Mrs. C Does Stuff

Our son, the Little Mister, has had this wooden play set for about three years now.  He loves it!  This Denver Wooden Swing Set was a gift from Santa his very first Christmas.  It sits in our backyard where there is sun beaming on it for most of the day.  Although it is still a rather new unit, it had started to fade pretty badly.  And, the fabric over the fort was torn at the top, from years of waving in the wind. We knew it needed a refresh.  So, we decided to stain it and change the fabric over the fort.  We were able to do everything in one weekend.  For this project, we enlisted the help of my brother and my husband's teenage cousin.  She did a perfect job getting into the hard to reach nooks and crannies we struggled to get to with our old backs and knees. The first step to this refresh was to remove the slide and swings from the unit.  We removed all the hardware from the wood, except the adjoining plates on the top corn...

Our kitchen is a little small, and I need lots of kitchen storage.  So, I came up with a solution to my problem of not having enough space to put everything.  I came across this pretty armoire on Craigslist. The shape and size was perfect for what we needed.  It was simply the wrong color to match our kitchen cabinets and the other furniture in our living room area.  So, I knew I would have to stain it. Deciding what stain to use and how to use it was my first major hurdle.  I wondered if spray painting it was the best bet, given it would provide a similar look to our kitchen cabinets.  But, honestly, I could not really find too many examples online of spray painted wood in an espresso color or something of the like.  Most of the examples of spray painted wood pieces were of bright vibrant colors, none of which I wanted for our armoire. In my research, I came across the Young House Love post where they stained the cabinets in their kitchen ...