A little while ago, Miss Frugal announced that she wanted a more grown up bedroom as she felt that hers was too babyish (despite the fact we’d only decorated it last year. Apparently she now hated the turquoise and pink theme she’d picked out not that long ago and she wanted to go for all white.
The first problem (for her, not me) is that I’m planning to do Master Frugal’s room next month as a surprise when he goes away on is school residential and I don’t want her to have another big room makeover before his is done.
Plus the fact that she only just had it done means that her room was pretty low down on my list of decorating priorities if I’m honest. I have no intention of putting in time, money and effort every time her tastes change or she fancies something different.
But then she suggested that she pay for it herself and that she did the work herself and to me, that seemed like a reasonable compromise so I took her to the shop where she paid for a big tin of white paint and the equipment she’s need to do the job. She managed to rope her Dad into helping her and in the end, even I picked up a paintbrush to help so the room itself was done in no time and it looks really good. I’m getting to be a fan of the plain white walls as they’re such a blank canvas
Anyway, now she had the white walls that she’d been after she started looking at new furniture but again, my priority for furniture is Master Frugal’s room so it was a no on that front too.
A week or so later, I was giving the living room a bit of a spring makeover and I bought a really unusual side table which I loved other than the fact it was a really dark wood. I popped to B&Q and bought some Valspar 2 in 1 spray paint and without any preparation of the wood other than a wipe, I transformed from this….
To this….
I could see Miss Frugal watching me as I was spray painting it in the back garden and knew she was planning something by the serious expression on her face. Even so, I wasn’t expecting to come inside to find the contents of her bedside cabinet on the living room floor ‘just in case’ there was enough spray paint left to do her cabinet!
I did have about a quarter of a can of the spray paint left but that I know that wouldn’t be enough to do her cabinet. The paint cost about £11 a can so I bribed her and said if she helped me print off some photos for a project I was planning that I’d buy it for her and she could have a go at upcycling her boring pink cabinet into something more glamorous and grown up.
She gave the cabinet a good clean and removed the handles from the drawers before carrying the whole lot out into the back garden where she started her little makeover.
The spray paint we bought was a primer and paint in one so it was really easy for her to use and she quickly learned that really light sprays were the way to go. The coverage was brilliant and she managed to get the first coat on all of the drawers within about 10 minutes so she turned her attention to the main unit part.
This wasn’t particularly hard to do but it did take longer as she had to do the top, let it dry and then turn it on it’s side to do each side in turn. If she painted the sides with it stood like it was in the photo above then the paint started to run slightly down the side leaving a trail, no matter how lightly she was spraying.
The spray paint was touch dry quite quickly (possibly because it was pretty breezy in the garden that day) so as she was finishing one part, another one was ready for the second coat. It took two coats for it to be done and to our untrained eyes, the gloss finish and the brilliant coverage make it look like it was bought this way for way more than it cost us for the makeover.
The only section where there’s an issue is on the top where she’s gone a bit spray paint happy at the end and you can see that the paint there is thicker than everywhere else but she’s covered that up with a pretty coaster.
It looked that good that I did decide to treat her to some super glamorous drawer knobs as I thought they’d be the perfect finishing touch so while it was drying, we popped back to B&Q to buy some lovely glass knobs which were about £3 each.
We totally could have done without them but they really do add that perfect finishing touch to it don’t they?
She loves it and it looks great in her room!
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