Spraying my French Day Bed Fiasco, Getting Old and more

Before we get to my fiasco this week, I did have a triumph to share.

 Here is a little consignment project I took on this month. 

I don't do much painting of furniture anymore since my shop closed, but

a friend from my tennis days asked me if I would...so I agreed.  What I love about this is

that you can see how a perfectly fine piece of furniture (not antique) can look a bit dated in a room.

After painting it with Annie Sloan's Paris Grey and giving it a hand rubbed clear wax finish, 

the icing on the cake was giving the server (and the china cabinet, not shown) new hardware.

 A trick for any of you who want to change to a knob instead of pulls, is to use a backplate.

That can cover the old holes of the pulls, and then you simply drill one hole in the center and 

push the knob stem through the hole of the backplate.  We picked this hardware out from Myknobs.com and we were careful to not select acrylic knobs (they don't look that great).  Glass is ok, but crystal is BEST!  We loved the difference it made in the room.  

And while I was there putting on the hardware, I noticed that my friend had left a photo on the server.  I didn't even look at it for the first fifteen minutes...then I realized it was a photo of us and all the other tennis pals from twelve years ago!! 

Wow, I really feel old now.  I am on the right in the lilac top.  Smokin' hot, right? Haahah!!  It was the year I met my husband to be, and so it was the year that my life changed forever.  No wonder he wanted to date me. And why do we, as women, get so critical about ourselves only to figure out as time passes that we had no reason to be.  Anyway, I stopped playing tennis a few years later, and I miss all the fun we had together.  The gal right next to me is the one that gave me the piano that I painted white.  She moved away to Florida.  Life has a way of carrying on, doesn't it?  Anyway I have to say my forties were so much fun, and now that I am almost through the next decade, I am having an adjustment with the things age is doing to me.  Ugh, right?  Enjoy where we are, because I suppose when I blog in ten more years, I will be saying how fabulous my fifties were and what was I thinking??  

Mr. Maison Decor and I went to dinner at a french restaurant that we love to celebrate nine years of marriage.  Twelve all together, as we started dating in April, and we married three years later in April too.  Happy years and a happy union, its been the best thing that has ever happened to both of us, and how I know this, is that he wrote me a letter and told me so.  How sweet is that?  

 Soon I will be writing a blog post on how I am suffering from ADD, because I have so many projects going on at once.  And this project is the French Day Bed project.  The bed is a rusty mess, and anything I put on it gets rust marks.  I am making a Sunbrella cover for the mattress I bought for it (another project with Matthew Mead) and so I wanted to preserve the rusty look by coating it....so I went to Lowes and talked to some guy in the paint department, looking for an Exterior grade clear coverage thing.  

 I went home with this...when I applied it, it was so noxious, that all the doors and windows had to be flung open...the house still stunk. I finally dragged it outside myself after barracading the dog in the kitchen behind a bench.  He is afraid to go around stuff, so I take advantage of that, haha. 

 He is so funny. He was whining his heart out to let me in...you can see his toys and stuff all over the floor, and my basil plant waiting to go outside as well sitting on my Matthew Mead french settee, which doubles as a dining room barrier.

So the bed went outside...after awhile I checked to see if all the rust was now encapsulated.

NOPE. Turns out this inhibitor spray is an oil!! And now I had rusty oil all over the bed.  GRRR. So I washed it all down with a bucket and scruffy sponge and some Mrs. Meyers.  I was over the fumes and now mad that it was going to take another step to get my bed ready for the cushion I was sewing.

My supplies in the cellar yielded a can of this spray...so I gave it a try.  After that dried, I wiped it with a paper towel and rust was still coming off.  A facebook friend said she had to do two coats, so I just applied another coat today. If that doesn't work, I am going to have hubs take it to the autobody guy and ask him to spray it for me.  I won't have a rust finish if I do that, but at this point I am OVER trying to figure out how to preserve this rusted look.  Hahha.  Ok, that is the latest from here....I will be stitching up the sunbrella cushions and pillows and hoping the weather turns warmer so I can get some outdoor living started!