This is not a tutorial.
I don’t know anything about painting and I’m not good at it. My husband won’t even let me help him paint anything in our house, but then again he is practically a professional. He is from a family of painters (although he is a musician) and he spent the summers of his youth painting boats and houses, along with his relatives.
I on the other hand am clumsy with a paint brush. I leave blotched uneven areas, and I spill. A lot.
But yesterday I did a little brushwork anyway. My husband was away, and I didn’t want to wait. You see I bought some old untreated shelves for a song at a garage sale in the village and I wanted to surprise him by having them up before he came home.
I treated the shelves with oil and that was easy enough. It’s immensely satisfying, drenching dry wool in oil. It’s like bringing water to a very thirsty person. And it makes such a difference to the look of the wood too.
But then a small box with little drawers fell into my lap. It was a bit worse for wear and frankly a bit smelly too. But it cleaned up nicely and I decided to paint it.
I found some white wall paint in the basement, and some green acrylic hobby paint in my daughters paint box.
I wanted to get, what I would call a Swedish Kitchen Green. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but almost.
I covered every side of the box, and the drawers, as evenly as I could. And although I did spill a bit (and get paint all over my hands) I was much neater that I thought I would be.
When the outside of the box, and the front had got a second round, I painted little dots of the drawers. First I made some flowers, but that was too cutesy for me so I dried them off
And here it is. I put my buttons in it and although it would perhaps be even better with smaller and more numerous drawers, it is a wast improvement from my previous buttons storage, which was the tried and true all buttons showed in one (pretty) tin.
