How To: Easy Faux Zinc Letters

Hey guys! I’m really excited to show you my latest how-to today, the easy faux zinc letter (emphasis on EASY!). Remember the letter “B” on my mantel in the Pottery Barn mirror knock-off tutorial?

   

Well, I made that letter “B” out of stuff I had laying around the house. Recycling, actually.

It’s cereal boxes!

I was super lazy efficient about making this, no glue or paper mache required. Yes, you can find cardboard letters like this at Jo-Ann’s. Their design of the letter B looked too much like a number 8 to me so I decided to create my own.

I got so involved in this quickie project that I forgot to take progress photos – oops! This took me only an hour from start to finish. It’s the perfect TV-watching craft.

First, I sketched out two “B”s on the back of some cereal boxes. I used two cereal boxes for this, making sure that the unprinted side of the cardboard was facing out on every side. To make it three-dimensional, I cut the remaining cardboard into 2” strips.

Now. If you’re following along at home, get out your painter’s tape. It was a little pain-staking, but I taped up the letter so that the tape on the front of the letter is invisible (tape inside). The tape’s on the inside of the letter. On the back, I could afford to be less careful and taped this mama-jama up!

Since the letter wanted to roll onto its side, I put a couple of rocks inside to weigh it down. I skipped the full-out papier mache, but if you want, just mix cornstarch & water together and slap some newspaper on that puppy!

 

Go to the store and get yourself some acrylic paint.

Make sure you absolutely absolutely get:
1) Plain black acrylic paint
2) Folk Art “Pearl White” – You’ll find it with the rest of the metallic acrylic paints. It’s a white metallic.
Take the black paint and cover everything. Let it dry.

 

Hooray! Here comes the MAGICAL part. I was like a kid in a candy store when I saw how cool this effect was… who knew that a layer of white metallic + black = metal look??  #WorthTheHype

Take a dry brush, and load sparingly – at first – with the Pearl White paint. Brush it on using straight strokes and dab it on to get the look you want.

Fun, huh?
Check out this close-up of the letters. I love how the edges look forged when they pick up the shine from the metallic paint!


So there you have it – a metal letter art for the cost of 2 bottles of acrylic paint and an hour of your time. Happy painting!


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How To: The Pottery Barn Knock-Off Mirror

Can you justify paying $699 for the Eagan mirror from Pottery Barn? Actually, I did the math. With shipping oversize item fees, tax, and plain old shipping, we’re looking at:

Retail price - $699
Tax, 7.5 % - $52.43
Shipping (10%) - $69.90
Oversize item fee - $60
TOTAL COST: $882.33


Holy Mastercard, Batman!!!


I saw some tutorials on my favorite blogs on how to make one of my own, so I did! I mostly followed this one, at The Lettered Cottage (the rest of their house is amazing, too). I made mine a little more polished by adding a thicker frame to my mirror. Here’s the finished product:

I walked into the project with ZERO knowledge of what to do, what to buy, or how to do it. Through a google search, I found several other tutorials which were helpful, here and here.
The goods:

• 15 8x8 mirrors (located in the candle section – they’re considered candle holders, and they regularly go on sale for 50% off. Mine were $2.49 each, on sale.)

 

• Wood
  • (2) 2"’x4’ pieces of particle board (the mirror will measure 44.5 x 27 inches – I used 1/2 thick plywood to cut weight) 
  • 4 brackets to hold two pieces of particle board together (near the hooks at Lowe’s. I used 1”x4” boards for support and nixed brackets altogether)
  • (3) 8 ft. sections of 3/4 inch flat molding (to go in between the mirrors)
  • (2) 8 ft. sections of 1 1/16 inch corner molding (kinda pricey at $10/piece. Other bloggers have said each one only cost them $4, so I must be missing something)

• 1 can Oil-Rubbed Bronze Spray Paint  (you could probably get by with one. Or, use stain for a more natural look)

 

• Loc-Tite, Liquid Nails, or heavy-duty adhesive (I used construction grade Loc-Tite, available in the adhesive aisle at Lowe’s)

The tools:

• Caulk gun
• Miter saw
• Jig saw or circular saw
• Tape measure
• Clamps
• Personal Protective Eqiupment! (Loss of eyes and hearing is permanent!)

 

If you’re going to make this mirror yourself, make sure to research the other blogs I mentioned and get detailed instructions. In a nutshell, you’re going to:

1. Cut the plywood, corner molding, and flat molding to size.
Allow for 8 inches, even though most of your mirrors may not actually measure exactly 8 inches square. You won’t notice it – I promise.

Also, I cut weight by using 1/4 inch plywood. I was worried about warping, so I backed it with a few pieces of 1x4 inch scrap wood, which also doubled as a bracket. You’ll see the 1x4s in the photos below.
The tutorial at The Lettered Cottage gives dimensions, but if you’re more of a visual person and using a thicker frame like I made, then see below.

I really wish I had seen a sketch like this in other instructions… slow ol’ me took a while to engineer this out!

HYere are a few close-ups of how the frame fits in real life. The corner molding will be glued to the top of the mirror backing.



Make sure you cut everything the right size before you start gluing…

2. Attach brackets and plywood together to create the proper sized backing for the mirrors.
I used extra 1” x 4” boards instead of brackets, with screws. Don’t worry about the screws sticking out. Here is the back view:

And front view:



3. Place the mirrors and molding on the plywood all at once.
This is the moment when you find out if you’ve measured and cut everything correctly!
I used post-it notes to label my mirrors and make sure they went back in the same place (and in the same direction) once I’d decided to put them in a particular spot. I had to do this because I cut the plywood to accommodate the 7 7/8” mirrors, only to find that some were larger and some were smaller, and some were cut completely crookedly. Account for 8 inches and you won’t find yourself in the same awful Tetris-playing mess. 

 4. Glue down the wood only.
Glue one edge of the frame at a time, then make sure everything lines up again. This was a super-slow process since I only have three clamps!
I was lucky enough that my corners matched up, but if they don’t, consider using wood filler to eliminate any gaps between the molding.
If you decide to add the little rosettes (available in the picture-hanging section of the hardware store), glue those down too. I went without.

5. Paint!
…Or stain. I am kind of kicking myself for not staining it. I would’ve liked a dark walnut color, but the oil-rubbed bronze is still really nice. Don’t attach the mirrors until after you paint.

6. Glue the mirrors.
My mirrors had little foam feet on them, so I just put glue on the foam feet and put that down on the plywood. This takes at least a full day to dry. If you need to reposition the mirrors at all, try using a suction cup so you can pick it up safely and easily.


7. Attach hanging hooks to mirror (and wall).
I don’t have any pictures of this, but I used Hillman 50-pound picture hanging wire and screw-in hooks. If I had to do it again, I’d probably use D-rings. At this point, the mirror is super heavy!

You’d be crazy not to screw this mirror directly into the studs, and that was my challenge – the studs above the fireplace are NOT anywhere centered, so the mirror actually hung really crookedly for a while. Watch out for that.

6. Clean mirrors
I accidentally discovered that painter’s tape is stickier than the adhesive on the mirror stickers. So, I stuck painter’s tape to the stickers and pulled the painter’s tape off, saving me tons of time from scratching and peeling stickers off of mirrors. (Sorry for the dark picture, those windows get crazy bright!)

To clean the adhesive gunk off of the mirrors, rubbing alcohol and a paper towel works wonders – skip the 409 and Goo-gone.

Other things I wish I knew:
Don’t use a miter box. It is a pain.in.the.behind. Get a miter saw, like the one I borrowed from my friend Emily (Thanks, Em!)

Measure twice, and then measure again. I screwed up the direction of one of my diagonal cuts (arrrgghh!) and had to buy another piece of corner molding, at $10 per section. Expensive mistake!

Don’t sweat it if there are gaps between the mirrors. The mirrors I bought were all 7 7/8” and as much as 3/16” inch smaller than 8 inches. A few were cut unevenly. You’d only notice if you were using them for this project! Don’t trim your plywood or molding – just let it be and hide the spaces when you put them all in place. The dark color of the stain/spray paint should hide the gaps too. I spent at least a few hours making the mistake of cutting them short, and some of my mirrors didn’t fit in the frame well. I know I’ve said this twice now, but it was SO frustrating!

It’s ok if the mirror no longer fits in its little molding “frame.” You can still save it - when you put the mirror into place, make sure it’s flat (and not at an angle) when you glue it down.

Total cost: < $100 (including my expensive cutting mistake, something like $85). Now, if I could convince Ben that I just saved almost $800…!

Ta-da!

Thanks for stopping by!
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How to Re-Upholster A Chair

I finished the Goodwill chair last week! But before the big reveal I will also post the photo documentation of each step along the way. 

So, in photos, I present to you:

How to Re-upholster a Chair

1) Buy an old chair. Look for stability of the chair itself. Wobbly chairs are fixable, but if you can find one that's not wobbly, you might save a lot of time. This particular one was covered in a stiff red vinyl, and while the structure of the chair was very sturdy, it had a dimple in the middle of the seat (if you look closely, you can see it. Your butt sinks in when you sit in it- not comfy.). The wood had seen better days, the chair was extremely dirty, but just needed some TLC.
No, the chair isn't actually slanted... I'm just not a good photographer!

2) Turn the chair over and unscrew the seat screws to remove it. If you look, there are seat screws at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock on this chair. It wasn't hard to take off, but the screws were very old!

3) Remove the current seat upholstery. If you're lucky, you'll only have to pry out a few staples. In my case, there were upholstery tacks holding the vinyl on.  Lots of them! 

When I took the vinyl off, I found yet another material covering the wooden seat; it appears to have been originally covered in leather. Unfortunately, years of exposure to moisture caused the leather to grow mold... which was a nice little surprise. So, I had to move the party out to the garage (hence the recycling bin in the background) once this was discovered. Look:

That wasn't the only shocker. When I pried the leather off, it was so brittle it just cracked and peeled off like thick cardboard. Then, I found out why the seat had a dimple -- it was filled with what looked like husks and shredded paper. Thousands of sits later, that stuff had no "cush"!  Being the safety professional I am, I handled all of this moldy stuff with gloves and a dust mask (my personal protective equipment).

Removing all of this finally revealed the seat!  Unfortunately, the front of the seat, where the upholstery tacks had been, cracked all the way through.

4)  Fix the chair's structural issues. This could be a project in itself, especially if there are large pieces missing out of the wood, parts of the chair are missing (like a rail) or if it's just extremely unstable.
My issue was the dimple in the seat, since you can see that the picture above shows the burlap covering permanently stretched. I also had to figure out how to repair the edge of the seat.
You can get straps to staple in and stretch across the seat to give it back its spring, but that didn't solve the seat edge issue.

As a fix, I used a jigsaw to cut a piece of wood roughly in the shape of the seat (yes, I used PPE). I nailed it to the original seat. The plywood I used was 1/4" thick, and didn't cause an issue because of the foam I used later. The photo shows how the seat fits onto the chair, but you wouldn't want to attach it just yet.

 5) Clean and polish the wood. It's a bummer you can't see the difference in the wood, but after cleaning it up with water, removing decades of dust improved the chair slightly. Next step: Lemon oil. It can help to restore and clean the wood if it's already in decent shape. Apply lemon oil to a soft towel and rub the wood down, being generous with oil.
This chair frame had specks of white paint splatter on it, which, after rubbing down 3+ times with lemon oil, came off easily with a fingernail and did not damage the chair. The wood just sucked this stuff up!! As a bonus, the oil made the chair smell like lemons. :) For any of the rough areas with wood splinters or dirt that wouldn't come off, I sanded very lightly with super-fine sandpaper, then applied extra lemon oil on top. After three applications over the course of 6-10 hours, the chair looked darker, less aged, and much more polished.

6) Apply foam and batting to the seat. Cut 1" foam (green in the photo below) to the shape of the seat, leaving 1" extra past the seat's exact dimensions. I also did a rough bevel of the foam with some sharp scissors, but it's not totally necessary if you're using batting. You can get this foam by the yard anywhere you can buy fabric. While you're there, buy some batting. I used organic bamboo batting, but the synthetic kind will work just fine. I bought some that was thick enough to conceal the bump of the plywood seat I cut out, but you have a lot of flexibility here. Cut the batting and allow at least 5 inches past the seat's edge (10 inches total).  You can trim later, but it's harder to fix if you don't allow enough material.  Lay that down, the place the foam down with the seat on top. Pull the batting so it's taut and staple approximately every 3-4 inches, about 1 inch from the edge of the seat.. Trim excess material once the batting is secure.

If you're doing a lot of upholstery projects, I recommend an electric or pneumatic staple gun. I still use my manual gun that I got at Lowe's for $15.

Close-up of the batting covering, complete:

6) Cover and staple the fabric. Cut the fabric to at least 5 inches beyond each edge of the chair (10 inches extra again). If the fabric has any kind of a pattern, make sure it's straight and level when you lay the seat on the fabric. Just like you did to the batting, pull taut and staple.  Edges are tricky; I folded mine like a present, but do what looks best since every chair is shaped differently.
I used an upholstery fabric on my chair, but regular cotton print fabric can work just fine too, depending on how hard you're going to use this piece. I would choose the heavier upholstery fabric for a chair which will endure a lot of wear and tear. For my ottoman, as an example, I used regular thin cotton fabric since no one really sits on it.

Close-up of the seat, complete:

7) Home Stretch: Screw the seat onto the chair frame. Align the screws and re-attach. Make sure the seat is secure.
I had some issues with mine, since the thickness of the material between the frame and seat was too thick for the shallow screws that were originally used. I drilled two holes next to the original ones and used longer screws to make sure the seat would stay in place. The new screw's on the right, old one at left.

Turn the chair over, and tada!  Done in 7 steps.

Doing the math:
Chair - $7.54
Foam - $4.44
Batting - $2.29
Fabric - $3.66 (with coupon)
GRAND TOTAL: $17.93

...with plenty of material left over.

Here's the final product.