Sundry by Sage

I have been reluctant to post my completed projects here because they were started prior to the blog being conceived, meaning I do not have before pictures, but I have succumbed to peer pressure and will post some of what I recently finished.

My daughter is a pack rat, I am a minimalist, our worlds collide especially when it comes to her room.  I was not about to spend hundreds on speciality closet organizers to store her junk luckily, I happened to drive by a site where someone was being evicted and a dresser was heading for the landfill.  I intercepted the dresser and repurposed it to what you see here.  The dresser was solid, it had no drawers but the area between the drawer slides was cardboard, everything else hardwood.  I ripped out the cardboard and replaced it with luanne plywood I purchased at Home Depot for $9 and painted the piece stone gray  (had it on hand).  The green was acquired at the same Home Depot on the "Oops" paint shelf for $2.  In order to make the paint look like the pieces you see in shabby chic shops I added plaster of paris and water, this gives the paint a chalk effect and it becomes easy to sand for distressing.  After painting, I sanded to make the piece look worn.  In some spots I sanded through to the wood base in others just to the gray base coat, then I covered the entire dresser with 2 coats of satin poly.  The hardest part of the project was agreeing with my daughter on the collection of storage baskets.  The baskets were purchased at TJ MAXX and the storage bins were on sale at Target.  Total investment for the entire project including paint, materials and storage bins $57.

This next item was given to me as a christmas present, a print of a beach bike by an artist from New Jersey.  I needed to frame it but of course wasn't about to spend money on it.  I acquired a pallet from the back of my local Home Depot lot (yes, I asked first if I could have it).  The pallet was disassembled and the wood was stored in a pile for future projects.  A frame was constructed around the mat protecting the print but when completed it looked kind of bland.  My new favorite thing is using vinegar and steel wool to make stain.  Apparently the vinegar reacts to the steel wool and when you apply the vinegar with the steel wool to wood magic starts to happen.  I applied my solution to the frame and you can see the results, the beautiful copper brown.  I was so excited by the outcome.

This is just a taste of what is to come in this area.  Thanks for checking things out.