Until now we only had a tiny stool sitting in the hallway and it was mostly covered with mail and other stuff so I couldn't even sit down half the time to put on my shoes. You know, cause I'm a grandma!
I checked ebay every now and then to look for the perfect bench to put in our hallway, but they were either too big or too far away or too expensive. Then one day: I found this raw beauty just a street away from our place for 12€.
The condition was quite alright as I was planning to sand and paint it anyways. I don't thing we have more than 5 pieces of furniture in the house that I haven't repainted (I just counted, it's true!).
So, you know the drill: I start by cleaning and slighty sanding the wood to prepare the surface for painting.
I started with one layer of white and then two layers of lilac paint, just remember to let it dry overnight after each layer.
After painting the bench I remembered that the wall has a baseboard and since it would look ridiculous for the bench to be away from the wall a few centimetres I grabbed a saw then next day (because I thought of that in the middle of the night and obviously had to get up from bed to measure the the baseboard) and sawed off a corner in the back of each leg of the bench.
I looked for the perfect stencil image to add a little something something to the bench. I found this awesome steampunk corner stencil and printed it out in a medium size. Cutting out the stencil was biatch! I've never cut out such an intricate design and was mighty glad when I was done. Of course I couldn't cut out the stencil like it was, so I coloured some parts white to have the stencil in one piece.
And this is what the stencil looked up close after applying the paint. I used white paint and a little bit of silver.
The inside of the drawer looked awful painted, so I glued a bunch of pieces of candy gift wrap inside decoupage style.
And don't forget to lube up your drawer with wax, it makes such a huge difference! Easy access ;)
There we are! I added 4 stencil images to the bench, one for each big surface. Some turned out better than the others, but all in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the result!
Let's check it out in the hallway:
Alright, that's it. I think this will be the last furniture project in a while now, but you never know. I enjoy all of my furniture projects, but I'm also glad when I get to work on smaller crafts and get to use all of my craft room space without painted furniture waiting to dry.
This post will be part of the Upcycling Tuesday and Creadienstag.PS: Check out all these funky geeky crafts at the Nerd'n'Geek Linkparty <3
