Busy, Busy, ...Decisions, Decisions!

Been busy these last couple of days. Yesterday I started scraping one of the doors that leads to the outside. It resembled this door when I started:

Now it looks like this (pardon the tools and my mess!):

I was impressed with how clean it came with just my putty knife and my paint scraper. My neighbor has her doors stripped (with white trim) and I really like the look. I am tempted to have just my two doors that lead to the exterior stained similarly to my neighbor's, but have all of my other doors in the house be painted white (as they currently are). What do you think?

You can see below that I have made some progress on the stairs as well. The skirting is scraping clean better than I expected (where the phone line used to be tacked), and I am almost done scraping all of the risers. You can see that I have also been busy filling nail holes on the risers. Maybe I'll sand and prime those tomorrow.

Today I started off my day by applying the glazing finish to the top of my dresser. I really love how this is turning out! When you look at it up close, it almost seems to resemble woodgrain. You can see I still need to apply the glaze to the vertical surfaces:

Once that was done I primed and painted the newel post in Ultra White. All of my home's doors and trim are currently painted a soft ivory color. I want a fresh clean look, so I am planning on repainting ALL of the woodwork in Ultra White. I think the white trim will make my wall colors look more vibrant and fresh. I'll put a second finish coat on the newel post tomorrow.

I will eventually paint the lower portion of the newel post—need to scrape and prime the quarter-round at the carpet, but this would be much easier to do if the carpet wasn't there. So I'm still working out a plan for this—I'm not quite ready to rip up all of my carpet, but might consider ripping up the perimeter and carpet tack strips so that I can scrape my woodwork throughout the room that's currently embedded in the rug.

And lastly, today I scraped paint off my baseboards and removed layers of painted wallpaper from a small wall. I plan on replacing this purple color with the cream color on the walls in the stairwell. My home has plaster walls and I'll have to do a little bit of wall repair before I'll be ready for paint here.

I'm still pretty stoked about finding those balusters yesterday! They had exactly how many I needed in the sizes I needed and I really like the detail in them—and I got them for a heck of a price! I think I'll paint them white. Such a shame to do since they're lightly stained now and would probably look equally nice with a darker stained finish like I want to use (I love woodgrain!), but I think the contrast of having white balusters with stained treads and railing will look nicer.

Guess we'll see what projects tomorrow brings!

A Dressed Up Dresser

We bought a new unfinished dresser a few years ago. The price was right, we needed the drawer space, and we had no design direction in our bedroom anyway. With an unfinished piece, the design sky was the limit! As it happened, the design sky was "natural" for a few years; I needed to contemplate my new "canvas".

Finally, I decided to paint it brown (should've shot this sooner for a better 'before' shot! Believe it or not, this brown color is actually much darker in person. The flash makes it look much lighter than it truly is!).

Then I needed to replace the stock wooden knobs with something pretty, after all, pretty knobs are like jewelry for furniture! I searched the box stores, and scoured the internet—even bought some knobs on eBay!

Had a hard time finding just the right knobs until I finally found these little gems—on clearance! Oh, the luck!

I loved the details in these knobs. Only problem was, they were BLACK and virtually blended into the dark brown color I had painted the dresser.

I like to follow other DIY'ers and a gal I follow posted about a product with which I was unfamiliar called Rub'n Buff. It's a wax/paint/finish that comes in a few different colors. You just barely rub some onto a textured surface to bring up the highlights.

I chose a silver color. After a little bit of rubbin' and a little bit of buffin', my knobs now have a pewter look to them and pop against the brown a little better. Noticeable, but subtle. I like it!

Lastly, I am applying a glaze over the entire dresser to give it some more interest and character. It's a black glaze I'm applying with a sponge brush. In the pictures below you can see the difference it makes—in these shots, I have applied the glaze to the drawers, but not the vertical surfaces.

I think it's going to look great when it's done! One thing this project has taught me—it's very difficult to photograph BROWN!