If You Mess Something Up on Accident, You Can Make Something Better.

I like to paint things just for the heck of it. Sometimes my patience keeps me from painting things properly, resulting in a poorly executed $5, 2 hour craft project that because of its failure, turns into a $100, plans-needed, 1 week build fest.

I cant say that I was entirely crushed when the silver paint job that I did on our black shelves scraped off with the 1st attempt to move them back against the wall. Clearly my prep job was less than stellar (no patience, I just want to paint. Who wants to sand?) and the silver paint didn't stick. Why would I want to paint perfectly fine black shelves with silver paint? Because it seemed quicker than the silver leafing process that would have looked (in my dreams) like this piece from carsonandco.com

Granted, the above is a properly proportioned cocktail table and I was starting with a shelf that had a thick coat of black paint covering up all of its ugly bits and pieces. See what happened:

Strange shiny silver proportions with black scratches (that actually don't look too awful in this picture). This was definitely not going back against the wall. So on to plan b: BUILD a bigger console cabinet with the clover leaf pattern radiator sheet metal as the cabinet doors. Specifically the clover leaf patter for 2 reasons: 1. I had it in my head, once something is there it will come to fruition. 2. Because I wanted to put the stereo in the cabinet and be able to hear the music with the door closed. One of the reasons I wasn't ever too fond of the black shelves was because the stereo stuck out about 1.5 inches.

So, I built this:

I still need to put a back on it so you can't see through the center shelves, and it needs feet. Its currently sitting on 2x4s that are collecting dust bunnies. That may take me a month or two since its pretty much 'done' in my book and can sit on 2x4s until we move. I stained 3/4 inch birch plywood with a dark gray stain then rubbed it with silver paint and wiped it off before it dried. This way it has a slight shimmer, but the wood grain still showed through. 3 coats of urethane, some coral colored knobs from Anthropology and bam, done. Clearly I need to organize the books better on the bottom shelf...

*and I have no idea why the type font is different and the pictures are misaligned.