Hey you shiny attention hounds!! Here’s another non-sewing, yet totally rad finished project. And good news for any of you pining for the days of my finished GARMENT posts… this project is directly related to my recent decision to value sewing more than guests…

Yeah. I said it. Talk about selfish sewing… amiright?

I could make this story nice, long and convoluted. Because I find the inner workings of my mind so incredibly facinating. But, out of sympathy for your hound-style attention spans…I’ll try to keep it brief!

November 2013

1. Patty moves to busy street in scary part of East Nashville. Rents two bedroom house.
2. Patty chooses back bedroom as her  bedroom, since other bedroom is on front of house and on incredibly busy street.

December 2013
Patty’s mom comes for a Christmas visit. Patty buys a nice full sized bed for the guest room. Mom can deal with the scary street.

Spring 2014
Patty starts to spend more time loitering in guest room. So pretty. So bright. Blue walls and so many windows. Also… traffic less scary-slash-annoying.

April 2014

1. Patty convinces Foresterman to spend full weekend swapping rooms. Includes a large book collection. All fabric, clothes, shoes, craft things, dust bunnies…. pretty much half my possessions. Immediately falls in love with new, bright front bedroom.
2. Patty sets up very nice guest room, but is draggy footed about it. Ultimately realizes that current house setup is not reflective of current life. Guests are few and far between and between sofa’s and air mattresses… guest room is unnecessary. Patty is clinging to it out of outlandish desire to appear to have ‘grown-up house.’
3. Patty posts guest bed on Craigslist. Foresterman and Patty comb flea market for proper shelf-type addition to house additional sewing supplies in what will be new SEWING ROOM!!

Behold this monstrosity!!

Hideous, isn’t it? Take particular note of the stuck on contact paper stuff on the bottom ‘shelf’ (the light patch on the left and wood-colored patch on the right.

Here’s a closeup so you can really get a sense of the awful, heavy, years of paint, odd reddish brown color going on…

MMMMM…. This ‘bookshelf’ is actually a hutch – I think it’s meant for a kitchen to provide open shelving. That’s why the scallop is towards the bottom and the molding/finishing is towards the top.

Well. For those of you that read the Texas-era posts, you may remember my love affair with Annie Sloan chalk paint. The paint for lazy folks. No prepping required. I found a local stockist (House of Stella on 8th Avenue.) And bought a can of my favorite Annie Sloan color, French Linen. It’s a lovely taupy-grey color and I already have a lot of things painted with French Linen. I also got sample sizes of Pure White and Versailles.

Versailles

French Linen

OK. No swatch of Pure White. It’s, um, white. So…. anyway.

When we heaved the hutchbeast home and set it up on the dining-slash-work table. I stared at it owlishly for a bit and then flipped it upside down. I thought it looked better that way for my purposes.

I painted the exterior with two coats of French Linen. For those of you who haven’t used Annie Sloan paints, they really are VERY easy to use. No prepping (other than cleaning off) is required. The paint will stick to ANYTHING. Even Ikea/laminated furniture. Also, it dries really fast – like within an hour – so projects go quickly.

I did one coat of French Linen on the interior – just to cover up the dark brown – and then experimented with the Versailles paint. I was thinking of doing something a bit more funky – dry brushing or some other type of aged look. In the end I just liked the solid green.

As a final step I mixed some pure white with water (equal parts paint to water.) Then I white washed the exterior to lighten up the grey a bit – all the other furniture in the intended room is white so the darker grey was a bit much. I brushed on the watered down paint, then immediately wiped off with a flour sack towel.

Here’s the finished shelf…

Close up!

I love it! Yay! Flipping it over really did the trick and I love the unusual shape! I paid around $35 for the hutch and  LOT for the paint (Annie Sloan paint is expensive!) but there’s lots left for other projects.

OK. Let’s do a side-by-side before and after…

I loaded it up with some of the things from my sewing room and some knitting things. It’s a nice place for a bit more storage! A sneak peek of my new sewing room…

 Yay for Snugbug Nashville Sewing Central!

I also picked up this awesome table to use as a work table in the new sewing room – another Craigslist find.

Once I get the bed out I’ll get the table into the room and see how things look. If possible, I’d like to get a nice, narrow table for my machines and use the farm table for cutting and as a desk… but my eyes might be a little too big for my sewing room size!