A Little DIY

Sorry for the radio silence over here! In addition to the craziness that goes along with being *almost* 39 weeks pregnant (a.k.a. thinking you're going into labor 150 times a day), Mike got his tonsils removed on Monday! As if we didn't already have enough going on, right? ;)

The surgery went perfectly and he's doing about as well as can be expected. He's pretty uncomfortable and I'm guessing he's probably STARVING due to a serious lack of solid food consumption, but he's powering through it and hopefully he will be fully recovered and back to normal soon!

So the DIY I'm referring to is a furniture refinishing project we decided to tackle for baby girl's room. When we were in Texas over the holidays, we were nosing around in my father-in-law's big storage shed in the back yard and we discovered this antique secretary:

If you look closely, that's "1903" stamped into the back. Pretty cool!

I'm not sure why, but for some reason I knew we NEEDED to take this thing home and find a special place for it. We ultimately decided on putting it in the nursery and I'm so in love with how it turned out! 

Once we figured out that we wanted to put it in the baby's room, we knew it was going to have to be white to match her other two pieces of furniture, so the next step was to start sanding. I think that the majority of the time we spent on this thing was probably spent sanding! And I say "we" but really Mike did all the work, I just picked out the paint color and the drawer pulls ;)

Mike INSISTED that I wear this lovely mask while he sanded all of the old finish off.
At least Lou was amused! ;)

He was almost as helpful as I was!

So he sanded, and then sanded some more, until it was ready for primer. Mike lucked out a bit by agreeing to do this project for me because it meant he got to buy power tools! First came the sander, and then he picked out a paint sprayer for the primer and paint.

Two coats of primer, two coats of paint, two coats of sealant, some new drawer pulls and voila! I am obsessed!

There are so many things that I love about this secretary... I love all the extra storage it provides for the nursery. I love that Mike took the time and put in the effort to refinish it and make it so beautiful. And I especially love that our sweet girl will have a unique piece of furniture she can grow up with! 

It took a bit longer than expected due to rainy (read: HUMID) weather and typical life stuff getting in the way, but now that it's finished, we couldn't be more glad we did it! Mike has definitely been bitten by the DIY bug and his next plan is to build me a farm table and matching bench to turn our front room into a dining room. We've picked our design, so now it's just a matter of finding time to build a table with a new baby in the picture! Even if it takes 10 times as long as the secretary, I know I'm going to love it :)

Speaking of having a new baby.. She is still happily snuggled up in my belly! I have a 39 week post in the works, and the chalkboard is already drawn, so I have no excuse not to finish! Let's all just keep our fingers crossed that she decides to stay put until Mike is back to 100% ;)