The last couple weeks we’ve been working on a big project . . refinishing our big blanket chest. This was given to us as a hand-me-down by a friend many years and a few moves ago. It came with a few scrapes and bumps and we had added our own. Frankly, it was beginning to be an eye sore:

I decided I wanted to be daring and paint it. The problem was making a decision of what color. I wanted to do something drastic and ‘primitive’, but couldn’t be decisive. I finally decided I just needed to sand it down and start from there. A couple days into sanding it by hand earning a few cuts and blisters, I decided I needed to enlist Chris’s help. His answer – buy a hand sander. So, we did and the sanding turned our scuffed up piece of furniture into looking newly built:

Now, what color? I thought I would like a rustic white with some sanding down on certain parts of it. So, I started on the drawers while Chris finished up the sanding. Then we decided we really did like the natural color of the wood. We then tried to sand down the drawers I had already primed with little luck. So, we have some drawers with white accents!
We did decide to leave it light but showing the beautiful wood so I finished it with ‘natural’ stain. It turned out darker than I think we wanted it but it still looks a lot better than what we started with.

I was still in the mood for painting something so I found a $5 bookcase at a garage sale and painted it a deep brown/almost black. It’s just waiting to be put to use.

Now I find myself searching for other items around the house to paint – this is addicting!
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