Small White Bench

Hello and Happy Monday!

I have just a bit of time to post this white bench

I finished up last week!

Brand new white bench made from wood, painted, and sealed.

This piece is not distressed anywhere. 

I love how versatile this bench is! It can go anywhere from the entryway,

to the end of a bed, or even a standard height dining room table.


Dimensions are: 34.5" long x 9.5" deep x 18" high

$100 cash

Contact me for arrangements.

This is the most popular piece I build for people,

and can be custom ordered to length and stain/paint!

Have a great day!

~Anneke

You can now follow me via Pinterest and Twitter!

The Entry Bench

I'd like to say, first of all, a big THANK YOU to the so many of you who comment, e.mail me, facebook, etc. throughout the week. It really is quite encouraging to know you are not writing to yourself, and I want you to know that I do appreciate it very much and am so thankful to have amazing readers! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I got quite caught up in my 3-in-1 posts last week, and since then have been so busy that I didn't get my final "finished" piece of furniture, The Bench, written up and posted for you to see. I am seriously in love with how it turned out!

See our crazy TALL entry wall...oh, it's soooo bare, I know.

Slowly, but surely - it will come to life!

The bench fits perfectly!

This is actually where I stage most of my pieces of furniture,

but if I didn't, I would probably build benches

with locker style pieces along the back. :-)

This is basically 3 benches in 1 modified

from Ana White's Spa Bench plan found here.

Now I'm just on the lookout to fill the shelves with wicker

or seagrass baskets for shoes. The whole "get your shoes

on in the garage" thing is definitely not working out.

As for some finishing info.-

 I used wood conditioner,

1 base coat of Minwax Dark Walnut,

1 top coat of Minwax Jacobean,

2 coats of wipe on semi-gloss poly on the base, and

4 coats of the same on the top board.

Let me know if you have any other

questions about the piece!

In the meantime, I'm working on

this

this

this

and this

Any questions or interest, please contact me.

Have a great day!

~Anneke~

You can now follow me via Pinterest and Twitter!

Well. Now that I'm back and officially done with all of the laundry and cleaning, we ended up doing a little bit of rearranging between our living rooms. Unfortunately with rough times and our other house not selling we needed some extra money for property tax. Boo. Keeping it real on this end. :-( 

Anyway, we decided to go ahead with selling our nice leather sectional since it's been on my mind lately to open up our family room.

We started with this

Oh...that angled wall.... :-/

Sold the couch for what we bought it for two years ago

off of Craigslist. :-)

And now have this

You may remember me talking about selling

our other couch from our reading room here.

So with that in mind, we used our couches for 2 years,

sold them and made $400,

and bought the couch above for $100.

I'm feeling pretty good about that -

even though I have to use the cash for property taxes

and not for funner things.

It brings out the creativity, right???

As for the family room, we kept these Barcaloungers

SO COMFY!!! They just take up A LOT of space!

It's not "done", but what do you think initially?

I love having a rug there, which we didn't before,

and I love how open it feels.

We're planning to put move the tv to the wall,

add a media center, etc.

On another note, I somehow got around to building this today!

It's like CRAZY long!!!  Almost 95" for our entryway wall.

I'm planning to stain it a dark walnut or jacobean

and paint the boxes black or something.

They are from a toy box set!

Be on the look out for the finished picture. :-)

I hope you are having a great week!

~Anneke~

You can now follow me via Pinterest and Twitter!

Anyone Interested In Group Classes?

I had such a great time when I had my Girl's Day building Spa Benches

which you can read about here.

They had fun, I had fun, and they built beautiful benches!

Since then I have surprisingly had many people ask me if I would hold classes,

like Partylite for Wood Working. :-)

I think this would be SO fun, but I'm not much aware of any legalities involved,

and the liability concerns me.  Does anyone have advice for this???

I'd love to offer a range of group day classes to give people an opportunity to "test the waters" so to say.  Then they don't have to commit to a longer series of classes, as in a shop class, and not have to buy expensive tools they aren't familiar with or may not be able to afford at this time.

You would still get a great product for a little less than I charge, while learning a new skill. I wouldn't want to "advertise", but do this primarily by word of mouth.

It could be a 2 hr. shelf clinic or 4 hr. bench clinic., etc.

I'm just throwing it out there....

I hope you had a GREAT weekend!

~Anneke

Life Is More Than "Things"

I am so excited, like many of you, about the relationships I make along the way in this journey called life.  One of those relationships for our family is with a family through my husband's work at the Fire Department.

This past Tuesday evening, June 21st, I got to attend a fundraising dinner here:

for their beautiful 6 year old daughter Tessa

who has a disease called Juvenile Myositis or JM.

And I was beyond excited to donate a couple spa benches to support their goal of raising money to find a cure for Tessa and others who have JM!

Here is one of the benches that was up for auction (I unfortunately didn't get a picture of the other one - just think distressed creamy shabby color) :

 

This was a great opportunity to try some new distressing techniques! For a little technical info., we've got major distressing (think hammer, screws, nail punches, even lettering - which is unfortunately hard to see in the picture - it says CURE JM on the lower left bottom shelf), wood conditioner, onyx stain, dark walnut stain, onyx stain, and high gloss clear coat. It looks pretty substantial in person, and I was happy that it brought in a terrific amount for the fundraiser!

 

So, being with great friends and people to support Tessa, her family, and other families with JM is yet another reminder to me that the wonderful and beautiful things we create, purchase, and invest in, are really nothing without the ones we love.  And while the "things" in life "speak to us" in different ways, our family and friends infuse the specialness of these things into our life.

If you would like to learn more about JM or make a donation, please take the time to visit one of the following websites!

http://summersolsticecurejm.eventbrite.com/

www.firstgiving.com/tessacurejm

www.curejm.org

Thanks and have a GREAT weekend! I'm off to run on Saturday for my first half-marathon ever on TeamTessa - yeah!  What are you up too? (fyi- if it's relaxing, I'm jealous!) :-)

~Anneke