Greetings exhausted helper monkeys! I know you all had big weekends. We certainly did. All of my spare time is currently 100% focused on my sewing room rehaul, so there’s no REAL sewing to report. I’ve been snapping pictures along the way, though, so here’s the update!

First, there’s the furniture painting. I have a couple of pieces of furniture that I can’t let go of for sentimental reasons that will finally lead useful lives in the new sewing nook. First, my grandmother’s secretary. Grandma LOVED to paint furniture, so this has about 800 coats of paint. I refinished it’s partner, the china hutch, a couple of years ago, and it took FOREVER to get the paint off. I didn’t have the time or spirit for that this time around, plus everything else in the nook is white and I wanted this to be white too! Here it is in its pre-painted glory. It looks WAY worse in photos – it had a sort of shabby/chippy charm to it a few days ago and it lived in my little office nook (now disassembled) in the basement. The yellow print is a fabric-wrapped piece of cardboard.

Next, the dollhouse. My dad made this for me when I was little. He wasn’t much of a woodworker, but I really, really wanted a dollhouse and loved this! It was bare wood for years, then about, oh, fifteen years ago I slathered it with dark orange paint. Apparently, I went with the oil-based variety as it was a HUGE PAIN to paint over it this weekend. I was finally forced to go after it with spray paint yesterday – all the primer and coats of Benjamin Moore simply white in eggshell were not doing the job! I hope you’re all impressed with my orange paint job.

In any case, this got painted white too. It’ll make a good little bookcase in the new space, and I’ll finally be putting it to use! I really HATE just having stuff in the basement unused, as this has been since we moved into the house.

No sentimental attachment here. Just a little wood bookcase that I’d been using as a printer stand in my basement office nook. It’s getting the paint treatment and starting its new life as the bedside table in the guest room. The current bedside table is a 31″ Expedite shelf from Ikea that’s going into the new sewing nook.

So last Thursday (ah, it seems so long ago) I started priming. I. Hate. Painting. And painting, for that matter.

I made fairly good progress. We’re back up to super-sticky weather with jungle-level dewpoints, so it’s not the best weather for painting. Or, more specifically, it’s not ideal if one were expecting the paint to actually DRY.

I managed to get everything nearly painted. It took around three coats on everything and I did some finishing with spray paint – it just has such a nice finish! I was coaxed into poor decision making by the pragmatic, extremely knowledgeable boys at Ace Hardware. We’ve used a LOT of Benjamin Moore Simply White shade in our house – all of our trim, a lot of the kitchen. It’s the shade of white suggested by Ikea wonks to match the white shade that our cabinets came in. I MEANT to get a can of Simply White in the flat sheen, as I prefer painted furniture to be painted in flat, as any of the shinier paints show off the flaws. Well, the boy at Ace was VERY in favor of getting eggshell instead as the shiny finishes are more durable. And since Benjamin Moore paint is so blasted expensive and I knew I wouldn’t use the whole can, I figured that was a good idea as we always need more for touching up trim. Bad, bad idea. Painted white furniture should be painted in FLAT PAINT (at least, according to my aesthetic…)

In any case, I sanded the pieces to death before I started painting, so now I likely have black lung.