Laziness.. and a Repurposed Nightstand

I always find myself a little... embarrassed I guess when someone (usually a relative) informs me I haven't written anything for awhile. Uh... yeah. Sometimes... I just feel I have nothing exciting to share. Time is sliding by without much excitement. Josh is still at his training. However, since he is having his training near where I work I've actually gotten to see him every week. So it's not bad at all. In a way it's like he's not even gone.

As it is I've been filling my time with more crafts, reading some books, doing some cleaning, and mainly just being lazy. The lazy part has been wonderful. My classes started again, and I haven't quite gotten myself into the school groove just yet. I think being lazy has been more fun.

When I look back at everything we did last summer (and everything I wrote about)... this summer just isn't as exciting. Most of our travel plans/ideas got pushed to the side. Between Josh being sick with kidney stones, my school, work, and now Josh's training... well, I guess traveling took a backseat. Sadly. My school work is interesting to me, but I don't think many people would enjoy reading about the details of it. And my work... well, there's always something interesting or some sort of drama going on there, but again, I don't think anyone really wants to read about it.

So here, at the moment, is my some-what boring life. Josh will graduate from his training soon. At the end of the month Josh's dad and step mom are coming to visit, which will bring the travel back for awhile. AND there is still my mom and "mystery guest" coming to visit at Thanksgiving.

In the meantime... here is my newest project.

I got this nightstand for free. As you can see (even though the picture is a little dark) it's quite dated. The drawers are a darker color than the rest of the nightstand, the knobs are ugly (in my opinion), and although you can't see it well in this photo, the upper left corner is broken off exposing the cheap particle board underneath.

I took pictures of the inside of the drawers, but it doesn't quite show what I wanted it to. Well, let's just say there was years of... grossness inside of it that wouldn't wash off. So I covered it up.

 

I planned on painting the drawers to be white like the rest of the nightstand... so I decided to give the whole thing a new "facelift" and put a fresh coast of white paint on everything. I went out on the hunt for new knobs - which turned out to be a bit harder than I thought it would be. I had to check out a few different stores before I even found knobs... and then when I did find knobs, I didn't have a huge selection. But I did find some newer knobs which look much better than the old ones. I also did a decoupage design on the top (similar to my last projects). This time a friend let me borrow her real Mod Podge, which worked MUCH better than the homemade stuff I was using before.

I'm too impatient to wait until the sun is out... so I realize this picture is a bit dark so it's hard to see the "improved" paint job. But it's there, trust me. 

Some frustrations with this project... I had started painting the drawers with the old knobs still attached. I had to wait for Josh's help/hand strength to get the old knobs off. When we did get them off, there was an obvious ring where the old knobs had been. I attempted to make extra "layers" of paint to get rid of these rings without much luck. The paint on the drawers also looks textured from the paintbrush. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I wasn't in love with the look of it. I decided to try to add a layer of glitter on the drawers to "distract" people from the rings from the old knobs and the textured paint. I had read on Pinterest to mix glitter with Mod Podge or Elmer's glue and it would dry clear with just the glitter showing. First I did a layer with Mod Podge, and it turned out well. I liked how it looked, but I wanted more glitter. So I mixed up some Elmer's glue as I didn't want to use up all of my friend's Mod Podge. And it turns out... Elmer's glue DOES NOT dry clear.... because in certain spots on my drawers there is now a yellowish tint in some areas from the glue. SIGH. Oh well, Josh tells me I'm the only one who sees it. I am also frustrated because the whole time I was working on this project the cats were coming by to investigate what I was doing. That being said... there is cat hair dried on every freaking surface of this thing. On the outside, on the inside... when you look closely you can see black cat hairs dried into the paint. I tried to scrape/pick them off/out with no luck. Oh well... again... something only I would see. You'd really have to be up close to see them. Then again, I know I'm the only person who is going to love this thing, so I guess that's all that matters...