horse | Restyled Junk

Saturdays are usually my junking days, but last Saturday I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My barn is already stuffed with my accumulation of yard sale, thrift store and auction finds. Yes, I do things with my junk treasures, but in reality, I bring home more junk treasures than I can keep up with. Older stuff gets pushed to the back of the barn and forgotten. So…

…last Saturday I decided to shop my barn. These are the pieces I pulled out. They were filthy, so I got the hose out to knock off the thick layer of dust. Once that was accomplished, I was able to get down to really cleaning them and sanding them. At one time I had four of the chairs. The other three have long since been restyled and sold. It was time this baby got a makeover. My shop doesn’t have too many little kid things right now, so I thought the rocking horse would be a good addition. I picked up the sewing table several years ago at a church sale. It doesn’t have a sewing machine in it, but I thought it would make a great end table. The little table…or maybe it’s a desk…was a discard from my brother from eons ago.

I was on a roll, so I didn’t take pics during any of the transformations. What ya see is what ya get. Sorry about that. There wasn’t a lot to see anyway. Thankfully everything was pretty straight forward with no drama.

The finished rocking horse. A couple coats of pink chalk paint and some sanding to distress. I was thinking about dry brushing on some white, but my very tall, redneck son said he liked it with just the pink. (giggles) Now it’s ready for a little cowgirl to giddy up.

The table (desk?) and chair were done in the same color. Not sure if you can tell in the photos, but they were both painted a pale green.

They would look good alone…

or go well together as a set.

I added a pearl finish and stamped pearl white roses on them. I tried to take a pic of the roses, but they are very faint. Can you see them?

Is this pic better?

Lastly, the sewing table. I really, really, really want to keep it, but I have no room. It was painted eggshell and distressed with sanding. Oh, I also removed the curved thing that enclosed the sewing machine from underneath. It wouldn’t stay up and I didn’t want to mess with it.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my frugal shopping. I may have to do it again this weekend. Eventually I should get close enough to an old stereo cabinet I have been wanting to restyle. It’s about halfway back in the barn so it may be awhile still, but I’m getting there. It was the one my parents had when I was a kid. It was pretty bad when I brought it home, and it had a pack rat living in it. Who knows what’s living in it now.

With this project, I’m wondering if I will have people cringing and asking “What was she thinking?” I have waffled between loving it and hating it myself.

Years ago, I used to make carousel horses from old Wonder Horses. That really isn’t my style anymore, but I still have several Wonder Horses just hanging out in my barn. I pulled out a few of them and cleaned them up. I was determined to come up with something new…something that didn’t scream “nursery” decor…something a little more decorative for any room in the house…something…I decided to cover one with book pages.

I glued pieces of newspaper over the holes. This may seem like a pretty thin covering, but with the addition of the Mod Podge and layers of book pages, the finish over the holes was really quite strong.

I also painted the entire horse with an ivory colored paint. I realized too late that this really wasn’t necessary. I have covered things with book pages before and you can’t see through them.

Now for the decoupaging marathon. Full sheets of the book pages were just not going to work. I simply tore them into smaller pieces and layered them on. I also watered down my Mod Podge. It seemed to go on a lot easier that way. There are a lot of curves, bumps and indentations on a horse. I saturated the book pages really well, then molded them into, onto and around all of the obstacles. About a third of the way done, my back, shoulders and neck were on fire. I had come too far…I would recover later…I was not going to give up.

“Was that what you were going for?”
“What are you going to put over the newspaper?”
“Huh?”

These were the responses I got from my family of guys when I asked them what they thought of it. Hmm…

Oh well, I had put too much work into it to call it a fail…yet. I decided to wipe on a brown stain. I liked the way it unevenly aged the surface. Yep, the unevenness of the stain was done on purpose…because I said so. I applied a sealer over the whole thing. Okay, I still wasn’t happy until…

I staged a few pics. Sitting on a drop cloth in the middle of torn paper…well, in that setting, it looked horrible. Placed in a more decorative venue, I didn’t think it looked too bad. Here it is on top of a hutch. I’m thinking some leather or greenery would have looked nice too, but unfortunately I didn’t review my photos until after I had put everything away.