This bench was made for me by my Dad. If you look at the top you will notice the wood is really thick. You can’t buy lumber this thick anymore. I don’t know where he got it.

Anyway, it was painted a red/orange years ago as you can see from the inside of the legs. It sits upstairs on a little screened-in porch off our bedroom. Our home is over one hundred years old so we have some “fun” rooms, like a screened-in porch off our bedroom. Cool, huh? Except that we rarely use it. How sad.

Moving on. I usually never have a plan. Because I’m an artist, I work very intuitively. So I just grabbed a can of paint I thought would be a good color. Actually, now that I think about it, it was spray paint-my very favorite thing. I just love to spray paint. My husband’s afraid he’ll come home some day and find I’ve spray painted everything in a room, floors, walls, furniture and all!

Anyway, I spray painted green (think it was Apple Green by Rustoleum 2X). I left the underside the red/orange for the fun of it. Plus my dad had painted it. I wanted to remember that. This bench will have a place in my heart and home.

Then I started with the sandpaper and just went wild. I love the way it turned out.

I love the way the nail heads look. My dad didn’t take a lot of pains. He just went with the flow. So most of his projects one would lovingly call “rustic”. 🙂

You will notice a lighter shade of green. It wasn’t any color I painted. It just showed up when I sanded. I’ve noticed this has happened before. Don’t know what the reaction of the sandpaper to paint is but I’m curious about it.

A couple of years ago I bought a set of drapes at Goodwill and covered the seat cushions with them. You will see the green and orange colors. So it wasn’t as intuitive as I thought. 🙂

window curtain

chair before/ugly print, faded wood

chair after, new cover, wood re-stained

Earlier this summer,  I sprayed this lamp. Again, going with kind of an orange and green theme. When I went upstairs just now to take pictures, I realized why I chose that color combo. The lamp was a a boring beige.  Seeing as frogs are green I spray painted them in Pistachio Green my Rustoleum 2X and the shade I painted Fire Engine Orange, also by Rustoleum 2X. I distressed the shade a little with some fine sandpaper. Also one of my favorite painted looks

orange frog lamp

Anyway, that’s it for now. I wish I could paint the walls but I can’t as it’s the exterior of the house. Also, was hoping to get floor repainted this year but not sure that’s going to happen. Can’t put any other flooring down because it gets wet. Also would like to do something at the windows but again it’s the snow and rain factor.

Someday we’ll move from this big ole’ house and I sure hope the next owners have as much fun with it as we have. All the hard work will be over so they’ll just be able to enjoy it. 🙂