It’s Friday already? Wow. This week has been crazy! We started back at school – totally without fanfare. No first-day-of-school-pics. No special breakfast. No big lesson plan mapped out. We simply pulled out the math books and did a math lesson. Good, slow start to ease back into it. Then I loaded up my girls, a carload of pillow forms and a stack of pillow covers I’d just made and we headed to Columbus and Pickerington. We’ll call it a ‘field trip’. The girls got to see the capital of Ohio, the skyscraper skyline of the city, shop in a fabric boutique, see where Mom sells her wares, enjoy some delicious ice cream from Jeni’s and dinner at Panera Bread. And they experienced their parents favorite coffee shop while Mom purchased a couple of bags of the best coffee beans ever.
Tuesday we pulled out the grammar books and reading books along with Math. Wednesday Grandma came to help with school and I went to my cousins cabinet shop to start painting my Mom’s new, custom build, kitchen cabinets. More coming on that as the project unfolds. It’s a big one but I’m enjoying it and thoroughly thrilled to have been privileged with the opportunity!
And now I want to share with you my piano bench makeover. We’ve had the piano for a couple years now but it didn’t come with a bench and we hadn’t found one. A few months ago my hubby and I found one at a thrift shop. We paid $25 for it – which might be a bit much from a thrift shop but since we really wanted one and hadn’t ever run across one we paid the money for it.
Here is the before. Actually I think this was after it was shortened. It was too tall for our piano – weird I though – I didn’t know pianos were different in height?! Anyway, my hubby, handyman that he is, took the legs off and shortened them about 4 inches so it was a perfect fit.
I used my handy little drill/screwdriver that my hubby gave me for Christmas years ago to remove the lid from the bench and get all the hardware off.
The legs I painted with milk paint. I needed to paint some samples for my Mom to pick which color to use for her cabinets. So I mixed up a bit of Ironstone, Grain Sack, and Shutter Grey. After painting my samples I mixed all 3 paints together and used it to paint the legs of my piano bench. 
I love milk paint more all the time. 
Sometimes during the day I think the color is a bit too blue. Shutter Grey is a blue/grey and it’s beautiful but for this piece with the grain sack top I think the blue is a bit to – blue 😀 So I will most likely add a wash of grain sack or ironstone at some point – you know, in my spare time!
The grain sack is an authentic European grain sack with a monogram. E for my daughter Emma and a J for me.
I simply cut the grain sack to fit with extra to wrap around the top, serged the edges and used my power stapler to staple it in place. I went right over the fabric that was already there. 
Inside the box I did a quick coat of aqua – just for a pop of fun color when you open it to get the sheet music out.
I love how the detail of the wood shows when you paint and then knock the paint off the edges with some fine grit sandpaper. 
The variations in the paint colors is something I love about milk paint. It has a depth, warmth, and life to it that you don’t find in any other paint.
I’ve had a lot of protest over my wanting to paint this piano. I do like how it looks – and it looks especially good in photos. But I want a whiter look in my living room. Yes, I will probably wait till I get the walls repainted a whiter white and my chairs slipcovered, but there is a lot of brown in this room with the wood floor, my bamboo rug, and the piano.
And what cracks me up when people protest and say this is one wood piece that should not be painted – IT’S ALREADY PAINTED! That is a faux wood grain finish that has been painted on. Yes it is a wonderful job of a faux finish. And I do really like it. It’s just not white!
I do have plans to experiment a bit with the side you can’t see very well and see if there is a way to do a whitewash that would allow the existing finish to show through a bit but also help it look a bit white. We’ll see, but you can be pretty much assured that at some point I will paint this.
I have a piano painting job on my calendar for September! A friend hired me to come paint hers. I will be using chalk paint and she wants a creamy white. I’m excited about the project!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Jill
Sew a Fine Seam
follow along with me here:
Can’t blame you for wanting to give piano a white wash at least to see how it would look, think would be great, more what you want. Doing your friends piano will be a wonderful way to see how you like painting pianos and more experience for painting your own. Can hardly wait to see your friends piano when it’s done. You will show us won’t you. Excited also to see your Mom’s cabinets. Lucky lady getting new cabinets.
Apparently my fingers have one idea and I have other for what I’m doing here. Might be cause of twisted middle fingers from arthritis, darn digits anyway. Between twisted fingers and no feelings in finger tips I hit wrong keys more all the time, lose comments.
Love that new piano bench, when you paint your piano will go even better with it. The grain sack looks great on seat. Color of bench does look very lightly blue.
Sounds like a fun trip to Columbus. That’s educational for your girls also. Good for you all to have some fun gadding about.
Yesterday I decided to clean my counter off on one side of kitchen and scrubbed the grout tile back splash, not that it needed it. Everything seems to get dumped on that side of kitchen counter. ugh. When I got done I decided I’d paint wall but then started cleaning out the fridge, yes I seem to get more done by jumping from one thing to another. (fridge needed it badly again). So while I was cleaning out fridge hubs decided to paint in kitchen where I had cleaned. He does much neater job. I took stuff off top of cabinets on that side to clean up again. Where all the dirt comes from I have no idea but it sure does accumulate in hurry, grrrrr. Hubs painted little darker gray which I had thought about. Not sure if cabinets will be lighter gray or white, thinking white would be better so not too much gray all over. I was thinking of buying bead board, paint it white to put on walls on other side of kitchen but think that’s going to be too cost prohibitive and hubs not sure he could cut it right so now thinking just do all kitchen walls little darker gray and white cabinets. I’ll add more color with my chickens and other stuff I put on top of cabinets. Better stop this, need to go back to cleaning bedroom, just have to vacuum, hang out towels and think that’s it for today I think, maybe work on making my paper gerbera daisies I got from Lia Griffith’s blog. She makes incredible paper flowers. Hope you have great weekend.
Thanks JaneEllen! and i’ve hit the post button before I was done too! Hope your weekend is great too!
YES PAINT THE PIANO!!!!!!!!!!! YOU LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE!!!!YOU STARE AT IT ALL DAY!!!!!!!!IT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY!!!!!!!!EVERYONE ELSE MAY NOT LIKE IT BUT THEY WILL GET OVER IT SO QUICK!!!!!!!WE SHOULD ALL LISTEN TO OUR OWN DECORATING HEARTS AND LOVE OUR OWN SPACE!!!!!!
Thanks SO SO much Tammie! Exactly my sentiments and just what I needed to hear! You’re the best!
Wow what a transformation! Your bench looks awesome.
Thank you so much Alicia!
It’s so funny that you want to paint the piano. This entire post, I kept reading and hoping you’d share how you did the piano…I just assumed you had done a beautiful paint job on it, too!. I love the warmth of it!
Thanks Amanda! I like it the way it is but it’s just too much brown for the room. However the paint job is amazing so I keep waffling about painting over it!