I want to start today’s post by issuing a public apology to my mom. 🤣 In Friday’s post, I mentioned that she had told me to paint stripes on the ends of my island, and I said that we didn’t talk about the details of the stripes, so I just went with the general idea of “stripes in colors from the wallpaper) and did this mockup and credited the idea to her.
After posting that, I met my mom and my friend who was in town for lunch, and to say that my mom was none too pleased that such an image had been credited to her would be an understatement. 🤣 She said, “That’s not what I had in mind at all!” Oh my gosh, I was laughing so hard. We all had a good laugh about it. I mean, she said stripes in the colors of the wallpaper, and that’s what I thought she meant! Evidently, I got it very wrong.
So I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a public apology to my mom for misrepresenting her creative idea and impugning her creative vision and artistic eye. And then yesterday after church, I realized that I had missed an email from my mom where she issued a public statement. Oh my gosh, y’all. I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face. But as per my mom’s wishes, I will post her public statement here…
Oh my goodness!!! Those stripes are definitely NOT what I had envisioned! They draw all attention away from the wallpaper. Talk about CLASH!!! My first choice was dark blue with a white top. I only suggested stripes because you were so determined to use pink. I thought large dark blue stripes with small and even tiny pink stripes. Your pictures and mockups don’t seem to show how very large that island is. If you paint it pink, it is going to scream “LOOK AT ME” when you walk in rather than directing the eye to the wallpaper. I think dark blue would make the wallpaper pop. But it is your house, and you have the right to be wrong. 😊
🤣🤣 So again, Mom, I issue this public apology to you. (She did want me to emphasize that this is all in good fun. We have a very fun relationship, and we joke around a lot about our creative differences and differing opinions.)
So with that behind us, I do have a solid plan. But I didn’t get as far with it as I had hoped this weekend because…well…I’ll get to that. But here’s what I did get done.
First, I got the feet on the island moved out. If you’ll remember, I had attached the feet before adding all of the trim. And I made the mistake of not accounting for the trim when I marked and measured the placement for the feet. So once the trim went on, the feet were barely noticeable.
So while my friend was still in town, I had her and my mom help me flip the island over on its top so that I could move the feet. Since I had glued them on with wood glue, I had to use my Dremel Multi-Max to get them off. Then I had to cut six pieces of 1/2-inch plywood to attach to the bottom so that the feet could be moved out enough since the trim stuck up 1/2-inch from the plywood base.
With those plywood pieces providing a level area with the trim, I was then able to measure, mark, and drill the new holes for the feet.
And then I re-attached them (again, using wood glue) about 1/4″ from the edge of the trim.
And with that, it looked so much better and more balanced. You can actually see the feet now.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison. It’s a small change that makes a big difference to my eye.
And now the feet can be clearly seen from all four sides of the island.
After that, I spent quite a bit of time on the top. I sanded it down completely to get that reddish pink paint off, and then sanded down to 220-grit to get it as smooth as possible. I also filled in that deep groove in the trim around the edge with wood filler all the way around and sanded it smooth. Since I’m going to paint it to look like a very light marble, I didn’t want that deep groove because that’s kind of a dead giveaway that it’s wood trim. Without that deep groove, it looks more like a real edge profile that you might see on real marble. And then I got it primed and sanded down to 220-grit so that it’s as smooth as possible.
Just with those two changes, it looks so much better. Even though the top is just primer right now, I love the brightness that the white adds to the room.
I’ll do a little bit more sanding to make sure the corners are as seamless as possible on that edge trim, and then I hope to get the top finished today.
I also got all ten drawer boxes painted. I hadn’t planned on painting them, but I very clearly bought the wrong plywood to make my drawer boxes. I mistakenly bought a 1/2-inch plywood that is primed on one side and veneer on the other. I didn’t realize I was buying a primed plywood. But the veneer side doesn’t look like veneer, either. It doesn’t have that natural warm brown color that plywood generally has. I mean, it did when I bought it, but as it sat in my workshop, it developed this antique white color, which is pretty ugly. So I decided to paint the inside of all of the boxes white. That was a time-consuming and unplanned step in this island project, but I didn’t want those yellowish drawer boxes.
And then, rather than using wallpaper on the ends of the drawer boxes, I decided to just paint them a fun color. I searched through my stash of paint and found this one that I thought would work. This is Behr Watermelon Punch, and it’s one of the 15 colors I used on the home gym walls. I think it’ll be a nice punch of color when the drawers are open. I only painted the ends because the backs won’t show, and the fronts will be covered with drawer fronts.
And that’s all of the progress I made this weekend after my out-of-town friend left on Friday because I had to spend the rest of my weekend dealing with a crazy situation. I won’t go into details right now or name any names, but I will leave some clues as to what I may be talking about. Let’s just say that a certain unhinged maniac, who has been harassing me via comments on my Facebook page, comments on my blog, and via email, escalated on Saturday night to sending me insults and threats to my personal phone number via text.
MAJOR. RED. LINE. CROSSED. Before he did that, I had already talked to my friend who works for a local sheriff’s department to get his advice. He gave me the name of an attorney to talk to today and told me to file a complain with the FBI’s IC3 office.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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