Candlestick Makeover

The last time I went garage sailing, I spotted this great set of candlesticks. I loved their curvy shape, the fact that they were solid wood, and that each candlestick was unique yet coordinated. I am not a huge fan of taper candles, but knew I could give these babies a makeover to accommodate pillar candles. They were in pretty bad shape. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but they were really dirty and had lots of yellowed stains on them, like they had been in the attic for a while or something. They look nicely weathered in the pictures, but trust me, it was dirt. ;)

I found wooden plaques at Michael's for $.79 and thought they would be perfect to use as the top platform for pillar candles. Because the plaques were raw wood, I knew they would need priming. It took 4 coats of white spray paint to get good coverage--the wood was quite thirsty. :)

I used Elmer's wood glue to adhere the plaques to the top of the candlesticks, then filled in the seam with wood filler. After I sanded the dried wood filler, I was ready to paint! Oh and let me mention that wood putty is very different than wood filler. I originally bought wood putty, but then read that it does not dry and become hard. Not quite sure what the point of that would be??? Wood filler dries fairly quickly and then can be sanded down and stained or painted. I'm probably the only newb that didn't know this! :)

After getting a coat of white paint (I used a foam brush and the leftover paint from the dining room chairs), they were looking much better! See the difference between the dirty one and the freshly painted one? I'll admit, I really wanted to distress them, but my attempt failed miserably. I'm still stewing over a way to distress them without ruining them... Ideas?

One of my favorite places to get pillar candles is the Dollar Store! Pillar candles start at $3.50 each at the big box stores, but I scored these for $1 each! Woot!

I'm loving the new look! I'll be back soon with our finished Spring fireplace display!

Saturday Finds

This is technically a couple Saturday's old, but had to share our recent find. :) In our previous home, we used our breakfast nook as a play area for Little One and our dining room as our main eating area. In our new home, we have a bedroom downstairs that we made into a playroom, so we kept our breakfast nook and dining room for their intended purposes. Hooray! We only owned one table, though, so we removed the leaf from our dining room table and put it in the breakfast nook and bought a new table for our dining room. Confused yet? Haha

Anyway, we have not been 100% satisfied with how the table looked or fit in our breakfast nook. Because of its oblong shape, the person sitting in the back always ended up slamming the chair into the plantation shutters when they got up. Not cool. And, let's be honest...I'm not a fan of the style of the table. Cute in the 90's, not my style now. Danny Tanner called and wants his table back.

Here's a phone shot of the old gal.

Our original plan was to save up and purchase a new, round table that fit the breakfast nook better. But, with our long home to-do list, the breakfast nook table kept getting pushed to the very bottom. We decided to try and find a table on Craigslist for the same price or less than what we could sell our existing table for to save money and get this item marked off our to-do list.

I'll admit, I HATE buying things on Craigslist. I have terrible, terrible luck. I contacted 2-3 sellers within a couple hours of their listing going up, and they would either not bother responding, or their table was already sold. Another seller went as far as scheduling a time for us to come get the table, then mysteriously wouldn't give us their address and then told us the table was sold. What happened to honesty? Rant over.

Thankfully, on attempt #5 or 6, we found a round table that was in perfect condition for $200 AND were able to purchase it from a really nice woman without any drama. Hooray!

Here's our new little table!

It fits the space SO much better than the other table did! We gained a ton of space in the breakfast nook and were able to position the chairs so that no one would back up into the shutters. LOVE IT!

We were able to sell our old table for $220 on Craigslist, so we ended up with a table that we loved and $20 in our pockets! Woot woot!

Have you swapped anything out recently that just wasn't working in your home? Do you have better Craigslist luck than I do?! Hope so!