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About a year ago, my mom made a big change and decided to move closer to me. She built a house from scratch in a beautiful area of our town. The only problem? She moved from a house full of character to a builder grade home...one in hundreds, instead of one of one. I promised her that we will build character into her new house. So, slowly, I've been building pieces and adding character over these past several months. We have lots more to do and many rooms to finish, but it's happening. That being said, I'll be sharing lots of projects going on in her house with you. The first of which is this DIY wood x console table for her entry way...which was actually a surprise present I made for her birthday. It was so much fun having her walk in and see it.
The hallway for her entry is so long and crazy wide. I thought of multiple ways to furnish it, but ultimately came up with this 8' long and 17" wide table. She was in desperate need of storage spaces. With this open concept plan, and quite a bit smaller house, she lost storage space along with storage pieces she once used. So, my requirement was to build something to take up this space that offers storage and adds character.
I decided to go with this plan from Ana White(full tutorial here). I made the length a little bit longer, but the steps are all the same. I'll share below with how I got the white wash weathered wood finish.
First step in building this table was to create the frame. Using 2x2s and 2x4s, I attached them together using pocket hole screws.The next step was to secure the bottom and middle shelves. These are 1x12 boards. They were secured to one frame first using wood glue and pocket hole screws.Then I secured to the other frame in the same manner. This is a look at it upside down. I added the supports with the 2x4s on the top and bottom of each side, and a 2x2 along the middle shelves to the supporting 2x4 legs. Next was adding the "X". If I told you this part was easy, I'd be lying. It took me longer to make sure these were correct than it took me to build the entire piece. After many....many attempts, I settled. :) I think they turned out alright in the end. I then added the top using 2x6 at 8' long. Now for the finish. This is probably one of my favorite finishes out of all of the pieces I have done. I white washed the wood using interior latex paint in satin. The exact paint is Swiss Coffee by Behr. I made sure to keep a lot of the wood grain showing and only did one light coat. I did make it heavier in some areas and not as much in others.
I then took Minwax's Classic Grey and went over the entire piece using some old cloths. If it was heavier in areas that I wished, I quickly wiped it away to let the white show through a little more. At the end, I then wiped it entirely down with a clean cloth, making sure to get up any unabsorbed stain. And that's it! It gave it a beautiful natural looking weathered look. I think the "X" and the weathered look gave this piece the perfect character for this space.
You can see here how long the entryway is....and I'm not even out the door in this picture. There's still a lot of space behind me. We have lots of plans for these walls, which include.....board and batten. Who would have guessed? Ha! Styling this was fun...and easy! I knew we needed storage, hidden storage. That came in the form of these baskets from Home Goods.We found this beautiful mirror from Home Goods also and flanked the sides with the blue glass vase and lamp. Added extra height to the left side with the candlesticks from Hobby Lobby. And of course, I added my go to faux plants and books!
I am so excited to get going on this floor to ceiling board and batten. I think it's really going to add such an impact in here!
Here's a good view of this space before she moved in. We decided to go with all white walls to save on cost...mainly knowing we for sure wanted the ceilings to be white and in order to make the ceilings white, either all the walls also needed to be white or we needed to pay for 3 tone paint. I figured white was the way to go. You can always go and add simple accent walls of colors. That's a whole lot easier than trying to paint an entire house's ceiling :)
Here's the after of this area one more time....and kind of the before too since this will all be changing with the walls in the coming months :)
These floors are interesting too. They look dirty, but they aren't. They have a mix of grey in with the brown that tend to reflect the light. They are beautiful and have a great mix of colors which easily match greys and beiges.
The next project I'll be sharing in here is a HUGE one! It made all the difference in her house. I'll be sharing that with you next week!
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