After a coat of paint on the walls, new bed linens and curtains and horse related accessories here and there, the look was coming together just as she had hoped. The only thing missing was to swap the twin bed of childhood and bring in a full size bed. She had a mattress, box spring and basic frame but no headboard or footboard. So the hunt was on!
Being her "Crazy Aunt" has its responsibilities and getting Maria's room done completely was big on my priority list. The bed would be a focal point in the room so it had to have the right look and feel to go with the new look that she was after. Fast forward to the Route 11 Yard Crawl, an annual event held in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in August.
see: http://www.virginia.org/Listings/EventsAndExhibits/Route11YardCrawl/
At the Yard Crawl, I came across an old metal bed from the 1930's that had great bones and was probably beautiful back in the day. Unfortunately, it was no longer beautiful. It was covered with faux fur which, once removed, revealed an ugly gold paint job. I started to sand it and I found its underlying beauty.
The footboard illustrates what it looked like once the faux fur was removed and the headboard illustrates what it looked like once I got the ugly gold paint off it.
I went to work sanding the whole bed. Then, I primed and painted the design area in a satin white. Once that was done, I covered it with cardboard and primed the rest of the bed with a black spray primer. Finally, I painted it out in a hammered black paint. I painted the whole thing except the area of the design which was still covered in cardboard to protect the white paint.
Next, I removed the cardboard and took a pencil and a metal measuring stick and lightly penciled in all the lines in the design.
Then, I covered the areas I wanted to remain white with this cool frog tape which is really great. I used an exacto knife and my metal ruler to get crisp, straight lines.
I finished the hammered black paint job by painting over the frog tape
and touching up everything to give it the final finish.
Using my exacto knife, I pulled off all the tape revealing the white areas.
It looked great but was very two dimensional, not at all like it looked in the original version.
I pondered what to do and decided I'd try my hand at pin-stripping!
After a visit to the auto store to get supplies, I watched a few demo videos on line.
Feeling a little more confident after the tutorials, off I went doing the pin-stripping.
Check the dramatic difference the pin-stripping made!
Now it looked 3-D like the original version!
You can see the before and after effect the pin-stripping had on the project .
The headboard has pin-stripping, the footboard does not.
The pin-stripping really pops the design like I had hoped.
And with Maria's permission, here's a photo of the bed in its completed state.
I knew this bed had potential!
Look around and see the potential in all the things that surround you!
Believe in yourself even if you've never tried to do something before.
Who knows, you might be able to add pin-stripping to your DIY resume!
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