Saturday, December 20, 2008

How to "distress" a bench

I made this deacon's bench in Grade 9. It was in pretty rough shape so I decided to paint it. Because it was already dented and scratched I thought it would work well to "distress" it. I called my sis-in-law Heidi to figure out how to do it. It was quite easy and a lot of fun. I started after I got the kids to bed and cleaned up, so I didn't finish until about 2am, but it's done!
Here's the steps I used to make it:
1. I rubbed liquid sandpaper all over the bench. It cleaned and supposedly roughed it up, but it still seemed pretty smooth so I sandpapered it a little more.
2. I painted it apple red with latex paint and let it dry for about an hourish.
3. I sanded all the edges and sanded a few areas on the wood to make it look more antique-y.
4. I rubbed walnut stain all over with a rag and let it dry for a couple hours.
5. I put just one layer of clear varathane on (it could probably use more)
6. All done!

Here's the finished product! It looks better in real life.

Hadley took these pictures of the couches we got, so I thought I'd put them on. We are getting reimbursed for them. I found them on Kijiji for $850, but we ended up getting the set for $750. They are black leather. I love them!

Hadley turned 3!

We moved to Calgary on Hadley's birthday. John is installing alarms for a security company. His brother Dan is the manager here. We'll be in Calgary until John gets into the RCMP. He takes the first test on Monday. Anyway.

Hadley's birthday was kind of crazy. We packed up on the 6th and drove through the night and got to Stirling at about 11am. We stayed there for a bit then went to Raymond and spent the night at my parents'. We left for Calgary Monday morning after breakfast. Hadley was so excited that it was her birthday, so we felt like we had to throw some kind of party together. We quickly unloaded the trailer and van while the kids were at Dan and Nicole's. Dan helped us unload too. I quickly found our swimsuits and we went swimming with Dan and Nicole and their 4 girls (they have twins to0). It was a lot of fun, but since we haven't been swimming in a year, Hadley was a little nervous. They had fun kid waterslides, but we practically had to force Hadley to go on it. She liked it, but wouldn't go again.
I took Elijah down the waterslide and he was like this for the rest of the time - sad.

We went back to Dan and Nicole's after and had a DQ cake. Hadley wanted a "princess cake", luckily they had some there! The girls were a little excited about the cake. Hence the purple faces BEFORE we even blew out candles.

Hadley loved getting presents too! Here she is with her loot.