Another Decorating Endeavor

Happy Hump Day!  I don't know about you, but I'm glad that this week is about half over.  Work has been dull, nothing out of the ordinary there.  What has been "exciting" is that Rob and I started refinishing the ugly 80's bedroom set we got from a friend.  We've had the set for about a year now.  It has a trundle bed, three dresser-like pieces, a desk, a nightstand, and these bookcase hutch type things for the desk and two of the dressers.  It sounds like a lot, and it is, but somehow it all fits into the smallest bedroom we have.  (Just to clarify, this is a different bedroom from the one I posted about previously that we recently painted and bought furniture for.)

Appreciate the ugliness...

A side view of an 80's treasure

We bought paint for the set a couple weeks ago and Rob said he would paint it whenever I got it sanded.  The weather on Sunday was really nice, so I said we should carry everything downstairs so I could get started.  Eight hours later we had moved everything from the bedroom to the garage, from the garage to the driveway, from the driveway to the yard and from the yard back into the garage.  It was a workout!  I managed to sand everything and Rob sprayed one coat of paint onto at least one side of each piece.  We still have about a million coats of paint to go and I don't expect to be done anytime soon, unfortunately.

To make the set less 80's looking, we decided to cut the bottoms of the dressers and nightstand to give it the appearance of having feet.  Originally, we were going to add legs/feet, but then the dressers would have been taller than the desk and we couldn't arrange them next to each other and they were designed to fit together.  So, we did this hack job of cutting them instead.  We also decided to fill in the paneling effect they have using a spackle-like product.  Here are some pictures:

A garage full of chaos

Cutting the "legs"

Sanded drawers and filled in dressers

I guess I didn't take any pictures of them half painted, but I can certainly do that tonight.  They are being painted white using an oil-based enamel.  Unfortunately, all we could find was glossy, but oh well.  Considering that this is a child's bedroom set and it may someday take a lot of abuse, we figured we should use something tough, even if the gloss finish wasn't our first choice.

The other unfortunate aspect of this set is the hardware and the way it is recessed into the drawers.  Since it is recessed like that, we can't just replace it with whatever we feel like.  So, I am painting the hardware.  I got a dark gray/black metallic spray paint and a glossy coating. This is the stuff I got.  I think the dark color will contrast with the white nicely.  Who knows, maybe I'll even like how it looks when everything is done... Once I paint it the black color I'll go over everything a second time with the glossy top coat.

I can't wait to be done with this project so I can put the room together.  I'm going to start painting the hardware tonight.  I spent Tuesday washing it thoroughly.  I was going to start painting it yesterday, but then I ended up being my sister's therapist for the night instead and didn't get anything done.

Now, as for the subject of weight loss, well, I'm just barely hanging in there.  Down to 193.6 today isn't exactly cause for celebration, but I can accept it.  After listening to my sister all night I feel like a few pounds isn't that big of a deal.  At least I can deal with my life.  My sister seems to have no ability to cope with anything.  She really wants to have kids and, honestly, I wonder if she could actually handle it.  She can't seem to handle even minor stress a lot of the time.  I worry for her, even though I'm pretty sure there is nothing I can do.

Anyway, that's what has been going on over here.  I just finished reading The Perfect Health Diet and I'm hoping I can put it into practice for tonight's dinner.  We'll see what I have time to figure out at work today.  I definitely need to visit their blog for some recipe ideas.