Canoeing in the Cold

This little lady is down and out! I went on a canoe camping trip with Mr. C and some friends this past weekend and it was frigid.  The nights went down to minus 5.  Brrrrrroni.  Our friends were nice and warm in their posh winterized tent, but Mr. C and I were trying out a little lightweight two-person tent (read coffin) that we are (were) thinking about taking on a cycling trip to France in the summer.  

 

It was horrible.  I'm usually an avid late night pee-er, but this tent was so impossible to get in and out of that my bladder had to hang on, and my eyeballs were floating by the morning.  I had more ease crawling in and out of the VC tunnels in Vietnam a few years ago then I did this 'tent'.  We couldn't even lie straight in the thing as the toe area was fully taken up by the air mattress, so we found ourselves contorting at odd angles to try and squeeze our skin into the cocoon.  Good thing neither of us are that tall.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this tent a zero.  And to top it off, it had no heat retention.  I was a shivering mess come morning.  Fortunately the rest of the trip was a success apart from the colds Mr. C and I both lugged home with us.

 

But onto some furniture!  This tallboy dresser is a great solid wood 1960s piece that was part of a 3-piece set I picked up.  It came with a desk which I painted mint HERE, and a 6-drawer lowboy I finished in gray HERE with a wallpaper accent.  I actually wanted to carry the wallpaper over to this piece as well, but I didn't have enough left.  In fact I am running low on a few of my favorite papers, so I decided to use this IKAT style paper which I have used before HERE, but I opted for a distressed finish on it this time.
 

 
The top of this piece was in a very cracked condition.  The old finish was about an 1/8th of an inch thick and took about two hours to sand off!  Because I went down to the bare wood, I made sure to prime with Zinsser BIN before painting to stop the dreaded bleed through in its tracks. The wood grain is thick and very visible through the paint still which looks awesome.

 
I painted out the body of the piece in a light gray chalk paint, distressed lightly around the edges.  I painted the top drawer white, and then I modpodged the distressed IKAT paper onto the drawer facings.

 

The original vintage wood pulls were finished in the same gray as the body, and the metal hardware was buffed to a soft silvery/gold.

Definitely a whimsical piece, but I think she looks adorable!

IKAT Gone Wild!

And here is my latest.  This was quite the transformation!  I was given this dresser by my next door neighbors who were moving house, and didn't quite have the energy to take this piece with them.

I picked up this great IKAT paper and knew I wanted to do a modpodge project with it.  This pine dresser was the perfect opportunity.

The IKAT pattern wasn't quite complete.  From a few feet away it just looked like polkadots.  Do I decided to use permanent marker to fill in some black ikats in the middle section. It worked great.

After sanding I primed in a similar shade of blue and I painted out the areas that would be getting modpodged white so that the paper would still be bright and not get that look like when you wear a black t-shirt under a white blouse.

Above is the pic right after I applied the paper.  It went on really great with no bubbles, and as a bonus the marker didn't smudge at all when I topcoated.

Because this was just a 'bland' pine dresser, I decided to help it have some statement by adding legs to it.  Mr Chuckles helped me with it.  It was a bit of work, but it looks so much more grand with the legs and the extra height they give.

Initially I was planning to change the hardware, but I realized after modpodging that the hole were not centered on the drawer, they sat pretty high up and the hardware I had chosen sat way too high.

I gave the piece a light distressing to make it look a tiny bit weathered, and little more whimsical.

This piece is currently for sale! Contact me if interested. raebond000@hotmail.com

THE BEFORE!