Remember that time I blogged about how motherhood was seriously sucking and then I came back two days later and was all like, "Yeah, but check out my new mantle that I painted and shit"? That's how this blog rolls.
So, yeah, I scored this mantle on Craiglist last weekend for FREE. This was my first time ever getting anything free on Craiglist and I almost peed my pants with excitement. I also got to borrow our friend Wade's truck to pick it up and thus got to drive a pickup truck while listening to country music. I was so Nashville for a minute there. I really want a pickup truck now. So the mantle is from a 1919 farmhouse (almost 100 years old!) and the owners weren't really feeling it. If they'd have done their homework, they'd know that these things usually go for $100-$300 around Nashville (I've been looking for one for awhile), but luckily they decided free was a better price.
The process of getting it to its current state was really fun. First Nekos removed the old nails and screws that were jabbing perilously out of it. Then I sanded some rough spots and slapped a coat of Annie Sloan's "Louis Blue" on it. I used Annie Sloan's "Old White" for the shelf. The blue ended up not being what I had in mind, and it was too one-dimensional, so after that coat dried I went back and put a "wash" over it. I made the wash using one part Benjamin Moore's "Wyeth Blue" (left from painting my front door this past summer), one part "Old White," and one part water. Then the mantle had a haphazard meeting with my electric sander. I love that this let parts of the "Louis Blue" show through as well as some of the off white the mantle was originally painted. When I was finished, Nekos sweetly carried this bad boy upstairs and screwed it into our bathroom wall like a boss. I feel so fortunate that he likes this kind of chippy, shabby, old stuff. I feel like lots of guys wouldn't "get it." Over the past couple of days, I've had fun picking out objects from around the house to display on our new bathroom mantle. Meaning: this project cost me zero, and gave me maximum happiness.
