harvest festival auction items

next weekend is the annual harvest festival at central minnesota christian school.  i am pretty excited because two of my pieces will be up for sale on the auction.  all proceeds will go towards the school.  the furniture was donated, and i was given  the creative freedom to do whatever i preferred.  i have never actually made anything that i haven't kept or given to a family member, so this was a very fun change of pace.

the first item is an end table.  it was missing some of the hardware, which meant i wasn't able to reuse the pulls.

  the top was also pretty scratched, so i decided to paint the entire piece instead of the leaving the top. 

 the color i chose was willow leaf by glidden.  i started by deglossing the piece, only because it was very shiny and i was worried about the sticking power of the paint.  instead of priming and painting the piece, i chose to try making my own chalk paint using this recipe.  it simply calls for:

1 part baking soda

2 parts flat acrylic/latex paint

i used a jar of sample paint from home depot, which only comes in flat.  the paint stuck very well, but definitely needed two coats.  it feels very sandpapery when applied, but after sanding it down it was very smooth.  i didn't mind the extra step of sanding since i always sand my pieces anyway to give it a worn look.  after two coats, followed by a thorough sanding, i applied a thin coat of glaze and finished it with a coat of wax.

the pulls really gave me a run for my money.  

there was no way to remove the screws without dismantling the entire drawer.  not what i signed up for.  i tried finding handles that could incorporate the screws that were already there, but no such luck.  i ended up having to drill my own holes inside the drawers to remove the old screws.  i purchased new pulls from menards.

they were a little too brassy for my taste, so i used some metallic spray paint to tone them down a bit.  i didn't want them to be a solid color, so i used a brush to apply the paint.  

it ended up giving it a nice hand brushed effect and toned the handles down quite a bit.  

i love the shape of this piece,

and the color is a very nice olive color that can be incorporated into many different decorating styles.  

the size of this piece is larger than most end tables, so it could be used for anything.  be sure to come check it out on saturday, november 17 at 5 p.m. at the high school in prinsburg!  there are lots of items on the auction.  if you are interested, you can check them out here.  the next piece will be on the blog soon.

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