So here's the project that I can now slap a DONE on. (minus hanging it...which may take a while...cause I need to wait on my hubby for that...dang it!!! Will update with a picture of that when it's completed...in the meantime...) It's my new Message center...which is replacing an industrial looking white board that went to my hubby's library...but I digress. It's the heat...I'm normally not this scatterbrained (hush Sis and Hubby...no chiming in here!)
The beginning pieces start here:
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Remember this from a few posts ago...Something Old...well she's had a makeover!!! The one thing I liked about this window when I bought it was the paint. It was already a creamy white...and the paint job wasn't too bad, (on the other side...this is the back) but it had all this natural crackling that I didn't have to do! SCORE!!! I wanted to bring out all that loveliness and I wanted to experiment. So I started with some left over shoe polish I used with the Entry Way Welcome letters. I've never heard of using shoe polish as paint, but why not try it. It might start a new trend ;-)...or not. But why should I let that stop me. So out the shoe polish came.
Look at all that beautiful texture. It's not perfection and it darkened the creamy paint, but I didn't care. I like it that way. And see all that crackle...YUMMM!!! Shoe polish experiment a success...this time at least!!! Who knew.
Next came a couple of coats of poly. I used a sponge brush to apply it, and I noticed that the poly drug a bit of the shoe polish around (big bully!)...BUT, I still liked the effect. If you're searching for perfection do not use shoe polish...just sayin'! I applied two coats of the poly letting it dry well in between.
Still lovin' me some texture here! Once the poly was all dry I took my hubby's razor blade scraper to all the window panes to clean them off. Yeah, this is the long, boring part that I did at 2 in the afternoon...heat of the day at 109...someone should check my sanity for sure!!!
Once all the excess paint, dirt etc was scraped away I cleaned all the panes front and back. Now here comes the fun part!!! I wanted half the panes to be magnetic so I could use them to hang up notes, kids school stuff, cake orders, etc., and half the panes I wanted to just be window so I could use my chalk markers to write notes (yes, you can do that...it works really well actually). But I didn't want the windows to be just plain. Who wants to just look at a wall through a window. Not me, but as we've established I'm not always in my right mind (109 degrees right?). I decided to find some lace or a doily and use it as a reverse template with a can of frosted glass spray paint. Instead, I found a wonderful piece of scrapbook paper (at JoAnn's) that was a lacy cut out all over. PERFECT! I bought some repositionable stencil spray adhesive and voila!!!
Of course the window panes are not 12x12 so I had to cut the paper down. Wait, I'm out of order here...we've skipped a few steps. First, I turned the whole window over to the back side. Since I want to use it to write on and wipe off I needed the texture on the back. Can't wipe off all the hard work. Then I picked the panes I wanted to use and taped them off on the inside. Ok, back to our regularly scheduled programming...I had to cut the paper down.
I laid the paper in the pane and using the window scraper blade I made folds in the edge keeping the paper along both the side and the bottom to fill up the window. Then I went back with my fingers and deepened the fold so I knew exactly where to cut.
That's me showing you where I cut it...got to get all the steps in! Once it was cut I laid the paper on a plastic sheet and sprayed the back side with the repositionable adhesive spray.
Then I sprayed the pane with the frosted spray. I didn't do more than one coat because I didn't want it that translucent. I did check to make sure I was fairly even by looking through under the pane. Again, I was not going for perfection. Which is good, because the paper did come up in a few places and so the frosting wasn't perfect, but it looked pretty awesome to me. I did have to add a few shots of adhesive between panes, but not much. Here's how it turned out...
Isn't that SWEET???!!! The nice thing was that I could turn it over and start on the reverse panes right away because it was on the back side...also, at 109 degrees paint dries extremely quickly!
Flipping over the window, I taped off the panes I was painting next. Then after shaking the can of magnetic paint vigorously...and for quite some time...I spray painted the opposite 4 panes with a light coat to start with.
I ended up doing almost 4 coats of this paint. I say almost because by the time I got to the 4th coat I only had enough paint to barely touch up each pane. I wanted to make sure it was magnetic. If I had to do it again I might purchase a different brand. After I'd bought this at Hobby Lobby (with a coupon of course) I found a can of Rustoleum Magnetic Paint at Home Depot that said it was extra strong metallic so that magnets stuck better. But I already had this and I think it'll work for what I need. It was a mess, however, and I had to take the razor blade scraper back to the other panes of glass. Since I'd done the frosting on the back side there were no worries that I'd mess that up...yay for small victories!!!
The next morning (this morning actually) I got out the top coat (the colored coat) of paint I'd had my husband pick up at Home Depot. I wanted to add a pop of red to the area of the kitchen where this Message Center is going. I have red on the dining room side and hadn't figured out a way to add it to the kitchen side. This is the perfect way. So he picked up a sample sized bottle in the dining room color and that was my top coat.
I painted right over the magnetic paint (the instructions say you can do that and it's supposed to stay magnetic). I gave it two coats cause we are dealing with red here. It's a very matte paint, but will work well for my needs.
Once that was done I removed the tape, cleaned the other panes with window cleaner...then cleaned up the wood a bit since the magnetic spray paint was a bit messy, and the project was done!!!
I can't wait to hang it and use it. Just another Treasure in my house to make it a home!!!
Jennifer
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