Trash Transformation

A few days ago I told you that we are in the midst of several projects at Bradford House. I hate to keep y'all hanging for so long, so I grabbed a few shots of one of the smaller transformations we have been working on.  It is also a teaser for one of the bigger items we have been occupying ourselves with this week. I don't want to give it away, but let me just say that paintable "beadboard" wallcovering is not just for walls.

In this little project, we used the paintable beadboard paper to line the bottom of an old tray we found in a junk pile. Bless it's heart, but that poor tray had been sloppily slathered in white paint and was practically crying for help. How could we resist -- especially since we also had some leftover beadboard paper.

If you are not familiar with paintable wallcovering, you can find it in the interior decorating section of most home improvement stores. Some paint stores also carry it. The paper comes prepasted in various patterns and is super easy to work with because the pattern repeats are usually very small.  Here is what it looks like:

For starters, we gave our tray a instant character by applying the faux beadboard to the surface of the tray.
We let it dry overnight as the instructions directed. 

In the next step, (which I totally forgot to photograph) we used gel stain to highlight the grooves and distressed areas of the tray. We also faked some distressing on the beadboard paper using acrylic paint. Then, using a water-thinned, robin's egg blue latex paint (2 parts paint to 1 part water), we lightly washed over the entire tray. When that dried, we lightly sanded the edges and handle areas to remove the finish to give it an aged, weathered look.

Finally, we brought it in and ACCESSORIZED!

The pale, grey-blue hue goes great with the calm, beachy colors of this vignette.

The simple addition of the once trashy tray really ties the accessories together and
packs a lot more flair than a typical arrangement of books and flowers on a table.