A Little Paint & A Little Sanding.....

Welcome to another Met Monday hosted by Susan at BetweenNapsonthePorch. This week I decided to show you a small project I worked on in conjunction with my secretary project. After all the black paint was already opened and that was half the labor! A while back a friend had given me two vintage fruit prints. I loved them and I loved the frame they were in but they were missing something. Matting was the key I felt. Off I ran to Michael's to get some matting. I originally thought I would mat them in red and possibly even use some fabric to mat them with. I have been working on my dining room for quite awhile and thought the red/fabric matting would go well with what I have been working on in there. When I got to Michael's and we took the back off of the frames to measure them for matting, imagine my surprise that matting already existed behind the pictures. It had been stored behind the prints and not used. SCORE! There was even lovely wood mullions! Here are the prints as given to me.

At the same time I started thinking about the mirror in my dining room. My table set and side board were the same wood. If there is one thing I can say about myself is that "matchy matchy" is not my style. I like contrast and interest and everything the same finish doesn't give one that. So I made a quick decision to paint the mirror as well. Here is a shot of the mirror before.

Here are the prints with the matting that was store behind them. I was still not loving them. What to do? What to do?

I decided to experiment with some fabric and french gimp. I liked it but was in fear of them looking a little too casual and country for a formal dining room.

In the end I decided just to paint the mullion black. I painted them black and then distressed them with some sand paper since the frame had a distressed finish to it.

Now we were getting somewhere! I did the same to the mirror painting it black and then sanding down some areas to distress it. You can see where the sanding took it back down to the wood in some areas in this shot.

Here all three of them are finished. As you can see I have not yet gotten them up on the wall. The mirror is extremely heavy and I need some muscle for that!

Hopefully I can get the walls in my dining room done by Wednesday for Barbs "Whats on your wall Wednesday" over at Grits and Glamour. In the mean time be sure to visit Susan for more wonderful Met Monday transformations.