The Interior DIYer

Storage bench makeover with Fusion Mineral Paint

I’m sorry. I did it again. I painted a thing. Is this get boring? Correct answer: NO.

The relentless humidity we’ve been experiencing here in Ottawa broke last weekend and in a burst of energy, I started to organize our front hallway. One of the many updates I’ve wanted to make to our hallway was to add a storage trunk of sorts that could hold our hats, mittens and scarves in the winter and store our shoes in the summer. I also wanted it to be cushioned so we could sit on it, but it could be no wider than 40 inches as that’s the exact width of the small alcove-type space in our hallway. So I did what I do best and logged in to Kijiji to see what I could find.

It took me a long time to not only find the right size storage bench, but one that hadn’t already been taken by someone with a car that could pick it up sooner than I could. I’m talking like 10 months of searching to find something, but F I N A L L Y last weekend I found a storage bench that no one wanted, that would fit our picky hallway nook and the owner offered to deliver it to me for free. Yassss.

It was a storage bench only a mother could love. It was made almost exactly 51 years ago [according to the stamp on the inside saying “October 1967”] and was covered in brown and beige faux leather material. It was pretty fugly, but I could see its potential.

It is very well made and has some heavy-duty hinges and for $40, it was a total deal in my mind. A few hours after it was delivered I was painting it with my now very reliable Fusion Mineral Paint. The storage bench isn’t going to be a major focal point in our hallway, so I wanted it to be in a dark colour that could hide the scuffs and scrapes that come with an entryway, so I painted it in Coal Black from Fusion Mineral Paint. Just like our painted tufted leather armchair!

I painted two coats of Fusion Mineral Paint’s “Coal Black” on the dark brown sections and three coats were needed to cover the lighter beige [in the photo above you can see the difference between two coats of paint on the beige vs. one coat of paint on the right. The two coats were good, but still streaky so a third coat was needed]. I took my time and left the bench for a few hours between each coat.

After the three coats were painted, I left the storage bench open overnight [so the paint on the seams wouldn’t seal shut] and by the next morning it was ready to be used.

I continue to be amazed by how well Fusion Mineral Paint works on leather [and faux leather alike]. The coverage is perfect and you honestly cannot tell it’s a piece that has been painted. I’m not just saying this because Fusion Mineral Paint sent me paint. I’m saying this because I feel more people need to know that the DIY possibilites with paint are becoming more and more endless. If you see a secondhand piece of leather [or faux leather] furniture for sale but the colour isn’t your favourite and the thought of having it reupholstered is making you gently weep, know that painting it with Fusion Mineral Paint is 9,000% an option.

Our hallway is still a WIP, so it’ll be a few weeks before I’m able to properly photograph our storage bench in its new home. But for now, I’d like to thank Fusion Mineral Paint, again, for providing me with paint to do this project [and a few more coming soon!]. It means a lot to this busy working mom who is barely holding it all together 💕

DISCLOSURE – while this post is not sponsored, I did receive this paint free of charge from Fusion Mineral Paint in exchange for a blog post. I only work with brands that I like and of course, think you will too. Thank you for supporting the companies that support The Interior DIYer.

Updating (and childproofing) our secondhand dining table with faux marble contact paper

It’s been in every dining room photo since my One Room Challenge but I never got around to properly introducing it; our updated dining room table! I updated it in May with some faux marble contact paper and I’m only getting around to writing about it now. Story of my life these days, but it was the best update I could have made to that table.

One of the many things the previous tenants left for us was their dining room table. They knew we had next to nothing since emigrating from Dublin and since they’d be buying a dining table for their new house, they decided to really kindly leave their old one.

I was irrationally excited about it as it’s a really solid table [we bought a table last October, but it ended up being very weak and flimsy]. Our dining room is also a really big room so it needs a big table to anchor it and make it feel less like you’re floating around in the middle of the ocean. While I loved the shape and size of the table, I knew I’d want to eventually update it. But exactly how was my next daunting question.

The table is for the most part solid wood, but in a deceptive way. In a few spots [as you can see on the left in the photo above] it’s some sort of MDF just beneath a thin surface of real wood. There was also no finish so the raw, untreated wood had a lot of stains it wasn’t willing to part with; nail polish, coffee and food in general. None of which could be cleaned off.

I first thought about staining the table with a wood stain, but to be honest, I didn’t like the wood pattern on the top and the already dark knots would have ended up looking even darker. My next immediate thought was to cover it in contact paper, but I was hesitant. I mean, that’s a lot of table to cover. And the edges were so fiddly.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I finally made a decision; I was trying to once again clean a smushed blueberry from a few days previous [yay, untreated wood that absorbs everything] when a massive splinter of wood from the edge broke off into the palm of my hand. And I mean it was huge [#ThatsWhatSheSaid]; it was about 5 inches long, razor sharp and decided it would much rather hang out in my hand. What if it had broken off when Cora was around? What if it happened when I wasn’t there to see it? The mind goes to fantastic places once you become a parent, so that afternoon during Cora’s nap I took out the rolls of contact paper and got to work.

It was time consuming but easy to cover the table. I took the leaves apart and applied the contact paper one section at a time. I used the same technique I used a few years ago to cover our then coffee table – you can see the full step-by-step tutorial here! [p.s. I was about 2 weeks pregnant with Cora in those photos, but didn’t know it 💕]. I also lightly sanded the legs and applied two coats of white paint [I used some leftover Behr’s eggshell paint for baseboards and doors as it was wipe-able and held up really well throughout the dining room].

I will be the first to admit it is not a perfect update. When you stand at the end of the table you can see the wood pattern in the reflection, but only if you’re really concentrating. The end leaves of the table are much wider than the width of the contact paper so there’s a random 2-inch strip of contact paper at either end. But for us right now, this table is perfect. It fits the three of us for dinner plus the hot mess of garbage that gets dumped on it. It’s very sturdy. But above all else, it is a dream to clean. No matter what you spill or drop on it, it wipes off immediately. And when you have a toddler that is an angel one minute and the 11th member of Suicide Squad the next, that’s a deal breaker. Function > form.

For anyone curious, I ordered my contact paper directly from the manufacturer. They said it’s available in Lowe’s here in Canada [but I couldn’t find it on their shop online], and back in Dublin I bought this exact same contact paper in B&Q.

A simple update with paint

I made a really simple update this weekend to a kitschy rose I bought in Value Village a few weeks ago. The matte porcelain flowers were a shade of purple I wasn’t particularly in love with and they were also worn and chipped in a few places. I grabbed my favourite tin of Classic Burgundy paint from CIL and painted two quick coats of paint on the petals, front and back.

Though this was a really minuscule project [so small infact that I need a magnifying glass to read the likelihood of it being allowed to be even called a ‘project’], it was a kind of project I need right now; something that can be done in 20 minutes.

Have you worked on a tiny project recently? Sometimes I love tiny projects. They’re enough to get finished with a toddler running around in the background and also make me feel like I’ve achieved something other than perpetually cleaning up after said toddler tornado.