Baby Steps

Friggin stop the presses!! Holy crud Batman, guess what?!?

Wait... I kind of need a moment here. I have this habit of accomplishing hard things and not realizing how great a feat they sometimes are, and I believe this is one of those moments. So, here it goes...

My Checkbook is balanced. *crickets*

No, wait! I promise this is a really big thing! Why you may ask? Because 5 years ago it would have taken me 3 months to prep, a slip prevention worksheet and who knows how many Xanax. Not to mention by the time I was done, peace would not have been acquired. This is part of the process when you have PTSD from a relationship. I have talked about his before as an #exspouseofanaddict. Nothing was ever as simple as it was. It was complicated.

Remember trauma is defined as a normal reaction to abnormal behavior. So if I had trauma and anxiety over a checkbook you can just imagine how abnormal it was? Yep.

Today, not only is it balanced but I have peace! And that is a good feeling. Despite plans to be here a while ago, I am finally here today. And now I get to go forward.

I know a lot of you out there are with me on this. You know these feelings, and you also punish yourself for not being where you hink you need to be. Stop doing that.

Give yourself grace. Realize it took a while to get to where you are and it will take time, effort, and work to get out of it. You aren't afraid of the work, you are afraid of the time. We all are. You are afraid if you don't change now, you might be this way forever. You won't be.You are concerned you are going to stay that way, you are conscious of it, so we both know you aren't just going to concede.

So take a minute to reflect on your life, what have you acomplished, that when viewed as babysteps, is no big deal. But to compare it side by side as a before and after? It is huge. Recognize that today and move forward.

We've got this!

Table Benches Part 1

Oh my heck! This project... it will be so worth it when it is done, but if I ever get to done it will be a miracle. The table... unfortunately has had some issues {face palm}. In the post about my table I mention polycrylic binding to impurities and debrit in the wood? Well, apparently this table had them. It started to create air pockets between the wood and the finish. And then just insert kids into the mix, and the picking begins. So one night after dinner, I was looking and had to surrender to the fact this table was going to peel. And so I let them have at it. Within 5 minutes, it was peeled and stripped, along with the map and everything else. The pencil marks got left behind, so that is bonus, right? LOL!

Finding Normal

It's 4 am and I am awake...again. As of late this is a totally normal thing. The only difference is today I am not going to lay in bed hoping that sleep will find me. I am so over being a patient person in regards to all the stuff I am processing through. Ugh...processing.  That seems to have become a dirty word as I am so tired of hearing it or using it. Usually I lay in bed waiting, ever so patiently for sleep to find me so I can drift off back to dreamland. But if I am going to be honest with myself I am going to admit that if I do remember dreaming, they would be considered nightmares. Sure, they seem peaceful enough... and then there are a few threads of truth to my dreams, enough to remind me how scary the life I once led would be terrifying for most.

Table Redo Part 2

Okay, so I have previously revealed to you my plan for this awesome thrift store find. And I have begun to work on it and it has been beyond therapeutic! Working with things that you get to make into your own piece of heaven is always an amazing feeling! So first things first, let me show what I have done to get things moving.

THE PREP WORK

I have refinished a lot of furniture over the last 10 years. I have done this by sanding, stripping and sometimes just painting over the top of the existing paint. It all depends on what I want the finished product to look like for which method I decide to do. In this case, I combined all 3. 

The Legs

The legs were awesome as is. As in the nicks, dents and grooves were perfect and I wasn't about to touch them to ruin them. So I knew that I was going to paint over them. No sanding, no stripping. This is where we have a curtain call for a handy little product we call Denatured Alcohol. I don't know exactly how it works, but it does. You get an old rag and saturate it with the denatured alcohol. Thoroughly wipe down the surface you are going to paint over. This type of alcohol seems to penetrate through the existing paint (whether it is acrylic, latex, oil, or enamel) and preps the surface for the new paint to adhere. And adhere it does.

I used Rustoleum spray paint in Almond. I feel like their paint seems to have more saturation of color so more covering power, and their color is just pure color. You get excellent coverage and you only have to wait minutes in between coats verses hours. Always read the back of the can of the spray paint you are using. Not all spray paint is the same. And if you do not re coat within the window of time on the back of the can- WAIT. Always wait. If you don't, then you run the risk of it peeling or not adhering, or scratching off. Just trust me on this.

The legs took me a grand total of like 60 minutes.

The Tabletop

This was a little more of a delicate part of the table. I needed to strip down the paint because I wanted the top to be a wood color. I didn't want to sand it down, and I am really glad I didn't. It would have been a huge expense in just sand paper. I tried a small part and it kept gumming up underneath the paper. So I got out the paint stripper. The one I use is spray able and I am all about easy. I sprayed it on the table top. By the time I got to the end of the table it had been the 15 minute wait time to start scraping off the paint. I recommend gloves. I don't know what is in paint stripper, but I know there is enough of something to eat away years and layers of paint. So I am sure eating through your delicate skin is no problem (yes, it burns...badly).

I got a really nice surprise as I scraped off the paint. There was a perfectly oiled butcher block like table top. Who covered this up?!? Well, no wonder the sand paper was gumming up. It smelled like Danish Oil under the black paint. So I am sure that was another reason the paint came off so easily. There were parts that left little flecks of the black paint behind. But I couldn't have placed them more perfectly. My husband, that is new to this DIY redo stuff kept asking if I was gonna get it off. I just kept laughing at him. Now that he sees it... he gets it. I did have to sand a little bit as there were places there were knots in the woods that seemed to have the sap disappeared with the paint stripper. But not much effort was put into the prep of the table top.

Next, I wanted to darken up the wood a bit, and even it all out. Not to mention the fact I am kind of picky about the color of "wood" I have in my house. It can't be too yellow or too red... just a good neutral.

So when you apply wood stain in this type of setting, the method is pretty important, to me at least. This table has all these nicks and grooves in the top and I want to make sure these depressions get the stain in them and that this color gets left behind. I use one of those cheapo little brushes from your local home improvement store to wipe a thick layer of the stain on going with the grain. Then I use a rag (that I plan on throwing away) to wipe the stain and really rub it into the wood going against the grain. I then finish it up by wiping with the grain, again. After this, I let it dry. Since I did this in sections, I used this rag to wipe onto the almond color legs to accentuate the worn look on the legs and give it a nice patina.

FINISH

At this point, if you had no intention of putting anything else on the table top, you could just seal it. So if you have no desire to paint a piece of furniture with a map or anything else, I will mention finishing before the hand painting. I have used polyurethane and polycrylic, and my vote is for polycrylic. It doesn't yellow and when it dries, it is really hard and durable for high traffic areas like tables and chairs. BUT, there is a catch... polycrylic adheres best to water based stains and paints. And if there are impurities on the wood, it tends to draw them out and bind to them instead of the wood. So in this project, I used polyurethane. 

As for the chairs, I am going to refinish 4 of my chairs. The others are going to be used to create benches for the long sides of the table. I am really excited (and you should be to, because it is going to take your breath away!) for this as I am going to paint a bunch of different colors (imagine coral, gold, teal, olive green, and a brick red). So yeah, this project still has a ways to go... but it will be oh so very worth it!

HAND PAINTING & STENCILING

At this point I hand drew out the map using a pencil. I tried as best I could to come as close as possible to what the map looked like. Of course, I am not perfect, so there are errors, and mistakes.

 I planned the vinyl, and positioning of all the stencils.

Here is a close up of the compass rose in the upper right corner of the table.

And this is a close up of the map name I designed. it is stenciled in the top middle of the table.

I used a very small brush (a nail striper) to trace the lines of everything that was not a stencil. I used a more full (eye) liner brush for the pink, green, and yellows. And just a regular paint brush for the stenciling.


  

I peeled the stencils while they were still wet so that the paint didn't peel off with the stencil when it dried. Once this was all dry, I began applying the polyurethane.

And after hours of waiting to dry, I had to call in an army of guys to lift this heavy thing into the kitchen. We had only minor injuries... :)

I apologize for the dark pictures, but it is winter in Utah. The sun goes down early, and I have an east facing house with a covered porch. It is just not a great combo for will lit photos.

This one gives you a view of the chairs I still have to refinish....

Thanks for stopping by... I better get going! I am really excited to get started on those chairs!!

#rustoleum #tableredo #awholelotofschmidt #tableredowithvintagedutchmap

Table Redo Part 1

So I know for the last year in my Coming Up section has been some info about redoing my current table. The day I sprayed that first chair, it snowed later that night. Ugh... Total frustration! It put a damper on getting anything else on it done. I do believe now it was divine intervention as my life has so drastically changed that if I would have redone that table, it would have been for nothing...

Halloween Scary Garden

If you have not caught on yet that I love Fairy Gardens, you should know...I love Fairy Gardens! I have 2 posts on them, both here and here. When I was a wee child, I remember adoring all things tiny- to the point I may or may not have a vague memory of a doctors' visit removing a miniature baby bottle from a nasal cavity. So of course with #Halloween being the absolute best holiday of the year, hands down, there definitely needs to be some sort of miniature garden for the spooky season. One completely dedicated to ghosts, goblins, zombies, spiders, tombstones, etc. and the list goes on. I live in Utah y'all, so having actual live plants with it had to be negotiable.

Self Care: Not Just a Simple Concept

In the last few months I have been on a journey and it has taken me places I never knew possible. It started in September with my first panic attack, and I wrote my post about Emotional and Mental Burnout. It has been a very personal journey, but has also given me insight and perspective into, and for, the way most of us live our lives.