A Journey from Ugly to Pretty

The title and this picture might be a weird combo but no this bug, although pretty in a creepy way, did not turn in to a butterfly :)

I am also not talking about a road trip...

But about the sad ugly remains of this table, which has clearly gone through a lot. A battle where it lost two legs...

And a kid with anger management issues, gave the result of this sad thing. But the remaining two pretty legs made me see potential.

I started by sawing and attaching the missing wood piece, and sanding the dark brown paint and the kid's 'art' away.

I primed it with white paint to make everything equal in color, working with a table that has only two legs was a bit challenging.

I then painted it a sea green/ blue.

And the top got a vintage road map, like the previous table I had fixed a few weeks ago.

I cut the map in shape and applied many layers of varnish making the top smooth and waterproof.

Then came the most exciting and challenging part, attaching the legs. I was sure to use driftwood legs and wanted them to be very natural, straight driftwood pieces would have looked like ugly replacements. I made sure to use a level tool so that the table was straight even though the legs weren't.

And after a few weeks of work here is the result *patting myself on the back*.

I used a map with the exact color of the paint. A road map of west Turkey.

The driftwood seems to be growing out of the table, I love how natural it turned out!

Working with discarded materials is extremely satisfying, giving life with stuff that is tagged as 'trash' putting some work in it to make it unique and beautiful. If everyone would re-use as much as possible landfills would be much less filled, don't you think :)?
The table is available at StarHomeStudio where you can also see more pictures and all its measurements.

February Projects

This year did not start well for us, actually 2015 ended bad with Lucky passing away, and then 2016 started with Bibi passing away. Needless to say that we have been very sad. With Christmas rush over we also did not have the sales to keep our minds occupied, which did not do our moods well.
With all this we have not been very motivated in general which causes for a circle as not being motivated is pretty depressing too.

Then last week we discovered a lump on Simon, pretty big and pretty scary as it must have grown fast, we wash our dogs regularly so I notice such things pretty quickly.
He had a biopsy on Tuesday and was diagnosed with cancer. A not very aggressive skin cancer, but no cancer is friendly. We had him operated on Friday and a total of 4 lumps were removed. The survival rate is pretty high of this type, so we hope that Simon will stick around for a while, we are not ready to loose yet another family member.

Here he is in the garden of the animal hospital waking up in the sun right after surgery.

With all this we have vet bills piling up, so we are having a sale in our Supply shop in hope to help a bit with the costs, use the code DOGGY20 during checkout and you will get a 20% discount. We have a flat rate shipping of 5$ for no matter how many items (except the fabrics due to weight).
Of course any sale in any of our shops is very much welcome StaroftheEast, StarDelights, StarBags, StarsWear and StarHomeStudio.

With all this going on I have not been able to finish my January projects. Only the piano stool got finished, the two chairs are still in the same condition and the walls still need to be painted. The fact with all this that I burned my right arm with boiling oil, and strained my left wrist while carrying Simon is not helping either.

Before my arms got injured I did manage to finish the weekender I showed 10 days ago. And I started and finished a little furniture piece in between.
After all this depressing talk, I want to finish with a positive thing, here is the furniture piece I made and am very happy about:

It started as a very sad and ugly nesting table (without the rest of the nest). There clearly used to be wood between the legs but those were gone.

It has a dark brown ugly color (no offense to those who like this) which I very much dislike.

And you could clearly see that it was suppose to be part of a set because of the grooves.

I started with sanding the wood and filling up the grooves with wood and wood paste.

I then varnished it with sanding sealer, sanded it again and then applied several layers of white acrylic paint to give a nice base.

I knew right away what I wanted to add to the legs, driftwood! I choose strong but natural wiggly looking pieces to make it clear that they are driftwood.

Coming together nicely, don't you think?

I then painted everything (except for the top) a sea green color.

And for the top I used a Vintage map of Istanbul. As the top was not entirely flat but had a rounded border, cutting the map turned out to be a challenge for me, but I eventually managed to make it straight, unlike the detail you see above.

After varnishing and sanding the top many times (I lost count), I am very happy with the result!

The entire table and the driftwood was varnished too to make it waterproof and wipe-able.

No sign of the once-upon-a-time-it-was-an-ugly-nesting-table.

The cute end table is available in our StarHomeStudio shop where you can see and read more details about the table.

As for February projects, well I will need to finish January's projects and I won't add anything else to that list as my arms need to heal first. I also hope that Simon will recover quickly the 'cone of shame' is driving him nuts and for us it is the 'cone of pain' as he keeps bumping in to us with it.
Please send us some positive vibes, we really need it!

Transformation of a Piano Stool

I showed this sad once-upon-a-time was a piano stool piece for my January projects. It took me almost the entire month to finish it, with other things in between of course but still it took much more time than anticipated.

After thoroughly sanding the wood and cleaning the metal from rust, I treated the metal parts with a black anti aging and anti rust metal paint.

The wood was first treated with 3 layers of sanding sealer and then sanded again to give a nice smooth surface. Then I painted 3 sides of each leg black and the top sides white, creating a sharp edge between the black and the white turned out to be a challenge as I could not tape it off due to the shape of the legs but eventually I got it.

To create the black stripes I tried several things, creating a stencil pattern did not work out as the surface is not flat. Also stamps or simply trying to draw straight striped did not work out either. Of course my first thought was tape but the thought of cutting a gazillion thin tapes and then putting them off was scaring me. Mum came with the great idea to stick the wide painters tape to a piece of plastic coated paper and put it through the shredder. In a short time I had enough evenly cut tapes.

Peeling them each off the paper and applying them to the legs took a while.

The scary part was painting over the tapes with black. You might think why I did not paint the legs entirely black and then painted with white. Making the stripes white on a black surface would have need more layers of paint on the tape, and pulling those neatly off would have had a bad outcome as everything would have cracked because of the many layers of white, so this was although not obvious the best way.

Wile holding my breath I started to peel of each tape one by one. I read somewhere that it was best to not let the paint dry entirely or the paint would chip. I read somewhere else that if you applied the tape from left to right you had to remove the tape from right to left (the opposite) for a cleaner removal. Yes I had investigated a lot before starting to get the best result.

After holding my breath for a bit more over an hour (yes I did breath in between the stripes :)), I had lovely black and white stripes.

And loads of little tapes everywhere...
Some stripes needed a little retouching by hand and brush but most turned out great. On top of the paint I applied a mat varnish to seal and protect the paint work.

After cutting the embroidery round, then accordingly a round piece of wood and foam it was time to sew the top. With black and white striped piping to match the pretty legs.

Tadaaaaa! The result! I am very happy how this turned out, it was worth all the effort and its old look is long forgotten.

The embroidery is vintage, a lovely kitsch fluffy embroidery with birds and flowers, very soft to the touch.

The beautiful piano stool / ottoman / pouf is available at StarHomeStudio.

January Projects

Now that the weather is colder and wetter not much planned for the house, but there are two projects waiting for furniture revamps. Last month was a success as all plans got finished.

This set of chairs will need a lot of tender loving care before they can be painted and upholstered, the wood is not in a condition that it can be varnished, but maybe a crazy color will give it a nice modern make over, nothing planned yet.

The second project is a piano seat. It is super heavy with the metal work making the height adjustable and the solid wood legs.

We are thinking some crazy stuff for this one too, lots of colors for sure and of course it will need a seat :) The metal work will need to be cleaned and treated too so although a small piece this one will take some time.

And as soon as weather allows I still have some paint work to do on the house, the place of the new window and some make up on the walls in general, I scratched off peeling paint so the walls look a little sad now, but this will all be fixed soon.

Do you have any plans for the month/ year?