Pure Satisfaction

A few months ago, my mother was rummaging through her basement as my husband and I were getting ready to leave for home. Home is a seven hour drive from my mother's house, and neither of us were in a mood to look through my mom's junk to find things we may want to take home. But leave it to my mother: every time you go to her house, she has some old piece of junk, either a dresser or a lamp, or a fish tank, or some old clothes, that she is just dying for you to have. I've come to the conclusion that my mother is honestly just too lazy to have a garage sale. Instead, she pawns all over her crap on her children. We really are unsuspecting victims.

In this particular instance, my mother brought out this:

Apparently this mirror was my Uncle's, and when he passed away, my mother asked for it for me. She thought I would love the bright colors and that it would be fun in Beardface's and my apartment. Oh how wrong she was. I was fairly horrified at the sight of this thing, and I couldn't think of what would make it look more normal. Until it hit me: I can remove the paint and stain it. Oh how beautiful it will be!

And that's what I did. Beard came with me to Lowes, and we picked out all the necessary supplies: sandpaper, paintbrushes, gloves, stain, and polyurethane. I was all set.

That day I got to sanding, and, let me tell you, sanding paint off is no easy task. Especially since whoever painted this particularly hideous artifact painted several coats of several different colors all over it. I had a lot of work to do.

Almost a month later of working on this beast over weekends when I could drag it outside to sand it, the project was complete:

Yup. The mirror is finished. And it honestly looks like something I'll hang in my house. I've got a few more projects around the house that I'd like to do this to (like the coffee table you see the corner of on the right side of the picture). Once we move (July 1st!!!) I'll be getting my hands dirty with some more projects.

It's amazing how something old and gross can become something so simple and pretty.