Project Gallery Archives - Page 44 of 94

I’ve obviously been pretty busy over the last few weeks.

After I got the playroom finished, I immediately set my sights on my home office. It has basically been the room where “stuff” goes to die. I was climbing over ladders, toys and wayward pieces of furniture to get to my makeshift desk.

That photo was taken on a good day, after I had picked up a bit. Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that bloggers lead a glamorous lifestyle.

Anyway, since I spend so much time in that room, I decided that I wanted to focus on it next. I began by cleaning it out and giving away a lot of its contents to locals via my Facebook page. Once the clutter was gone, I knew that I wanted the focus of the room to be the far wall (where my computer is in the above photo).

Looking to branch out a bit from my usual graphic paint treatments, I thought bringing in some warm wood tones wood be fun. I love the white wooden planked walls that are so popular of late, but white wood doesn’t really match my home’s style. But, they did spark an idea.

I bought a few packages of EverTrue 32″ pine tongue and groove plank paneling at Lowe’s and played around with some layout ideas on my floor. I ultimately decided that a herringbone pattern would look pretty neat.

I calculated that I would need about 10 packages (at $9.58 each) to cover the entire wall. I split all of those planks into 3 piles and stained them in 3 different shades of brown. I used the little half pint cans of stain – Kona and Summer Oak from Rustoleum and Provencial from Minwax – and it was just the right amount to stain all of the boards. I used Minwax Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner before staining since pine often looks blotchy after staining if it’s not prepared correctly. With the stain and wood conditioner, I simply wiped it on with a lint-free cloth, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and then wiped off the excess.

Because I wanted the pattern to be even on both sides of my wall and I wanted the angle of the boards to be exactly 45-degrees, I found the center point of my wall and drew out an angle. To do that, I used a framing square and a level to draw a 90-degree angle and then used an angle square to find the 45-degree angle.

I lined one of my boards up on the 45-degree angle and secured it to the wall using my pneumatic brad nailer. The planks are incredibly thin and light, so I was able to just use 5/8″ brads (i.e. little nails). I put two brads in each end of the board.

I used four boards in each section of the herringbone, since four boards across was half of the length as one board is long. I used a random pattern for the colors as I went along. Because the boards are tongue and groove, I was able to slide them each into place and secure them with the brads.

Until I got to the edges of the wall, there wasn’t any measuring to it. I just had to count by four and rotate the boards when I got to that point. They went up on the wall very quickly.

If my boards didn’t completely meet up, I dabbed a little bit of dark brown craft paint behind them. It’s super professional around here, y’all.

Things got a little more complicated when I reached the edges of the wall. The planks had to end in a 45-degree angle to sit flush with the wall edge. I just used my angle square to draw those angles and then I cut them with my miter saw set at 45-degrees. I also had to cut most of them shorter as well, so I measured the length of those boards by holding them in place and marking where they should be cut and then cut them with the miter saw set at 90-degrees. I removed the baseboard from just that wall so that the panels would go all the way to the floor. I only have one outlet on that wall, so I made sure that I didn’t nail too close to it so that I wouldn’t get any brads through the wiring behind the wall (I don’t think my brads were long enough to worry about that, though).

The cutting wasn’t hard, but it was time consuming. I did this entire project by myself (and I think it killed Tom that I wouldn’t let him participate), and I later found out that my neighbor had come up with her own contingency plan of getting me to the hospital in case I cut off a finger while I was home alone. Thanks, Ellie! 😀 That totally cracked me up, but it made me so glad to have her as a neighbor. In reality though, using a saw really is dangerous if you aren’t taking the proper precautions, so wear eye protection and check and then double check your hand placement before you bring down the blade.

I completely forgot to take a picture of what the wall looked like once all the planks were installed. They weren’t all perfect, though. Some of them touched the adjacent wall and others were about an inch too short. It was fine, though, because I knew I was going to stain and install some lattice trim around the edges to finish it off. I measured and cut the angles at 45-degrees, pre-conditioned and stained, and then installed it to the wall. I actually used a slightly longer brad – I think 1 inch – to secure the boards to the wall.

I taped off and covered my new wall and then painted my ceiling “Lindsay White” (1 gallon of Glidden flat white paint off the shelf with an extra 1 oz of white added in at the paint counter) and the rest of my walls in Glidden Blue Blazes.

The end result is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I still have some touching up to do on the paint, but I’ll probably wait until the rest of the room is complete to deal with that.

I have some great pieces of furniture that are going to go along that wall, so I can’t wait to show you what it will look like once it’s finished. There are still lots of fun surprises in store for my home office!

So, what do you think of my herringbone wood paneled wall? I love it so much that I want to marry it.

Joining the Best DIY Projects of November link up at Beneath My Heart.

My favorite DIY projects are always the ones that involve painting. More specifically, I love the ones that allow me to update a vintage piece of furniture with brightly colored paint.

To date, I have only used three types of paint on furniture – latex paint, acrylic paint and spray paint. There is a world of different types of paint available on the market, but I have never wanted to rock the boat. I know how these paints are going to react on my surfaces, and 9 times out of 10 I reach for plain ‘ole latex paint.

I’ve been itching to try something new (I still haven’t tried Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, y’all). When I saw the gorgeous finishes that my friend Marian was achieving with her new Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at milk paint. She was sweet enough to send me a few colors to try out, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Until I saw that the paint came to me like this.

Yep, it’s a little cardboard box of paint. A beautiful little box, but still a box of paint. I almost froze in sheer panic – particularly when I opened that little box.

Crap! It was a bag of powdered paint. It reminded me of every failed attempt I’ve had with boxed cake and muffin batter in that I can never get all of the lumps out. Ack! I shut the box and stuck it in my office for a few weeks.

As fate would have it, I found the perfect desk for my office redo (if you follow me on Facebook, you should be happy to know that I have quit obsessing about it), and it screamed for me to use the gorgeous Flow Blue color that Miss Mustard Seed sent my way. I had to be a big girl and just deal with the powdered paint.

After a few problems along the way, I ended up with a beautiful finish on the desk. When it was all said and done, it was actually really easy to use! The cool thing is that you only mix what you need, so you don’t have 1/2 of an unused can of paint when you are finished with your project. It leveled beautifully (no brush marks) and in an hour I put the hardware back on my drawers. I could have never done that with latex.

I know I can’t possibly be the only one who’s nervous to try a new type of paint, so I put together some tips to help ease your nerves. There are several types of milk paint on the market, but I’m talking specifically about Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint since it’s the only one I’ve used.

Five Beginner’s Tips for Working With Milk Paint

Tip #1: Watch the Instructional Videos

Marian has put together a series of videos that give brief tutorials on everything milk paint. She shows you how to mix it, how to apply it, and how to get a no-chip finish if you aren’t going for the chippy look.

Each video is only about 2 minutes long and can be found here. I highly advise watching them all before you begin, even if you don’t think you necessarily need to. It will be 10 minutes well spent.

Tip #2: Stir, Stir, Stir

To mix your paint, you add 1 part paint to 1 1/4 parts hot water. What? Yeah, I hate ratios like that, too. I ended up doing 12 tbsp of powder to 15 tbsp of water in an empty paint can, but you can use a plastic cup if that’s more readily available to you. That ended up being the perfect amount for what I needed for my project of painting the fronts of six desk drawers (the rest of the desk will be another color).

In one of her video tutorials, Marian says that you need to stir for about five minutes. Trust her on that! Stir, stir, stir with a paint stick. I didn’t stir long enough and the paint was too lumpy…which leads me to my next tip.

Tip #3: Test the Paint on a Scrap Piece of Wood

Even if you have painted eleventy million pieces of furniture, test the consistency of your milk paint the first time you use it on a piece of scrap wood. It is supposed to be thinner (i.e. more watery) than typical latex paint. If it’s not stirred well enough (see Tip #2), it’s pretty lumpy and chunky. If you think that it needs more water (instead of just stirring it more), it will be really runny.

Because I didn’t test my paint on a scrap, here’s what my drawer fronts looked like after the first coat.

I’ve painted long enough to know that I can just sand down whatever is not working, so after the first drawer dried I quickly sanded down the lumpy areas. Once I applied the 2nd “just right” coat to the “too chunky” and “too runny” drawer fronts, they looked great. If I would have tested on a scrap, I wouldn’t have had the panicked feeling I felt when I saw my first and second consistency attempts.

Marian suggests using 1-2 coats of her milk paint, but I went ahead and used 3. I’m a rule breaker. I wanted complete opacity since the primitive/farmhouse/chippy look, though beautiful, is not my personal style.

Why, yes. I propped my drawers up with Solo cups. Necessity (and laziness) is the mother of invention.

Tip #4: Protect Anything You Don’t Want Painted

I learned the hard way that since milk paint is much thiner than latex, it is much runnier and dripper, too. Before I knew it, a few drops had slung off my paint brush and into my drawers.

In the grand scheme of things, the drips were not a big deal to me. I’ll either leave them alone since I’ll never see them when they are covered in my desk junk or I’ll use some Krud Kutter to try to remove them. But, if the drips had gotten on an important surface, I would have been very irritated with myself. So, mask off anything you don’t want painted, just in case.

Tip #5: Don’t Panic

When it was all said and done, I found that my original panic about milk paint was unfounded. Once I got the consistency right, it was really easy to use. It dried quickly, which is a huge plus when you want to transform a project in a short amount of time.

Like with all paint, if you don’t like it you can lightly sand it off. I had to do that with the “too chunky” drawer shown above and it now looks no different than the others.

I can’t yet speak to the durability of the paint, but I trust Miss Mustard Seed’s judgement. I applied one coat of her furniture wax and plan on doing a second coat for added protection. This was also the first time I had used furniture wax, and I was pleasantly surprised in how easy it was to apply and buff off.

All in all, I loved Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint and will definitely be using it for future projects if it is available in the color I want. There’s no need to prime or sand (you add in some liquid bonding agent if you have a glossy surface or if you don’t want to end up with a chippy finish) and the finish is very nice. I appreciate that her color palette includes some paint colors that can easily be used in more modern spaces.

There’s nowhere for me to purchase it locally yet, but I can order it from one of her retailers who sell it online.

I can’t wait to show you the finished desk! Hopefully, I’ll be able to show you that by the end of this week.

Have you used milk paint before? Have you been scared to try it? Let me know your thoughts!

I was provided with some Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint products for the purposes of review. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

DIY Herringbone Wood Paneled Wall

Beginner’s Tips for Using Milk Paint + a Project Sneak Peek