Silver Lining...

So what did I spend my weekend doing?

To start off with, we had such a beautiful Saturday in NY. It was warm and sunny and made me want to pack all my winter clothes away and head to the beach. It didn't last long but it made a big proclaimation that spring is almost here. Hooray!

To put a little spring in the house, I picked up this Hyancinth at Home Depot for $6. Lets see if I manage to snuff the life out if it like I do every other plant I've owned.


But on to the projects. The theme of this weekend seemed to be silver & gray. I know, I know - not very spring like. What can I say? Im a one note song. I like gray! After many weeks of putting it off, I decided its time to "finish" the guest room. True, nothing is every truly finished in my house but I want to be able to have another "completed" room to the list. (If I ever finish this one, that would make two finished rooms!)


Guest bedroom as of June 2008. If you want to see the progress on the guestroom so far - take a photo tour through time here.

If you recall, in my guest bedroom posts from last year I took some of your advice about putting a mirror over the desk. I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it but its a great idea. I was originally looking for something frameless but on a trip to Lowes, I spotted this one and that was it. For $69, it was very reasonably priced and it would fit perfectly over the desk. It adds that little touch of old world style, don't you think? And you know how I love to mix brass and silver tones so it was a way to carry that through to this room as well.



As you may also recall, I had a failed nightstand experiement using vintage luggage. I still love the luggage but it just doesn't work as I envisioned it. I'm still looking for suggestions of how to use it by the way so feel free to give me a suggestion if you have one.

So I had to find a replacement. I didn't want to spend too much money on it as I'm trying to focus my resources on more important rooms. But I did have a cheapo Ikea nightstand I was no longer using now that I have my pretty one instead. Its not ideal as its pretty small and something larger would be better...but beggers can't be choosers. This was absolutely free so it just made sense to use it.

But in its current state, it was just NOT going to work. Ugh, grainy pine. Its hard for me to imagine ever actually liking this. I suspect that its $39 price tag along with my severe lack of funds after just starting out in the real world had something to do with it. Who knew where it would find itself down the road?



Since I love the mirror, I figured I'd give a go at trying to mimic its look on this nightstand.
After preping with TSP and a light sanding, I painted it black. It looked like this


At this point, it was Saturday evening and I still had a lot of waiting time ahead of me as the coats of paint needed to dry before I could proceed. So while I was waiting, some sort of weird impulse made me pull out a small canvas and some acrylic paint I had laying in my closet.

{to be continued}