pale muted blue.  I'll be honest with you, the reason I didn't was that I didn't want to go to the store to get blue paint.  There are days when you just don't want to put a bra on, you know?

The knobs and drawer pulls I used on this unit are Ikea's FAGLAVIK, which, sadly, was discontinued about three years ago.  They're so smooth and soft and pretty.  They had a brushed nickel version, a chrome, and a brushed brass - these guys.  I looooove them .

I mean, that's just sexy.

















I love this cabinet.  I love the color.  I love that it didn't become a big black hole like I was worried it would.  I love the way the glass and the black look together.

But wait til you guys see my other Thanksgiving weekend project.  I'm almost done with it, and I'm crazy excited to show it to you!




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Art Storage: An Ikea Hack*

In March of 2017, I started refinishing what would become my art table.  I got 2.5 legs stripped, and then had to stop because I broke my foot...and then I never got started again.  This will be one of my next projects, but for the time being, it still works great as an art table. Over the weekend, I picked up a couple of Ikea MOPPEs to create some storage for the top:

The MOPPE comes already assembled, so I didn't have much work to do here.


I stained the entire thing(s) with Minwax's "Dark Walnut", and added knobs and labels.

At the moment, I have butcher paper covering the table surface;  my plan is to make a custom plexiglass top for it once it's done, to protect the wood and so that I can just wipe up paint spatters without damaging the wood - as old as this table is (possibly early 20thC; more likely a 70s or 80s piece made to look like an antique).

Eventually, the table will be stained the same color, and my hope is that the table and MOPPEs will look like a single piece of furniture.

The knobs here are 1/2" button plugs from the hardware store, just glued to the drawer fronts (actually the drawer backs). 

The labels are cardstock from an old sketchbook, affixed with tiny black tacks - an idea I saw on Pinterest.

The end result is enough like a card catalog or apothecary cabinet that I'm kind of in love with them!





For now, though, I am LOVING the MOPPEs!!

Next Up: 

More living room?! 

* I refrained from titling this post “MOPPE It Up”. You’re welcome.

SUCCESS!!!

It took two trips to Lowe's, two trips to Home Depot, and lots of blood and cussing, but I finally got the water line hooked up, and the new dishwasher up and running!

That is a working dishwasher, my friends!  See the little red lights?  That means it's WASHING MY DISHES FOR ME.  I was in ANOTHER ROOM while the dishes were being washed!  It's almost like living like normal people, LOL.

Clean counters!  Clean, empty sink!

The brass part I needed to hook up the water?  I ended up buying three different versions, trying to find something to replace the coupling I couldn't get off the old machine.   On my last visit, a very nice man named Terry actually took the old part from me (still attached to the mounting plate, which I removed and brought with me), and managed to get it apart!  I had tried everything, but I thought it was stuck permanently - turns out I just wasn't strong enough.  Yay, Terry!

And that clean, empty counter space above the WORKING DISHWASHER?   No more Ikea dishrack and stacks of dishes!  My kitchen is finally returned to the way it should be.

Daisy was a bit concerned about the weird sounds it was making.  It's quiet, as dishwashers go; but she's only three, and in her life has never heard one working.  O_O






By the way, something else visible in these photos?

I finally put on the rest of the Ikea cabinet handles that I got in ...um...oh, I guess I never mentioned it, at least, not that I can find.  Look, new cabinet handles!  They're $7 a pair at Ikea, but I got these in the as-is section for half that.  Yay!

I actually need four more (have I mentioned I suck at math?), so, next time I'm there, the set will be completed.

I still have the smoky glass knobs on the upper cabinets;  the gold handles actually look really great with them, with the white uppers and wood lower cabinets.  Yay!


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Master Bedroom Vanity Cabinet

Drumroll, please!

*drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdr*

Okay, okay, wait.  

Before: 

White and very dirty $9 thrift store medicine cabinet about which I
posted on Monday.  

Vanity table with round dresser mirror and jewelry on
the wall - which I loved, but the various jewelry boxes
(more on two other surfaces in the room!) were a bit
ridiculous.  Too much walking around to find stuff.  

*drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdr*

After:

Yay!  Plain ol' black paint - in fact, it's the same off-black that I used on the table beneath the cabinet, so they match perfectly. It took more than paint, though.  I scrubbed the entire cabinet inside and out, did some very minor repairs to small stains and water damage spots, primed the entire thing, and gave it three coats of the off-black paint. 

But wait - there's more! 

Yes, I'm a total nail polish junkie.  

Necklaces hung on rings on a tension rod at the top, a whole row of nail polish bottles (I can see them all now!!), and...well, to be honest, a bunch of other random stuff crammed in just for the photo, because I'm nowhere near decided on what will end up going where, and it'll take me weeks to get the new system to where it's comfortable to use. :)

Same with the arrangement on the table top - it's going to take work.  I'd like to have everything for my morning routine all here in the same space, but, we'll see how it goes.  :) 

This was just for fun, and because I had a tiny bit of black chalkboard paint that was getting too thick to work with, and I wanted to use up as much as I could before trashing the rest.  The face makes me giggle every time I see it, so, I guess this is working, morning-cheer-wise.  ^_^

I'm also a total lip gloss junkie.  

*

So, I have no idea what I'll do with the round mirror that was here before.  And I have plans for the dresser in the room as well; but that's going to have to wait a week or two while I turn my attention to the 12th century side-laced pendant-sleeved gown that I haven't even started working on, that I need to wear on the 7th.  OOPS.  

Back soon! 

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Bullet: Bitten

You know that decorating axiom, "It's only paint"?  If you don't like it, you can just paint it again?  That doesn't fly when you're talking about painting over wood for the first time.  Stripping, sanding, restoring, staining, sealing - not the same as just a coat of paint in a slightly different color.

 Granted, the kitchen cabinets were technically already painted.  They were an orange f'oak (fake oak) when I bought the house, and I promptly gave them a brush-down with some flat black paint on a wet chip brush - a step in faux bois painting - in order to preserve the wood grain look but darken the color.  It worked really well, and I've loved them ever since.


But then the jones for painted kitchen cabinetry that's been eating at me for years finally took hold.  I fought it for months before giving in; and then I spent weeks on end dithering over when to start.

There's no going back from this, I thought.  I'd better just dive in and get it over with.

TA-DA!!!  


Omg I love these.


I think the brown on the bottom is a bit out of place now,  but I'm not entirely sure just yet.  I'll take some living with.

The brown ceiling fan on the ceiling (asopposed to the one on the fridge) is balanced out by the brown cabinets on the bottom of the room, though, and it's not "all that brown" anymore, the way it was in the before picture.

Wow, I really LOVE this white.  Yup, it's Behr's "White Clay", .just like the ceilings.

It really brightens up the whole room.  It feels so *light* now, moving around in this very full kitchen.





<   isn't that an adorable little clock?  There aren't any batteries in it.

These are the same smokey-quartz colored glass knobs that were in the guest bathroom.

No, I mean these ARE those knobs.  I took them out to use them in here, because it turns out that I love them so much with the white cabinetry that I wanted to see them every day.   (There are dinky little silver ones in the guest bath now, until I find something else cool to put in there).










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Painting Furniture

Once upon a time, I was a die-hard opponent of painting furniture.  How dare you do that to wood! Beautiful wood!  My mother raised me that way.  And in many cases, I still believe it to be true.  But in this case, number one, I'd already refinished the dressing table in my bedroom twice before, and was ready to try a paint job on it, and number two, it's not like I can't undo it if I want.  Which I won't, at least not any time soon.

Because I luuuurve it.  It's plain ol' black.  And actually, it's not - it's a very deep, nearly-black charcoal gray (it's black, for all intents and purposes).  This, because I didn't have enough black to go around (there are more black projects coming up in the next few weeks), and so I mixed all my blacks and my darkest grays together to see what happened.  This was the first test.

If you'll recall, this is what the dressing table looked like before:

Before

And here it is now:

(I promise to fix the camera situation soon, sorry for the bad phone pics). 

Obviously the top needs some sort of organization and/or styling - stuff is just thrown on there for now, because I'm actually thinking of re-doing the entire jewelry wall, and [finally] doing something spiffy with the mirror.

More soon.

knob: same as the ones I used in the master bathroom.

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A Craigslist Dresser Facelift

I did two things over the holiday weekend break!  (I mean, aside from sleep all day Sunday, because I could).  The first was a quick furniture re-finish:

Before

I found this baby on Craigslist for $40 last week.  It's just a little MDF jobber by Sauder, but brand-spanking new, and pretty nice.  And certainly better than the thing it was replacing (which I'll get to tomorrow).

The first thing I did was remove the drawers, and dismantle the child-proof hardware that was attached to each one, which prevented (a) more than one drawer from being open at a time, and (b) any drawer from being opened without being pushed in and pulled up or some weird combination, in order to release the child-lock before the drawer would open.  I don't have kids.  And now I don't have a dresser that's a PAIN IN THE ASS, either.

The second step was to degloss the entire thing with my trusty Liquid Sander, and hit it with a bit of fine sandpaper to muck up the finish enough to take a coat of paint.

Then I wrapped the entire thing in plastic (yay, planning!) and spray-primed the top.

After

I streaked the body of the dresser, and the drawer fronts, with black paint, to darken the finish and give this thing some actual texture (rather than just the ultra-smooth Picture-of-Wood finish).

I also replaced the wooden knobs that came with this dresser.

A better shot of both the paint
finish and new hardware.

The bottom drawer sports a pair of these guys.  Yes, I adore maps, but actually this was because I only purchased enough handles for the top three drawers the first pass through Hobby Lobby, and when I went back for one more pair, they were out of the flat key-shaped handles I bought before.  I got these instead, because they're adorable.  And I kind of like the mish-mash of hardware on this thing, actually.

The top got another faux-marble paint treatment (whites and grays this time, in stead of the alabaster-y cream and brown like I did on that little nightstand), and I'm sorry to say that most of the picture I took of it just didn't want to come out right.

But this dresser makeover is actually a part of a much larger ordeal - I finally fixed up my bedroom closet!  More on that, and better pics of the dresser top, tomorrow.  :)






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Silver & Gold

Did a bit of paintin' and knobbin' over the weekend.  Here's what happened in the master bathroom:

This gold mirror was really cool.  It was a bit in-your-face with the gold color, but I liked it.

So I painted the two picture frames in the room to match, and then the gold was SCREAMING AT ME.

So I painted all three of them a lighter, less obnoxious gold.

That's better.  Softer.

The two frames - both painted, and the broken one repaired.

This is the same artwork (postcards, actually) as before;  the frames were painted a deep olive green before, and the mat behind the cards was the same blue as the walls.

But wait...what's that shiny dot on the cabinet there?

CABINET KNOBS!!!

These cabinets have never had knobs before!  And these knobs, actually, have never had cabinets before, so it works.  (I harvested them from a set of modular MDF cube furniture years ago and just had them in my stuff).

* By the way, this picture is the first one I've taken that accurately reflects the color of the walls.  Yeah. It's  that blue.  Also, please ignore all the BS on the counters here - that's not intentional, it's just all over the place for no reason, lol.  

Yeah.


Those are SEXY.






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Knobby McKnobberson

Another "small thing" in the guest bath that's hugely important to the overall look:

Hooray Knobs!

TADA

Matches the one on the upper cabinet...

...which had been there for like a year, LOL. 

Wildebeests: Nice Rack (Part II)

Remember this bit o' headboard from Friday?

And the front hall with the hook and wad of jackets and scarves?

After: 

door open for light

 Couple of cuts, some paint, some decorative glass knobs, some wall anchors - voila!  

Green glass knobs from World Market*.  There are two of these, and four other styles/colors, all mixed in there together.   Hee. <3

(See what I mean about the carving not being even, in that last picture?  Must've been a cheap headboard, LOL.  I don't care.  I love my new "old" coatrack thingy). 





* You know, they have some amber-colored ones, too, that I didn't like at first...but now they haunt me.  I must find an excuse to use them for something.  Possibly even...*GASP*...drawers! 


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Wildebeests: Small Dresser/Aquarium Cabinet

Remember Steve the newt?  And the smaller tank she got last weekend, that needed a home?  This is why:

I know, right?  UGH.   This is the small dresser I'd planned to move it onto: 

Problem was, it was really banged up, and not in a good way;  the knobs it had when it came to me looked just awful on the piece, so I replaced them with these equally-crappy but less offensive little spiral ones, just for the time being;  and there's no way the top would support the weight of even a small aquarium - it's just 1/8" plywood glued across the frame.  Also, the feet - ew.  Plus nobody was using it as a dresser!  It was just sitting in the bedroom, being in the way.

That said, I love this piece, and I have since the moment I laid eyes on it; and I really wanted it out in the living room where I could look at it more often.  So Sunday morning I de-glossed the finish, buffed out the scratches, and dry-brushed over it with black paint lightly so that some of the warm brown color would pop through in the light.  I cut a new top from a 1/2" solid wood table leaf that I had in the garage, and finished it to match - the perfect size to just lay over the top of the piece, so that if I ever decide to use it for something else, I can lift it off, no harm no foul.  Pop on some new knobs, and voila:

Yeesh, blurry.  Sorry.

I love how freaking SHINY it is now.  Wow!  Here it is in action: 

I know, I know, the tank still looks like crap - I'm in the process of spiffing it up.  At present all I've done is dump Steve and some of her stuff into it.  Plus the water's all shaken up in these photos, from me moving the tank around, which is why it looks so dark and dirty.  I promise it's not.

But, hey, look!  Something shiny: 

Oooooh, ahhhhh.  I dunno when this glass-knob-kick I'm on will be over, but today is apparently not that day.  These puppies were only $2 each, too!  I always grab a handful when Hobby Lobby puts their decorative hardware on for half off.   Because I am Bargain Hunter D. 

And because I love little secret color surprises, I painted the inside of the drawers...

...PINK?!?  I swear it was red in the can!  No no no no no no no...

Theeeeere we go.  Wrong can. Woops!  And today I wish I'd painted them turquoise.  *shrug*   Whatever color they are, they made a HUGE difference in my kitchen, believe it or not.  

Until this happened, all the aquarium supplies had been in a couple of my kitchen cabinets and drawers.  I put what I needed into this unit; and took the opportunity to throw out the stuff I didn't need anymore and wouldn't re-use;  so I gained a pretty piece of furniture for the living room, a nice stand for Steve, an empty kitchen drawer and TWO emptied kitchen cabinets!  Sweet. 

A little hand-carved and -painted box from Bali that a friend recently gave to me. 

It smells like herbs. :)

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