Great Furniture Finds at Thrift Stores

I found a great buy at a thrift store this week. As I arrived, they were bringing out a wooden shaker / farmhouse table and six solid wood chairs for $100! 

I texted these photos to my sister whose daughters both moved recently. I paid $100 for my front dining room table and chairs but had to refinished and paint them. 

This table and chairs is SOLID and heavy. They don't need any work and that is less than $15 a piece. I love when you can find deals like that. The chair seats need new covers but that could be done in an hour or  two. 

When you need new furniture, check your local thrift stores, classifieds, or yard-sale sites. There are good deals to be found! 

Have a Blessed Day!

Making a Case for the Cake Topper

Princess Three got a custom made cake topper from my friend Julie. I posted about it here.

We needed to find some container to put it in as my friend said, "No matter how old the person is that is looking at it, they reach out and touch it! They will want to move the hair and it doesn't move so they break it off!" 

I thought I could put a little note on the display saying, "Please Don't Touch" but the children can't read it and she said many times children are the ones breaking the hair off. 

I went to Hobby Lobby and about five other stores looking for some glass sided display we could use, but also, one she could keep and like so she can keep the dust off and something stylish she would like as decor. 

I found this square almost "Sea ship" looking container, but it didn't have a top on it. The sides were glass, and I flipped it upside down, but that put wood on the top and then people couldn't see it through the top if they were tall.

I found several others I thought she may like in her home, but they were either not deep enough, or were really tall. 

We video chatted her from the store and brainstormed about what we could do. I realized they had a framing shop and we could get a top cut for it, but wasn't sure how to hold it up. My sister figured out that we could flip up one of the two clasps holding the side glass in and it would hold the top glass up. So, we had the store frame shop cut us a piece of glass. I then asked if they had any mirror we could put in the back as I noticed that the only one they had in gold had a crack in one side. They said they don't cut mirror there. 

On the way out, I asked about getting a discount due to the crack and it being the only gold one they had, and it was 50% off anyway, so we got the thing for about $16. The next day after hunting down three shops, we were able to get a mirror cut, the broken piece taken out, and they ground the top piece we had cut so no one would get cut, for about $7. So, in all it was less than $25 for the $40 original priced holder.

The mirror shows the back of the dress from the front so you can see the entire topper from the front. 

We put a bow on the handle and displayed the thing on a cool piece of wood I found at a second hand store.

People were taking pictures and asking for the name of the creator all night. It was a hit for sure! My friend Julie is VERY gifted and talented! I will be helping her create a new website for her toppers and other creations soon!

I feel very blessed to know her!

Using Teak Oil To Freshen Up a Batik Box

I found this really cool wooden box at a second hand store recently. I could see it was sun faded but thought maybe using the teak oil on it may bring up the color again. 

I made a video showing what using teak oil on the faded wood would do for it! You can see the huge difference when I put teak oil on half of the mask.

In this video I share how to refresh and shine up old wooden items. I have used this method to shine up my garage door, the outside of my trailer, the fiberglass cover and door on my trailer, wooden knife handles, aluminum siding on my home, aluminum windows, a grill, wooden boxes, toys, bathroom cabinets, and kitchen cupboards. I am sure I am forgetting some things as well.

This shines and protects whatever you put it on. It will even clean oxidation and surface dust off items. If you are going to use it on something that is really dirty or oily, you can clean it first. Mineral spirits will clean metal fairly well.

Here is a link to me using it on the barbecue grill.

Here is a link to me using it on the garage door.  

Here is a link to me using it on the trailer siding, easier than waxing. 

Here is a link to me using it on the kitchen cabinets.  

Here is a link to me using on aluminum siding.  

Here is a link to me using teak on my wooden knife handles. 

Here is a link to me using teak oil on my swamp cooler. 

Here is a link where I use it on a larger jewelry box.  

I am so thankful for the older gentleman that interrupted my phone call asking what I was going to be waxing and told me about Teak Oil. As you can see, I have used it so often that I have gone through 4 or more containers of teak oil. 

It is such a versatile product and I am grateful to have it in my life. Have a blessed day!

The annual Couch Conditioning and Snake Skin Hat As Well

 

I shared about how my front room leather couch was fading due to UV rays starting in 2014. I found a great product that I use called Lexol. Here is a link to the original post on that.

I then posted in 2015 a part 2 showing it needed more conditioning since I hadn't conditioned it in years before 2014. The color of the couch was fairly dark still. Here is a link to that post.

In 2017 I posted here showing a post of what is going on in my life but also one of the couch showing how the color had faded over those past few years.

In 2018 I purchased a Rattlesnake Skin cowboy hat and shared how I used the same product to condition the snakeskin as I use on the couch. I have also used it on a leather holster for my fathers vintage gun and other leather straps. When I conditioned the hat, I also conditioned the couch at the same time. Due to the wear of years of sitting in the couch as well as so many years of UV sunlight on the couch, the dye and coating on the couch have completely worn off. 

When I conditioned the couch that last time, the leather took the conditioner differently than it had before. It was more wet like a natural non-dyed or conditioned leather. In the spots where the dye and initial color of the couch was intact, the conditioner slides over the couch like wiping down a counter. In the parts of the couch that are worn, the finish on the couch is completely worn so when I conditioned it, the conditioner made the leather very wet and I had to use LOTS of conditioner! The leather soaked it in and became dark due to the moisture rather than becoming dark due to the dye in the leather. 

I haven't conditioned the couch as often now because the product that I use has tannin in it and is a bit sticky for a few days until it dries. I also worry about the chemicals transferring through the skin. I have tried to do the last few coats of conditioner when no one will be visiting and using that couch for a few weeks at least. 

I noticed when conditioning it this time, that even more product soaked in and that the leather is now really soft with no finish left on the cushions. There is still some finish on the backs of the back cushions, but none on the seat cushions. 

There is no color left on the seat that sees daylight and I noticed as you can see in the photos of the couch per-conditioning this time, that where the couch pillows stay, there is a bit of color left, so I am going to remove the pillows from the couch unless family is home so that the color will fade more evenly in the next few years. It is really frustrating that the color has dissapeared, however, the conditioning of the couch has left it very soft and supple which is nice as I have seen other natural leather couches crack and get brittle. 

You can see the difference of the color of the couch by looking at the first link and post in 2014 compared to the photos of this post. I also did some repairs on the couch this year but haven't posted that video or post yet, but I am grateful that I was able to repair the couch and that I learned about this product to keep the couch soft and functioning so we can enjoy it for many years to come!

Under THESE Stars - It All Began - Printed Star Maps of Your Location and Date

Princess Three is dating the CUTEST Guy ever! I have never seen her so relaxed around anyone she has dated in the past. 

She has known this boy for about four years, but they actually matched on a dating site / app and reconnected about six months ago or so. She was working and he had just graduated with his degree and was heading off to a medical school out of state from where she is living.

With that knowledge, they dated casually, and she dated other men. He left for school, but they found themselves talking every day even with his heavy load of classes. They found that they always have something to talk about, and enjoy spending time together. 

He decided to come for a visit over Thanksgiving. We all really enjoyed his visit. They are so cute together. We were hoping he would be able to come over Christmas as well as it was fun to have more people to play games with and they are so easy going, that it is nice to have them around! 

Because he already had plans with friends for a skiing vacation, he had limited time for holiday fun, so we were all willing to have and celebrate our Christmas early so that he could be here for our holiday together. 

Princess Three gave him a really cute gift for one of his gifts. It is a star chart that is printed up and framed that is the night sky overhead on the night they had their first kiss and WHERE they had their first kiss! Apparently, they can determine the exact star configuration based on the name of the place where you were at any given date and year in history.

People print up the sky the day their kids were born, the day they got engaged, and other big events in life. They will print whatever saying you want under the star chart with the date and location. Say you were at Disney on New Years Eve this year. You would put something like, "Under this sky at the magical kingdom we got engaged. December 31, 2020. 

It is such a cute idea and I could tell that her boyfriend really was touched by the gift. I thought I would share about it as it was a new idea to me and figured some of you may not know about it either! 

The site and link are thenightsky.com. 

Have a Blessed Day!

Gumball Fun After Years Without - Skittles Aren't Working

Princess Five collected Looney Tunes for years. She has a fun collection of Bugs and Tazz items and I found this cute gumball machine years ago. 

When she was in high school, I would buy large bags of skittles and put them in the machine. Because they were small, you didn't need to put money in the bank as you could just jiggle the handle and the skittles would come out. 

When Princess One comes home to visit, her family eats the skittles and at Halloween, I would buy cheap clearance Skittles and refill the machine. 

However, for years I have been looking for real gumballs cheap to fill it up as the colors match the room better and I wanted it for more of a décor item than for a candy dispenser. I have kept an eye out for many years to find the small gumballs. I bought some on clearance at Family Dollar years back but they were stale when I opened them, the outside was chipping off. It was frustrating not being able to find them. 

I keep checking the stores and at Christmas, I bought some gumballs but when I opened them, they were green and red. I bought some at Easter, but when I bought them and opened them, they were in the shape of Easter eggs in pastel colors. You can't see them in the containers, so I have purchased them many times and find they aren't what I am looking for, so I have been waiting. 

I didn't want to spend a ton ordering online or bulk, so I have just been keeping my eyes open for a good deal and today was the day! 

Princess Five and I were mailing a package to one of her missionary friends, and we went to the store and in a cart near the checkout, my life changed for the good! Princess Five didn't want to get them saying the Skittles were fine. I didn't think they matched well and really just wanted a full gumball machine in the room as more of a décor item. 

I was super excited that the bags were quite large for only $1. I have never seen them for sale in the store and was taken back that they had them in the clearance cart since I have never seen them for sale. 

She reminded me that funds are tight, but I told her that I don't eat out, I don't go the movies, I don't splurge on things for myself, and that I have been looking for these for years and wasn't going to pass up on the opportunity. 

I was so excited to fill up the machine! I removed the skittles and a few were crushed and stuck in the machine. I washed the glass and cleaned the parts. We had a few struggles putting it back together, but finally figured it out. We got it working and I LOVE how it looks on the shelf. The colors match the room so much better and the gumballs are actually the good flavored ones that each taste different. 

When I was young, my favorite ice-cream flavors were bubble gum and licorice. When my dad would take me on our "date" night once every 8 months each month was a new child) when it was my turn, I would always go get a double scoop of those two flavors of ice cream. 

I LOVED gumballs and had my own machine when I was young. Today I popped a few in my mouth and started blowing bubbles. We used to have bubble blowing contests when I was younger with my siblings. We had some really epic bubbles! 

I think I've still "got it" when you look at the bubbles I blew. They got bigger each time I tried. I was worried to go any bigger as I didn't want it in my hair! 

Have a Blessed day and stay safe!

It Only Took 3 1/2 Years To Finish - Refinishing a Metal Chair and Seat Cushion

In November of 2016, I started working on a chair I got from my mothers home when she died. I remember this chair growing up in our home. I have not idea where the chair came from originally, but it has been in my family for many years.

No one in the family wanted it, and my nephew was going to take it to school for a prop in his drama class as it was really beat up. I decided if it were going to not go to someone in the family, I would take it home and refinish it. I have a little desk in my bedroom that could use a black chair so I took it home. 

If you remember back that far on my blog, here is a link to that post.  Around that time, Princess five had rolled her car and there were lots of crazy things going on in my world. I had also misplaced the fabric from my mothers home that I wanted to use on the chair, as I thought it would be cool to use her fabric on her chair. 

Most of the items I have from her are large wooden dressers, as I chose to get the dressers for the girls as they are functional over her antique decorative pieces that may have been worth more. With that, I thought a little bit of her couch fabric would be a nice touch to make the chair more "hers" and the chair did have a similar color on it at some point, so I was restoring it to what it was like when I remembered it from my childhood.  

I share in the two videos (the first video is in the link above post) how I spray painted the chair in the first, and the second video I did today, showing how to cover the wooden seat, add padding, and finish it off. 

The videos isn't the best as I have been losing my voice all week, so the sound isn't the best. 

I am also not feeling well, so hope I didn't pick up the Corona virus anywhere, but I have been feeling worse and worse this week and today feel like something is coming. I am heading to bed after this and it isn't even 8 p.m. 

Basically, you pick the fabric you want to put on the seat. You can recover the fabric that is on the seat, or you can remove the fabric by pulling out the tacks or staples using a flat head screwdriver and a pair of pliers. 

Once you have the old fabric off, you can use the old fabric as a template or pattern for the new cover, or you can just measure the fabric about three inches wider than the wood piece so that it will cover the padding and wood wrapping to the back where you can staple it on. 

Make sure to staple the edges evenly across from the side and not go around in a circle as you can mess up the top that way. Do one side, then the other, then the other sides like a cross, so that it is pulled evenly over the chair and you don't get bulges. 

I find using a staple gun works better than using tacks as you can do it one handed while you hold the fabric, rather than needing two hands to hammer a tack into the back of the seat.

Make sure to mark where the screw holes are in the bottom of the wood so you can find them under the fabric as it is easier to screw them into existing holes rather than trying to make new ones. 

Also, you may want to tape the screws to the wood of the seat so you don't lose them while working on the chair. I have lost one or more in the past and then you have to find the exact length screw or it can go through the wood, and when someone sits on the chair, it will poke them in the behind. 

If you have little children, you can buy some thin clean plastic at Walmart on the roll, and can put plastic over the fabric until you children are a little older and past the stage of staining the fabric. 

I have recovered dining and kitchen chairs many times over the years. Sometimes if the fabric is just dated and not dirty, I will just put the new fabric over the old, but if it is an old chair, I like to clean off the old fabric replacing it rather than covering it. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. 

Have a Blessed Day! 

Making Large Game Pieces For Decor From A Toy - Game

For many years now, I have decorated with vintage toy replicas or large décor game items. 

A few years back, I won some prizes at a game night and exchanged them at the local store for some large wooden dice. A few months later, I won again and was able to exchange the prize for a few more to go on a larger shelf I have over my stairs.

Here is a link to a post where I share a bit about it but also share about a dream with a  wall of antique game boards which I had forgotten I had until I looked up that post. It is interesting though in that post, I have the game piece shown at the top in the original red color before I painted it. 

I painted the first one and don't think I thought to blog about it, but then painted it in the way I am sharing today, and it has been decorating a corner of my piano that way for at least three years. 

Basically, I have been keeping my eyes out for the game "Sorry" that is made in a game piece with a little storage case at the bottom of the piece. 

The first one I found, was just the piece shown in the link listed above. I had some "Hammerite" paint I had used on a few other items, and thought I would paint the game piece with that and see how it looked. 

I REALLY liked how it came out and it has been on the piano corner since. I think it looks really cute as I put it on a bit of a stand to stagger the heights of the décor items. I made a video of how I painted the pieces and it is wonderful that I have been able to find three different pieces of the "Sorry" game.

I painted two of them and decided to keep one as a game to play with the kids and LOVE the other two with their hammered paint as I think they match well with the other "toys" in the décor. 

I have enough pieces now, but I still think it is a fun idea to paint those plastic pieces as décor items. I also think the bright red ones would be nice in a kids room or bright game room but it is wonderful to have what I have now. 

This is more of an "idea" post than a "how to" post but I am happy with the results. 

Have a Blessed Day!

Making a Fake Air Vent To Access Pipe Bibs or Plumbing In Walls

A few years ago, I had some issues with a pipe bib in my home. I ended up cutting a hole in my ceiling to fix the pipe and the flooding and I hate fixing drywall in areas that I may need to access later. 

I mention in that post back then that I thought I may put an air vent over the hole to be able to access that pipe bib in the future if needed. I then tried it, and was very happy with the results. Here is a picture of what that vent looks like. Here is a link to that post.  

My dad had a few floods in the past month. He had surgery and didn't heal well. He fell in the bathroom and on his way down, he hit the toilet and the back tank portion of this toilet started to leak into the bathroom below it. Due to him being wounded, we put a bucket down there to catch the water until we could make sure my dad was ok and due to the time that passed before we could get to figuring out what was causing the flooding, there was a huge mess. 

A few days after that flooding, I realized that I didn't take out the wet drywall and it had started to mold. I took all the drywall out and put fans in the walls to dry out what I could of the remaining drywall.  I also put an ozonater in the room to kill off the mold. I had already dried out the carpets where the water had come out through the walls, but with all the craziness of my dad's injuries and wounds, I just spaced the drywall. 

My dad had a friend that he thought could fix the drywall but he was supposed to come a few weeks back He didn't come due to some health issues. My brother called asking if there was something he could do. I told him that the bathroom ceiling needed fixing as it had been a month since the flood and I had been working non stop and didn't have the supplies needed to fix it. 

He came and was cutting the drywall to fix the holes and I suggested that we make a trap door in case the toilet ever flooded again or the tub overflowed or any other water issues happened. He was going to make it in the center due to the wood support but that would have been straddling the shower wall so I suggested that we place the "vent" over the shower so that if there ever was more flooding, the water would flow to where it could get out and if it flooded through the hole, it would just fall into the shower and down the drain! 

My brother went and purchased a vent cover and my dad suggested that we put plastic up under all the pipes and raise it up a little off the drywall so that the plastic guides the water to the shower stall. Even if the drywall under the vent got wet, we could easily cut a small piece to fit under the vent again. 

My brother mudded and attached the new drywall. I sanded the mud and did some touch up mudding / spackling and sanded that down. 

I then painted the ceiling with some paint / primer that we bought and then was able to paint the wall and ceiling with the paint they had for that room. It dried a bit darker than what was on the wall, but I feathered it into the old paint using a paintbrush, so it didn't look all that bad once everything was dry. I screwed the vent into the drywall and support wood and made the vent angle towards the shower so that if it did flood, the water would be pushed towards the shower center. 

I hope they never have any flooding again, but if they do, I think we have taken every precaution to avoid having the mess we did with it going down the wall and flooding the carpet in their family room and ruining the paint and drywall in the ceiling. 

I think it looks great, and no one would know that there really isn't a vent there. 

Just make sure that you actually use some drywall under the vent so that you don't have spiders and things coming in through the fake vent from the inside of the walls etc. It is easy to cut a piece of drywall to fit and makes the room airtight as in the winter, cold air could also come in through the fake vent if you didn't have that drywall secured in place under the vent. 

Feel free to ask any questions you may have. Have a  Blessed Day!