DIY Steciled Herringbone Pillow Covers (via Home Coming)

Let's welcome back Kayla from Home Coming everyone! Kayla knows how to speak to me. She must have read my mind and known that I am on the hunt for cute accent pillows. She kindly offered to share her tutorial on how to make a stenciled herringbone pillow cover today, and here it is. 

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Hello Pneumatic Addict Furniture friends! I'm so happy to be back here. And today, I'm hoping all of you can help me make a design decision.

For my most recent project, I decided that I wanted to add a little flair to two large, navy pillow covers I recently purchased from Ikea. After months of searching for a navy pillow cover with a fun design on it, I decided I needed to do what we all know best, and DIY it!




But little did I know, this journey was going to be much harder than I anticipated...

I bought a herringbone stencil from Cutting Edge Stencil, read the instructions, watched the video, bought some white fabric paint and set off to painting

I secured the stencil (as much as you can to fabric) and painted light coats with a paintbrush. Learning #1: White fabric paint doesn't work that well on dark colored fabric. 

I peeked a few times, and could tell that it really wasn't working that well at keeping crisp edges, but I guess I can't expect the word from painting on fabric. This is what it looked like after.

Learning #2: Kayla and stencils do not get a long. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get nice, crisp edges. Instead the paint would continuously seep under the stencil and smudge all over the place.

But never one to give up, I powered through and stenciled the whole front of the pillow.

Then this happened. I had used brown "painters paper" as my husband calls it (he got it from work) to stop the paint from sticking to the back fabric of the pillow cover. Good idea, but Learning #3: Don't leave the brown paper in the pillow case while the paint is drying. Take it out immediately.

So after picking all the paper off, this is how it turned out. I can't decide if it looks OK, or if it looks terrible. I mean, I'm a perfectionist so the rugged lines and paint smears annoy me. I have two more of these pillow cases to stencil, but decided to photograph this one and ask all of you your opinion!

 
Because for some reason I'm still thinking about stenciling the other pillow because it doesn't look too terrible from far away, or with other pillows in front of it. Ha!

I'll likely put use these new pillow cases in our new Master Bedroom once we get the rest of our remodel project done and get to actually enjoy the room. 

So what do you think? Should I stencil the other pillow covers or shouldn't I?


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Junk Pickin' in January

January has hit me hard people. 

I made a conscious choice to slow down on furniture this month in the hopes to recouporate from the past two months of holidays and boutiques. 

I'll be honest, its been nice. 

I have put in some garage hours over the past couple of weeks. I built my Industrial Farmhouse Table and have spent several hours on a computer armoire that I will share in a couple days. 

Right around New Years, I had the chance to go junk pickin' in a cool little town about an hour away.

I scored this super cool, double scale for $25 bucks, and can you believe I got those vintage, zinc-lid mason jars for $3 each?

One of my favorite finds was this cool old shoe form. It actually has brass caps on the underside of the toe and heel and toe.

"What is this?" you ask.

It is a 40" man hole cover.

I think its awesome. My husband can't figure out why I would spend $30 for a sewer grate. Just wait, I have something cool planed. Did I mention it weighs something like 80 lbs or more? Heavy is an understatement.

Industrial wood wheel pulleys are always cool. I think the man hole cover and the pulley are going to conspire together on a project.

The same shop I found the shoe form and mason jars is where I picked up this vintage mile marker sign. I fell in love with the individual number plates. Plus, I have the perfect spot in my kitchen for it.

I'll be honest, I thought about being selfish for a while. If I tell you where I found this great stuff, then you would go there and drive the prices up. I didn't want to reveal my "source", but then I decided that's what this blog is all about. Making unique furniture and home decor accessible for everyone. Soooo...

If you are ever east bound on Highway 60, stop in the little towns of Miami and Globe, Arizona. 

They are cool, old, mining towns that have been neglected for decades. Not trendy and popular like Sedona or Bisbee, but full of good ole' junk (and some yummy Mexican food).

Have you ever been? What did you think?

Industrial Farmhouse Table

Hi everyone! I'm still waiting for our laptop to be repaired, so in the meantime I've been taking trips to my in-laws to use their desktop. Remember last April when refinished a craiglist dining table? You can read about it here.

As soon as I finished that table, I was happy with it, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. It was too pretty. And being a professional cosmetologist I knew, pretty means maintenance.

 After living with it for 8 months, I was right. The smooth, dark finish was just begging to be scratched and burned. With 2, destructive 4 year-olds I knew I needed something a little more rough around the edges. 

I have quite a collection of table legs and parts that I've been hoarding storing in my garage for years now. I happened to have this great set of chunky, rustic pine legs that I pulled off a $10 yard-sale table. After the holiday and boutique season started to wind down, I finally found some time to work on a project for myself. 

*I will warn you now, I took these photos late in the afternoon with crappy lighting. They looked great on my camera's little screen, but once I got them up here I saw how terribly blurry they are. Sorry! Don't you hate when that happens?

I thought about taking step-by-step photos, but I decided that there are enough farmhouse table tutorials out there, we don't need another one. I basically came up with a hybrid of the Turned Leg Farmhouse Table and the classic Farmhouse Table from Ana White's website.

I did come up with a couple new ways to age the wood. For example, using a hand saw to dig scratches in the edges, making them look cracked and split.

My favorite part of the table was the little industrial touch I gave it with some 2" lag bolts, washers, and a drill bit. They are only decorative, but I placed them in spots to make it look like they are holding the table together.

For the finish on the top, I played a little around with the stain untill I got exactly what I wanted. I first applied a coat of 50% Rustoleum's Ultimate stain in Sunbleached and 50% Rustoleum's Ultimate stain in Dark Walnut. It was a nice, medium grey color, but it was a little too uniform in color and almost had a slight purple hue to it.

After the first coat was completely dry, I brushd on single coat of Dark Walnut by Minwax. Much better. More of a natural, old wood color. I then sealed the top with one coat of wipe on polyurethane. Then, to bring out more of the character of the wood, I applied a soft black glaze that I mixed up. 

That's exactly what I was looking for. Old wood. Not exactly weathered wood, just old stained wood. Slightly grey, medium-dark brown. This photo is the best representation of the color on my monitor. It reminds me of Mushroom wood, which often is what reclaimed Barnwood is.

Pardon the blurry photo. The base received one coat of Dark Walnut stain, followed by 2 coats of antique white milk paint. To get the chippyness, I simply let the milk paint do it's thing. Once it was dry, I scraped off the flaking paint with a scraper.

Both the top and the base got about 5 coats of matte Polyurethane to seal everything. Yes, I put polyurethane over white paint. I realize it can yellow. This is a kitchen table people. In my opinon, wax and oils just don't cut it when it comes to the constant wear and tear a family's kitchen table gets.

 I could have gone with polyacrylic and not stressed about the yellowing, but I really wanted a matte finish, and the lowest sheen I've been able to find in polyacrylic is satin. If you have found a flat polyacrylic, PLEASE let me know! You'll be my new best friend.

 Also, every notice that matte polyurethane isn't really matte? There is still a very suble sheen. I was hoping for total mattes-ville. If you have found a good dead flat top coat, share the love.

Suble sheen or not, I'm really happy with how my Industrial Farmhouse table turned out. This table is very "me". The one downside is now I'm itching to "industrialize" everything in my house.

Do you dig the industrial look too? Or is it just me?


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Double X Trestle Console

Happy New Year everyone! For Christmas, my in-laws very generously decided to take us skiing in northern Arizona. The husband took some hilarious video of us on the slopes with his Go-Pro. Once I can find them I'll get one loaded up here.



 I'm now home in the Valley of the Sun, back to the sunshine and back to "project mode". I've already spent all the money I got as gifts at thrift stores and Home Depot. Let's just say "my side" of the garage is pretty full. I've already crossed a couple things off my list and I still have a lot more fun projects up my sleeves that I'll share with you guys ASAP.

Ready for some sad news? Our only computer had a "boo boo" while we were traveling. I'm currently peering through a cracked screen while I type. Luckily, it is covered by insurance, but it will be a slow and long process. Forgive me if my blogging spreads out over the next month or so. I'll have to drive to my in-laws to use their desk top.

Anyways, on to the furniture. 

While gearing up for the boutique a couple months ago, I was getting burned out of just refinishing. I was really itching to build something. Truth be told, I would much rather build than paint something, but typically I have a better profit on something I just refinish, so that's why I'm constantly flipping items.

I wanted to try something new, so I sketched up a quick plan and started to build this. I am so happy with how it turned out.

Anything "trestle" is hot right now, as well as anything "driftwood", so I decided to combine the two.

I'm working on trying to get some plans for it. It really wasn't difficult and I would love for you guys to be able to build one. I downloaded Sketch-Up but have absolutely no idea how to use it. If one of you is a Sketch-Up expert, please throw a sister a bone!

The top is put together from 1 x 6's, the legs are 2 x 3's and 2 x 2's and the platforms are 2 x 4's screwed to 2 x 6's, trimmed in cove moulding.

The whole thing can be built with a circular saw, pocket hole jig and power drill. I tried a couple new techniques to distress the wood and was pretty happy them.

To give the edges a "hand-hewn" look, I skipped a small hand planer randomly.

I also discovered that a stiff wire brush pushed with the grain creates a weathered, sorta cracked look.

Like I said, hopefully I'll have plans for you guys soon. In the meantime, please feel free to ask me as many questions as you need to help you build this!

What do you think? Could you build it?

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Remodelaholic