The ‘Piece’ is Done!! …for now

I know that since I posted yesterday evening, some people may not check their blog lists for new posting several times a day (like I do *Ü*), so if you didn’t read my post yesterday of the trials I had to go through to finish this piece…the blood…the sweat…the tears…okay, no blood and not much sweat (temps were quite pleasant yesterday), but there were a few tears…so, if you didn’t read yesterdays post, you can read it here.  I purposely put all the negativity about the project in that post so I wouldn’t ruin the reveal.  lol

Hubs was at the neighbor’s house (the ones with the ‘magic shed’)a few months ago, and they were redoing their bedroom.  New paint, new carpet, etc.  She’s not big into decorating, but kind of got into it when they were doing their bedroom.  Hubs was there helping them move something.  He came home and told me I needed to stop by and see what she bought for in the bedroom-it was something that we had been talking about building for the dining room, and just the day before, I had drawn it up and figured out what size lumber I was going to have to go get.  He told me she bought it for $17 at the local close-out store.  What??  I had figured the lumber to cost around $60 for ours…and that was guess-timating!   Next day, I stopped down to look….I was in shock.  Painted and distressed….it would have been PERFECT for my house.  I went straight to the store and scored me 2 of them!

~~~~~~~~~~~$17$~~~~~~~~~

Isn’t is a beautiful thing??

Yes, it is one of those flat-pack chip board pieces, and they are made to put a heating insert inside, but for the price of the piece, and the savings vs. buying the lumber to build one, I could not help myself.  I bought this one and also a corner model (which I will show it’s placement soon).  I had started to prime it when I remembered to take a picture.  And then it sat, until ‘the conditions’ I explained in yesterday’s post, were right.  I won’t go back there in this post- it wasn’t pretty.  But here it is sitting on the front sidewalk yesterday…

 

That is when it was splotchy…you can see it on the side, across the top front panel and at the base by the opening.  Then I clear coated it again, and it was worse than that. <—Not going there again.

More paint later, I had ‘fixed’ it, and I had Brady help me bring it in before it started to rain.  I painted the inside, attached a front board, and put ‘a back’ on it (I will explain that in a bit).  Here it is as it now sits in my Dining Room…

Did I tell you I almost L-O-V-E it?

I say almost, because it HAS to be distressed for me to really        L-O-V-E   it.  I will have to work on the distressing which will probably have to be dry-brushing it with some brown because I’m still not confident that sanding will not take all of the paint off again.  I worked too hard to get it to actually stick and don’t want to risk ruining it.

Since I almost love it, I knew I had to take pictures to show you today.  I couldn’t show it without a back on it though, and I didn’t have any thin plywood to make one with.  We have some thick plywood, but I didn’t want all that extra weight added to it because I like to be able to move things around when I want.  So no back….what’s a girl to do?

Improvise.

I may, or may not, be bragging about my creativeness at this point (LOL) but I just wanted to show you what a creative, determined, trash-to-treasure- type woman like myself (and YOU) can do when push comes to shove and you are forced to ‘think outside of the box’.

I was going to use fabric.  Yes….fabric.  I went to my stash and found that I did not have a big enough piece of black fabric to cover it.  I went outside of the box again, grabbed a piece that was large enough, and headed to the basement.

What did I do with the fabric in the basement?  Some of you might know where I’m going with this…cause I know there are several spray-paint-aholics out there like myself.  Yes.  I hung it on the clothesline in the basement and I broke out the black spray paint.  Seriously.

Luckily, as I was setting up to paint the inside of the fireplace I found the spray can helper that I bought a month ago that I had forgotten about- it was still in the bag with the quart of black I bought for the fireplace!  If you don’t have one, this is a spray-paint-aholic’s dream tool…

Of course I had to pay $6 for this one at HD because after I became a spray-paint-aholic, I never saw one at Dollar General or Family Dollar like I had seen them before I became one.

Back to the fabric…I attached my spray can helper and went to work.  I sprayed and I sprayed and I sprayed.  I sprayed so much, that I began to feel a little ‘high’ from the fumes ( Note to self: need to purchase a painters mask).  I went up to the kitchen to finish dinner and ignored Hubs remark that it smelled like I spray painted a car in the basement (Another note to self: never spray paint a car in the basement- do it outside).

But it worked.  I stapled that piece of almost-black fabric to the back of my fireplace and wa-LAH.

Back of fireplace….done.  I tried to get a good picture of it, but it seems to be impossible.  If I took it like above, with a part of the mantle in the picture, it flashed off the wood and blacked out the fabric.  If I took it without any of the wood in the picture, it flashed on the fabric and made it look waaaaayyyy lighter than it appears…like this.

So just look at this picture, in which it looks gray, and imagine it darker- that is what it looks like.  It almost looks like dark bead board, which made me soooo glad I picked the striped fabric instead of printed, and that I did not run the stripes horizontal!

Here is another picture taken in a different setting on my camera…

I do almost love it.  So much.

Now I have to make decisions for decorating that area.  Of course I will show pictures when I get something worked out with it. 

This has turned out to be a long post and it’s almost noon now.  I do have a T2T piece that I finished yesterday and I wanted to show.  I took 2 pieces of ‘trash’ and married them to make something kind of interesting for the front porch. It's raining cats and dogs outside right now, so I will show that Friday.  The rain also gives me the opportunity to work on rearranging my t.v./craft room instead of working outside today.  That’s a good thing.