Tables and bathrooms and knobs – oh MY!

I have taken a break from house projects for a while, but here are some I was wrapping up before the Christmas holidays.

First was our table. I sold the one that was graciously left by the old owners, George and Betty, and scoured Kijiji for a secondhand oak pedestal table. I quickly found one that at $50 was just what I was looking for. Not much to look at, but it had a leaf so it would be able to stretch to accommodate most of my crazy family, and it came without chairs, which was just what I wanted because I had plans for the chairs. Big plans, y’all.

Here it is in all its basic oak glory.

I used a homemade chalk paint recipe to paint the pedestal base, and sanded the top and stained it with Minwax Special Walnut. A few coats of poly helped protect it from the destruction of my darling toddler.

Behold!

Once the table was tackled,  I spent a great deal of time lurking around the Habitat for Humanity ReStore searching for single wooden chairs.

I wanted to find six of all different shapes and sizes, and paint them all the same colour. Mismatched but unified. Same-same but different, you know?

Unfortunately, single wooden chairs in solid shape are surprisingly hard to find, and I tapped out at three before the holidays swarmed me and I ran out of time. I’ll hunt down at least one more when it is warmer than -45 here.

I got to work on the three chairs I did find (for around $8-10/ea) and primed them, then painted them Youthful Coral by Behr.

(erm, excuse the dead tulips)

The coral colour looks a tad awkward with the sage-y green kitchen walls, and if I had some sort of genie situation happening, the kitchen and hallway would be painted a creamy white like BLAM. But, since I am stepping off the DIY hamster wheel, this is one of those “who cares’ situations.

Now, onto the bathroom.

Damn, Betty. You really committed to this black and yellow colour scheme. I decided that fighting against it was pretty much impossible. I mean, the toilet is yellow. Kind of hard to hide that. So instead I fully embrace its retro charm. There is a whole website devoted to saving pink bathrooms, and I didn’t want to risk angering some likeminded black/yellow bathroom aficionados.

I painted the woodwork white just to lighten it up a bit, and I find that white is always a really crisp, clean look for a bathroom. A bumblebee print from Etsy (that was actually featured many months ago when I wrote about our experience being engulfed by real life here) added a playful nod to the colour scheme.

Over many many (many) evenings I slowly tackled painting all of the hallway trim white, and in two smaller updates, I replaced our dull copper kitchen cabinet hardware with colourful mismatched painted ceramic ones, and rearranged the furniture in my writing room to accommodate an easel to keep Olive busy while I write.

So there you have it! A few odds and ends, wrapped up.