DIY Faux Malachite

I would have never guessed a couple years ago when I made this double wide desk from IKEA components, that I'd still be using this inexpensive combo today. I really love it - it's great to have so much work space - but it was time to change up the look a bit. When Sherwin-Williams invited me to use some of their green paint to dream up a project for National Painting Week, I knew my old trusty desk was going to be the lucky target.

I shared last week that I've been dying to try my hand at a faux malachite painting technique, but I've been a little intimidated. I had no idea just how easy it would be! Here are the paint colors I used, all of the colors were mixed in Sherwin-Williams All-Surface Enamel Latex Gloss, going clockwise from top left: Cape Verde (SW 6482), Active Green (SW 6986), Country Squire (SW 6475), and Faux Impressions Clear Glaze.

I put a coat of primer down on the desk, just make sure the surface was smooth and clean. I did a little sanding too, just with a hand block.

Then I brushed on a coat of Active Green for the base of the malachite.

I let that dry for at least a couple of hours.

I made glaze mixtures in both the dark green and dark teal colors. The mixture was about one part paint to three parts glaze, and then it was mixed well.

I think the secret to doing a very easy faux malachite is two sizes of fan brushes. If you can find something very small and another very large brush, that would be ideal.

The malachite pattern part is fun and easy. I started at one end and worked in rows. The trick is to layer the swirls on top of each other. You cover up the start-stop part of each swirl with the smooth, round part of a new swirl. The glaze makes it so the paint dries a little slower and you can layer on the swirls in a clean way, so that the clear bright green base shows through.

Turn on some music and try to keep a loose hand. :) The trick is to not go over the same part twice, if you can avoid it. Also, rather than doing perfectly rounded circles, add some wiggle to the brush so that the lines of the swirls have some movement. It takes some playing with to get the hang of it, but it's fun to do and it goes really fast!

Don't forget to switch back and forth between the small and large fan brushes and the dark green and the dark teal glaze mixtures. I mixed the mixtures together sometimes too (such a rebel, I know).

I also tried to continue the same swirl pattern and glaze color down the side of the table top for a consistent look.

And here's the dried, finished look:

It's definitely not meant to fool anyone into thinking it's real malachite. It's just meant to be a pretty, abstract look. I love it!

I like how much blue there is in the finished desk - I think the SW colors were perfect! I'm really loving how they look against my dark gray walls and with my leopard Eames chairs.

And now for the barrage of photos of the desk at all angles!

I loved getting to try another faux painting technique - especially one that had such quick and easy results! A big thanks again to Sherwin-Williams for sponsoring LGN and letting me participate in this year's National Painting Week. And be sure to catch the thirteen other design bloggers' projects this week! Today, Cassandra at Coco + Kelley has another green project (I love the color she chose!) and tomorrow Erin from House of Earnest and Justin and Cassity at Remodelaholic will share their yellow projects. It's going to be a colorful week in blogland! :)

Tiger Chest

I've mentioned before how thrift stores can be hit or miss in NYC. I get it though. Real estate here is so expensive, they have to really hike those prices up to cover the rent. So I usually don't have high expectations for great deals if I'm popping in to shop. (By the way, I recommend any of the Housing Works locations, the Salvation Army way over on 11th Ave and the Angel Store Thrift on 17th.) For the most part you can expect to find something like this. The tag here read "Pink chair in the Eames style, Broken leg. As-is, $195" Like, what? You can buy them new for less. Who's going to pay that for a busted up knock-off?

Yet, just a few feet away from the overpriced broken chair was this Tigery beauty. Price: $200 on the dot.

This type of wood and finish is practically my favorite thing in the world. I love-lurve-luff the pattern in the grain. I don't even know what species the wood it is - looks too smooth to be oak. Crotch mahogany? Maple?

So then I did what any other hardcore thrifter would do. I threw angry glances of warning to the shoppers around me and flung my body over the thing while I spent five full minutes carefully prying off the clear mailing tape they used to secure the price tag (??). Then I happily hustled to the train to go pick up my car and bring this baby back home with me.

The chest replaced the pink wire console for now, which went on the back porch - and I love it there. I'm still trying to figure out the rest of the office, but I think we're getting there. I love this big brass lamp here that I pulled out of the lamp graveyard in the basement. A big desk project is happening this week (more on that Monday), and I think a new rug will really help.

HAPPY WEEKEND! I hope you're having a great one! xo

Eames Management Chairs in Scalamandre Leopardo Velvet

I can't believe I haven't shared these chairs with you guys yet. My babies! My pride and joy!

About a year ago I saw an ad on craigslist for vintage office furniture from an old publishing company that was going out of business in New Jersey. Vintage office furniture is usually great stuff, and the photos in the ad looked promising, so I hopped in the car (actually last year, I would have had to rent a zipcar, so this was a really risky venture - I'm glad it paid off!).

I was rewarded with a pair of Eames Soft Pad chairs from the Management line. These chairs are normally astronomically expensive, especially when they have five wheels and are upholstered in leather. My chairs only had four legs since they were made in the late 70s/early 80s, and they were upholstered in a rose pink upholstery that was stained and not in great shape. But they were $150 for the pair, so I snatched them up fast as lighting. All the while thinking of Ames Ingrams' reupholstered Management chair that I blogged about here, years ago.

That exact same, very lucky day I was online looking for some interesting fabric to reupholster the chairs in, and I stumbled across an auction for four yards of Scalamandre's Leopardo silk velvet on eBay. You guys, this stuff is INSANELY expensive - like, $1000 a yard expensive (you can usually find it for about $300 a yard online though). I got the four yards for $200 total and it was worth every single penny. 

The silk velvet is smooth as buttah and I love the little bits of green strie in the gold background.

As far as the upholstery goes, this was definitely NOT a DIY job. I had my upholsterer here in the city do these and I heard more than a few curse words come out of his mouth at one point when he called me about the chairs. Apparently they were not easy to take apart. :/

But a year later, I'm still loving them (such a testament coming from me) and even Michael doesn't mind them, you know, for leopard print office chairs. :) I'm of the "good animal print is a neutral" school of thought though, so I might be a little biased.

Oh! I thought I would mention that, while the silk velvet is absolutely fabulous and if you can spring for it you should, there is a great alternative for those of us living in realm of budgets, other than just lucking out on eBay like I did. The actual pattern of the leopard is an open-source pattern (I think) because a few other fabric lines use it as a printed cotton velvet. I know Duralee (Braemore maybe?) sells it to the trade and Calico Corners sells that retail for about $30 a yard (and they make this pretty X bench below!). The fabric pattern is called Jamil Natural and you can usually find a few yards for much less if you dig around the interwebs a bit. It's no where near as soft or as pretty in person I think as the silk, but the look is very similar from afar. And why not save $970 per yard? :)

These Calico benches made an appearance in the most recent Lonny:

And here are a couple more rooms featuring the leopardo pattern. In photographs you usually can't really tell which is which, but I'm guessing most of these are the real-deal silk velvet.

Sally Wheat

Palmer Weiss

Elle Decor

Adding Trim to Closet Doors

There are two closets in my office that hold a lot of good stuff - fabric and trim and wallpaper samples. Since I use these closets often, I decided to make them prettier and I gave the doors a little facelift recently. Here's what the boring hollow core doors looked like on move-in day.

The painters our landlord insisted on using didn't prime any of the doors before painting them black (with latex paint??), so I've been going back one by one and re-coating with primer and oil-based paint. Here's what the doors looked like after removing the old hardware and giving them a light sanding. This was also after I took down the blue wallpaper. (We had a little photoshoot in the space a couple months ago and the wallpaper needed to be removed. It's a long story, but I was fine with it.)

At one point I had installed a big brass knob on the far right door, thinking I had four knobs, but I actually only had three (you can see one of them in this post). Bummer. The knobs were a little big for the closet doors anyway, so I started looking around for a good, but mostly inexpensive alternative. I found these solid brass knobs at Home Depot for $5 each and they fit the bill just fine. A little on the small side compared to the others, but probably a more appropriate size for closet doors.

I sanded the doors down by hand, which was a mistake. I should have pulled out my palm sander or even stripped the doors with my beloved Citristrip. There was definitely a texture left that I hoped wouldn't showed through the new paint, but it did a bit. It's not all that horrible in person, but learn from my mistakes and don't take the shortcuts here like I did. :) Hopefully your doors are smoother than mine were and the whole problem can be avoided.

I had a bunch of pre-cut trim from a few old projects that I decided to use on the closet doors. Since all of it was pre-cut, all my long pieces were ready to be installed on the door with my brad gun and this project was a cinch. I only had to cut the short pieces and the pieces for the small boxes in the center of each door.

I made things really easy on myself and made it so every border was 3" wide. This way I could just eyeball the placement of the trim, hold it up, verify with a ruler that the trim edge was 3" away from the door edge (or the next piece of trim) and then put in a nail with my brad gun. No marking out, no levels. Fast and easy.

Once all the molding was nailed up, I sealed all the seams with paintable caulking and gave that a light sanding when it had dried.

The old hardware holes were patched too and then the doors were ready to be painted.

The only dark-tint primer I had on hand was a cheap brand that I'm not a big fan of, but I used it anyway to prime the new trim. Not surprisingly, it didn't do a great job of sealing the raw wood. So the trim took the oil-based paint differently than the old door did. C'est la vie, I guess. (Note to self: Only buy Zinsser!)

It's hard to photograph super glossy walls and doors, so you'll just have to trust me that it looks prettier in person. :) But I'm happy with how the project turned out.

I love the shine and the bit of dimension that the new trim adds. And I love the new wall color (BM Chelsea Gray) with the black doors too. The masculine neutrals help tone down some of the brighter colors I have in the space (like the neon tetanus console). :)

One step closer to finishing this room that still needs a lot of work!

PS Here's the door in our old loft to my girls room that I trimmed out (without any power tools!) and painted a bright yellow. And another, better shot in this post.

Have you trimmed out any of your interior doors? I love how it can really elevate those hollow core doors so many of us are cursed with! :)