I Instagramed it, so it's Finished

Now that we have two extra rooms to mess around with I figure it's time we can do something a little out of our box...like redoing a head board and foot board. This particular piece came from my mom who got it from her parents when she was sixteen. Nothing had been done to them since then (29 years) so they looked a little shabby. When I got to them there was old polyurethane pealing off and wood stain fading. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted it to look like by the time I was finished with it so it really freed up any worry about salvaging the piece. Would I have liked to keep the original wood and resurface it...sure, but sometimes that just isn't possible. 

This is what it looked like with a couple swipes of 320 grit sandpaper. Obviously not going to get the job done. 

So we brought out the big guns and plugged in Pops' power sander and went to town. FYI an electric sander is most definitely going on my Christmas list this year.

Once I realized I wasn't going to be able to sand it all enough to re-stain it (all of those curves where a beotch to sand) I let go of that idea and started sanding just enough for paint to stick. We decided to use left over Tawny from the secretary project since it was a good neutral. 

I did want to keep the detail in the headboard so I covered it in painter's tape before we got started. 

I picked up one can of Kilz Primer from Lowe's for around $5. A pint of primer runs about $8 but then I would need to get more brushes and painting on primer just takes a lot more time. I probably should have gone with two cans of Kilz to make the paint coats go on better, but we managed with one. 

I did invest in on of these guys for around $3. It makes the normal spray can nozzle into a trigger nozzle which makes my life so much easier. It cuts primer time in half and saves my little fingers from shriveling up into creepy witch hands. 

Here is the nozzle trigger playing nice with my can of Kilz. They just snapped on together like they were meant to be. 

Here are the boards with their barely one coat of Kilz Primer. You can see it's splotchy in the middle because I focused more attention on the posts and areas of detail. I had to sand down a couple spots where the primer gathered all weird, but other then that it was ready to be painted in about a half hour. 

Here are the boards with one coat. I saw that I would need to go back in some places and do two coats so I just went ahead and let this cure overnight for a week and finished it off with a second coat. 

So here are a couple of shots with the bed all set up. This is our old duvet from our old bed...yes we shared a full sized bed for a while before we upgraded literally three weeks ago to a king size and let me tell you, there is no going back. So anyways, this isn't the bed coverings that I would like on here forever, but they work for now. And yes, I had to instagram these photos because that room is so unbelievably bare it throws everything off. Also, I'm addicted to Instagram. ANYWAYS. 

I love love the detail that was salvaged in the wooden design at the top of the headboard. I obviously love that it's a neutral because then I can paint everything else that's easier to paint all sorts of crazy colors to compliment it...jk, but really. 

It should be noted though that both the head board and foot board are free standing, as in, NOT attached to the bedframe. I think we may not have the right frame that is supposed to go with the boards so we need to hunt that down in storage, eek. So until then there shall be no jumping or breathing in this room. We will see how that goes when we have company stay in this room in three days.