Hey y’all. I’ve clawed my way out of the oblivion of too much time spent working to check on the world of the googles and assorted interweb friends. But enough about me. Let’s talk about my new franken-dresser-craigslist find.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time playing with my new puppy (more on that in a bit) and watching reruns of Numb3rs (best TV father, ever. Also, the Biscuit.) When not engaged in those all-encompassing pass-times, I’ve slowly been progressing on decorating the rest of our cardboard-suburban house. And when I say ‘decorating’ what I mean is rearranging leftover furniture in an effort to not having too many empty rooms upstairs.

Things came along delightfully a few weeks ago when Mr. Bug and I finally sprung for a new bed for our room. We’d been sleeping on the bed I’ve had for about 10 years – and it was a hand-me-down from a friend, so who knows how old it really is. Not only was a I totally ready for a new bed with a more simple bed frame, but we needed more space (see also, new puppy. More below.) We upgraded to a king size bed from Ikea. It’s awesome. And giant.

So new king bed for us, which meant our old queen sized bed went into our main guest room, and Mr. Bug’s old double bed went into the smaller guest room. I really wanted some sort of dresser or something similar in our main guest room so anyone staying with us (yeah, I’m giving you the snake eyes, would-be-visitors) will have a place to stash their things while with us. So I took to Craigslist with a vengeance and found this monstrosity for $25.

Hideous, isn’t? Don’t worry, kittens, it’s particle board. No real wood for us bears. And it weighs about 367 pounds – seriously, even forearm forklifts weren’t enough to make it a two person moving job for Mr. Bug and me. Wanna see the worst part of it?

Mmmmm…. forest green interior….

Not to worry, thought. It was $25! And the shape was just what I wanted – doors/shelves on top, drawers on bottom. Perfect for guests. I coaxed Mr. Bug into dragging it home from the shop the craigslist poster had it at (yeah, it made us fight. It’s HEAVY, yo) and I ransacked my supply of Annie Sloan paint.

The guest room is very light and bright, I wanted to get a Swedish antique vibe going with my paint and aspirations of being a faux painter. Something like this.

[image | Tone on Tone]

I covered the outside with a layer of Annie Sloan Old White. That stuff is a DREAM – it totally stuck to and mostly covered the dark green laminate and wood tones with no priming, sanding, etc. After I got the first layer on, I was running a bit short on paint and too lazy to go buy more, so I mixed what I had left of Old White and French Linen – a sort of taupey grey color. I did the second layer and then after it dried I mixed 1 part white latex with 2 parts water, brushed on, then wiped down with a dry cloth right away to lighten it up and give it a whitewashed look. After everything dried I put on a coat of the Annie Sloan clear wax and buffed it with one of those wax buffing pads from the automotive section at Target.

Voila! My fautique. Swedish style. Bork a bork.

I’d initially intended to replace the knobs with white porcelain or ‘glass’ ones, but a lot of the old Swedish pieces I like have wood painted knobs, so I decided to keep the knobs that were already on the piece.

I painted the inside with a couple of coats of Annie Sloan Provence – a totally groovy blue that reminds me of my grandma. Because she painted her dining room set this shade sometime in the early 70’s. Grandma rocks.

The interior looks COMPLETELY different. I’m glad I didn’t give in to my natural sloth-like tendencies and just leave it green.

So, I love the cabinet. It’s perfect for the room. If I had it to do again, I might take a bit of extra time and fill in those face country beadboard panels in the door with wood putty before painting. I think smooth doors would look better, but the look of the fake beadboard isn’t terrible, I just get sort of annoyed at those fake details. Funny, since I love to fake-tique things, huh?

Like I said, the rest of the room is white, white, white and bright. Here’s our old bed in it’s new low-stress life of being a guest bed. I hardly has to do ANYTHING, although my moms is coming down to Texas for Christmas in 10 short days.

Those nightstands. Good gravy. We got them a few years ago on super sale at Target – they’re meant to be in a bathroom, but the price was right and I like the little shelf – good for storing books! But the handles – I HATE them and they’re a funky size so I’m having a hard time  finding something better.

The little painting on this bedside table was a recent find at an antiques shop. I really like the dark tones and the pilgrim vibe. Also, the book is sort of a joke – it’s a VERY old text book on “business.” I thought Mr. Bug (an accountant by day) might find something useful in said book.

Speaking of dark tones and a pilgrim vibe. We did, indeed acquire a baby hound dog in early October. For any of y’all who follows me on Twitter (@pattythesnugbug) or Instragram (pattythesnugbug), you’ve had the chance to view the basset hound content, but for the rest of you, here’s baby Peppermint the day we brought her home. She was about nine weeks old.

She. Is. Adorable. And naughty. Here she was a few weeks ago, impeding my progress in sewing a bedskirt for the guest room (pictured above, ohhhh…. this is a tightly structure blog post…)

And here she was earlier today. Mr. Bug ran the Dallas Marathon this morning, so I decked out the hounds as Christmas Elves to cheer him on. And amuse myself.

Pepper’s the one on the left. She’ll be four months old tomorrow. Housetraining has been… difficult.

Speaking of difficult, I checked my blog and realized I haven’t posted a photo of myself since FEBRUARY, ya’ll!! That’s around when we decided to take the relocation offer and uproot ourselves 1,000 miles to the south. sigh. Not only do I owe you guys a few finished outfit photos (not many items there!) but I look different! I’ve been working on Charlie’s Angels hair (big, wavy, ridiculous) and finally gave in to the inevitable march of time  and allowed my hair stylist to dye my hair back into submission. I was super impressed, to tell you the truth. My hair had really lightened over the years, but the color she uses (it’s an Aveda color in the salon, don’t know which one) really just looks like MY hair color, not some crazy bottle job. It’s…. subtle.

Me last February

Me a couple weeks ago, in the throes of a Linked In update…

I have to blow that mop of hair out every day to get it under control. It seems counterintuitive, somehow, and yet I keep on with my boar bristle round brush…

So what’ve all y’all been up to?