The last we left it, I had a very grey box that kind of resembled a large filing cabinet. {Sad faces.} I let it sit like that for awhile while I gathered supplies (and also because let's be real, it takes me forever to get things done). I do have to admit that the whole boxy grey thing started to grow on me the longer it sat. I'm feeling pretty good about how this will all turn out in the end.
I have a vision in my head of what I hope the bar looks like when I am (finally) done with it. When I first came up with the idea, I was nervous to attempt it, since it would involve using saws, and other tools I have never used before. Everyone has a level of DIY they are comfortable with, and while I figured I would give it a try, I wasn't exactly looking forward to building what I needed. And then I remembered O'verlays.
In the back of my head I knew about O'verlays, but I never looked into them. I'm so glad it popped into my brain to go check them out. O'verlays is a genius website where you can order decorative fretwork panels to customize your Ikea furniture, because not everyone wants their Swedish purchases to look the same, right? They have a bunch of different designs in the common sizes of Ikea furniture. Luckily for me, the design that I wanted to use, was one of the patterns they sell. I made paper templates of the sizes they offered, but since the bar is not an Ikea purchase, none of the options were really working. O'verlays does custom orders, and that's what I ended up doing. I told them the style and size that I needed, and not too long later it arrived at my door. The O'verlays are very light, but don't feel flimsy. You paint them, and then attach it to your furniture, and boom, upgrade. And now, Beyonce is stuck in my head.
Ok, Here's part of the plan:
My goal for the week is to finish painting them, so I can hopefully attach them to the bar next week. I set everything up and got my first coat on Monday night:
This is the point where I say I really regret using high gloss paint. In my head I thought it would leave a very shiny looking surface. After I started painting the bar I realized you need to use enamel for that. The imperfections of the furniture is not well disguised now. The paint also seems tackier than semi gloss, which may be why the O'verlays looked like this yesterday:
You see in the corner, how the paint is sticking out? When I lifted the O'verlay off the table, it took the paint that got on the plastic drop cloth with it. It was a little annoyance that was easily fixed by gently sanding everything down with 220 grit sandpaper. Then it was onto the second coat. I didn't want another sticky paint situation, so I put my tuna hoarding tendencies to good use, and placed a few cans under each piece so it wouldn't sit directly on the plastic.
I used a small paintbrush stolen from the kid's craft supplies. It took about an hour of painting the first night, because I had to get in my painting groove. It was another hour yesterday because I needed to sand first. Each night that I painted the actual bar, it also took around an hour and it's kind of crazy how it took me the same amount of time to paint an entire piece of furniture, as it took to paint two small O'verlays. Even though you won't see the back of the O'verlays, I want to paint them too. I'm waiting for the second coat to really dry and cure first, because it would just suck if the front got ruined while I was painting the back. The crazy humidity is really not helping my paint drying (or anyone's hair, I'm sure).
So I'm sitting around waiting for paint to dry, and I hope by the end the weekend the second coat will be done and it will be on to the next step! But first,
What you are up to on the sticky humid week? (Or maybe it's perfect weather where you live?) Let me know below!
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