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| {My little jewel I found on the street, it's got great lines} |
Confession...I love DIY's. I come from a family of DIY (ers) and not the 'paint the frame a different color' kind of DIY, but the kind of 'build a house entirely yourself' DIY. While I have no real ambition or patience to do that, I do like to dabble in the PG rated kind. It's not a money thing, although I do have a hard time spending money on something I can do myself, it's just more of a personal preference thing and let's face it, who doesn't like to color and bedazzle the crap out of something? At our place in Atlanta, I have boxes upon boxes of hot glue guns, paint, mirrored tiles, jewels, not to mention tool sets that could make contractors green with envy, basically pretty much anything you would need for most DIY's. Over here in France, that's another story. I've accumulated things over the last 10 years from throwing baby showers, decorating our places each year and just overall accumulation but let me tell you, the French make it hard to DIY. I first noticed the difference when I decided to do these 'tissue paper pom poms' for a baby shower and after searching many places, found the cheapest tissue paper packets were around $2 for 5 sheets. I yearned for a Michaels or even a Hobby Lobby. Shoot, I would settle for a Target craft department which I normally turn my nose up at. I found a few stores that came close with options but they weren't anywhere near the price of our stuff back in the States. So last year when I spotted an end table on the street near our apartment, I hesitated. I continued on my run and figured if it was there when I got back, then I would make a decision. 45 minutes later, I rounded the corner and not only was it still there, it seemed in better shape than I had remembered and the kicker, it was being eyeballed by 3 or 4 other people. That was it, I wanted it. It was as if it was an overcast day but only the sun was shining on this little end table. What happened next I am not proud of. I walked over to the table, picked it up, made no eye contact and went home. I figured if someone has a problem with it, they would say something, which was a 'win-win' for me since I was wearing my headphones. Shaun was a little surprised when I walked in with an end table in hand but indulged me anyway when I told him of my grandiose plans. I won't bog you down with the details of how I did it, since that is not the point but I did immediately take it apart and borrow a sander from a friend and went to work. Well that was last year and I finished it…today. It has been sanded and ready for paint for almost. an. entire. year. In my defense, I searched and searched for ideas and paint colors that I liked but each time I walked out of stores shaking my head. At our local Castorama (Home Depot-esque), they were selling pints of paint for 25 Euros. That is almost $35 dollars for basic colors, not even custom colors, or if I wanted a gallon, I could pay 65 Euros/$85!!!! And we haven't even talked primer, or paint brushes. So I put that sanded bad boy in our guest bedroom and forgot about it, until last night when a light bulb went off. I remembered I had a set of small paintbrushes and a few tubes of acrylic paint in our storage downstairs. Fast forward 14 hours later, and it's finished. Shaun likes to say it took me almost a year to do it (wise-ass) but I like to think of it as an overnight project, forever the optimist (cough cough). I love the way it turned out and wish it would make it back to the US with us, but we'll see. Until then, I will enjoy it as much as possible and who knows, I still have a few tubes of paint left, might just have to put them to good use.
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| {That pint of paint for 25 Euros I was talking about} |
I am also thinking about doing these as prints either in our place back in Atlanta, or here. We'll see how long it takes me to get around to that...
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