Project 52 - Week 18 - Painting a Pine Blanket Box

Saturday was a lovely sunny day here, so whilst OH was busy in the garden putting up some new fence panels, I decided to keep out of his way by staying inside and starting one of the medium sized jobs on my Project 52 task list, namely the painting of a pine blanket box.

I've had this blanket box for over 20 years and it has followed me to London from Yorkshire and is so useful for storing things away out of sight.  Currently, it sits in an alcove in the living room, next to an armchair and acts as a kind of side table for a lamp and my current sewing projects (in the basket) to sit on.

Here's a photo of it insitu before being painted.  I moved the armchair out of the way to get a good view of it.

 

It's a bit scratched from years of wear and tear, but to be honest, there probably wasn't really anything wrong with it the way it was, except to me it felt a little incongruous with the rest of the décor and was a bit orange.   You can't actually really see it when the chair is in place, but I still had an urge to paint it.

As I explained in a previous post about organising, I managed to empty it a couple of weeks ago.  It was filled with wool, fabric and sewing supplies, all of which found a new home in my sewing room and I decided that once painted, I was going to use it to store the hand made quilts I've been making this past year.  I don't have another option for storing them during the summer months when they aren't being used and they are quite bulky, so this was the perfect solution.

When it came to paint, the main colours in our living room are dark grey, pistachio green and dark teal, so I planned to use some, if not all, of these colours for this job. I didn't really have a plan as to whether I was just going to simply paint it or apply a design to it, so I sought a bit of inspiration from yes, you guessed it, Pinterest.

After having a good look at some of the beautifully painted designs on furniture on Pinterest, I got to thinking about it and it seemed silly to paint an intricate design onto something when it wasn't going to be seen, not to mention the fact that I'm no artist.  As a consequence, I thought I would probably just paint it one colour, my first colour of choice being the dark teal colour of the wall, so that it would blend into it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of the paint we'd used on the wall and fearful of not getting a good match if I bought some new paint, I decided to go with the grey of the fireplace  instead.  I managed to find the remains of this paint in our paint cupboard, so I was all set to go.

It took most of the day on and off, with waiting for each coat to dry.  Here's the finished result.  I can always add a design to it at some point in the future if I want to. 

I left the inside of the box unpainted as it was lovely and clean and just didn't need it .  I just lined the bottom with some vintage Laura Ashley wallpaper and now it is ready to store all of my hand made quilts.  Perfect.  Another storage solution secured and at no cost.

Joining in with Dreamer from Living a Slow and Simple Life in her 52 Projects Challenge to complete a task a week for a year.