Pinterest Strikes Back

Long time, no see! I definitely fell off of the blogging wagon about the time that I started getting ready to move. Now I am settled into my apartment in Charlottesville and getting ready for classes--it's amazing how time flies.

Part of moving always involves projects, right? Three projects in particular consumed a good portion of my time but in the end were totally worth it: a mail rack, a necklace organizer, and two picture frames.

The mail rack took up the largest amount of blood, sweat and tears. I found an old wooden floor vent at an indoor flea market in Jackson and it was in rough shape.

I mean, rough.

I sanded and sanded, and sanded some more, attempted to strip the paint off ("attempted" being the key word), and then sanded even more. I contemplating giving up on it, but decided that I had put too much time into it and that I should at least paint it and see how it looked. So I bought a sample size of "Safflower" and put two coats on this baby.

It's as bright as you would imagine. 

And that did it! I got some brass hooks and screwed them into some pre-existing holes that had probably been used to secure it to the floor, and I was finished!

Finished...

...and hung up in the foyer!

It's not ~perfectly smooth~ or anything, but I like it and it's definitely already had it's fair share of use as you can see. It's great for racking up my bills and Netflix and outgoing mail. Success!

The next project was my necklace organizer. Leigh had made her own with a few glass knobs and I'd always been a bit envious of her crafting skillz. I had been on the lookout for a piece of wood that could function as the backing, and, luckily for me, replacing a backyard fence yields a good amount of spare, hefty wood. I found a 2x4 that had an odd channel cut out of the back and picked the side that I wanted to use.

There is also some interesting bark detail along the top...I don't think this wood was suited for the fence, but it certainly makes the 2x4 interesting for an accent piece.

Next, I sanded it and used a richer, more intense stain because I knew that it was going to be hanging on a white wall. The bark area was delicate, so I just dabbed around it as carefully as I could and didn't wipe away the stain like I did everywhere else.

The darker the better, imho.

I got my knobs at anthropologie, but obviously any type of vintage, retro, modern, etc, knobs would work just fine. I also chose knobs that had a bit of a "neck" on them so that the necklaces would have a cradle to lie in.

random owl is random.

I worked with my mom, since the power tools are hers, and we spaced the knobs out across the wood, measuring from the outer edges of the shape of each knob, since they're all different sizes and five "even" spaces wouldn't exactly be even.

Finally, we used a dremel to cut off the backs of the long screws. This is where it came in handy that the wood I picked had that funky channel in the back. because of that, the piece can sit pretty much flush up against the wall.

Like so!

It's nice to be able to clear up some space inside my jewelry box, which had been overflowing up to this point. Success!

Finally, I repainted a set of frames that I picked up on an outing with Leigh and her mom. The pictures inside of George and Martha Washington are what I really wanted, so I decided to tape off the glass and give the frames some love.

The biggest mistake I made was trying to paint them outside on a muggy Mississippi afternoon. I also used a paintbrush at first, and even after two coats, the paint coagulated in streaks. Finally I got a roller and carefully rolled on a third coat, and that seemed to do the trick. Some paint got on the glass but I figure that I'll get them reframed at some point so I'm not too worried about it.  I used some mineral spirits to clean the worst of it up and packed them up into a box!

Final resting place.

I had thought to hang them in my office, over my desk or something, but I ended up hanging two pretty large prints up that my dad gave me, and my window-less galley kitchen needed some brightening up. Now Martha watches over my stove and George over my coffee. Success!

On a side note, HRH Skittles, Queen of the Mississippi and Marquess of Charlottesville, is settling in just beautifully:

Surveying her kingdom