Blue Room update

The blue room is no longer blue.
I guess the more accurate but nondescript name for it would be the small bedroom. It's the first room you see when you walk up the stairs. We gutted it, carved out a hallway from it (made it smaller), added a teeeeeny closet, updated the electrical, slapped on some paint, and added a chandelier.


The chandelier I found for 15$ at the Vermont Salvage:

so very brass

It was the perfect size and very very brass (which Dan hates), with super old cloth wiring. I brought it to Home Depot for some advice on rewiring it (turns out rewiring chandelier is super easy) and two old gentlemen there told me the chandelier was probably a very expensive one at the time it was made, and you can tell its value because it's solid brass and heavy plated brass, yada yada. Hearing that of course made me hesitate for a second about spray painting it, but I forged on.

primed white with zinsser spray primer

so cute and little

 

New sockets, socket covers, spray paint, ceiling canopy and light bulbs set me back roughly 35$. So a 50$ chandelier in total. Not bad, I suppose.

That chest of drawers is an auction find that I bought about a year ago. It has some really pretty details all around the body an on the drawers themselves and at the time I thought it would look great if I stripped the cream paint and brought it back to natural wood. So I stripped four of the drawers which took FOREVER and realized that I was never going to get all the paint off the details. So the drawers sat in our garage for a year and the rest of the chest sat in our parlour.

How it sat in our parlour for 12 months

cool details

Last weekend, while Dan was away at a conference in Florida, I finally got around to finishing it. I sanded the rest of the drawers and the body a bunch, painted it semi gloss white and the drawer faces a light gray. Then I sat for two hours and polished the drawer hardware with Barkeeper's Friend while I watched Rehab Addict.

Sanding line

Mango my sidekick keeping me company

Barkeeper's Friend is A-MAzing. Unpolished handle to the left, barkeeper's Friended on the right.

The drawers that I didn't strip actually turned out slightly better than the drawers I did strip. Go figure. Overall, it looks much brighter and cleaner and nicer, I think.

Some blue room before and afters:

going up the stairs

corner that now has a tiny tiny tiny closet

Now we just need some doors, door trim, and baseboards.