Guest Post: Knife Block Remix

 

I guess I’d look pretty bad too, if I was repeatedly stabbed. Yikes. I had noticed it had seen better days, but when I took the knives out of it and moved it to the craft room for a make-over, I was shocked at how truly bad it looked. Has that ever happened to you? When something had to be taken out of its original context to see the true horror of it? Anyway…

My first inclination was to paint it white because it sits next to my white kitchen aide mixer. So, I gave it a good sanding and put on a few thin coats. And it started to look like this:

Already a marked improvement. Then I got to thinking…wonder what I could to to jazz it up…since I was going to all of the trouble to refinish it and all. I considered distressing it, but decided that I was trying to remove it from that ‘distressed’ look. I thought about mod pod-ing something to it, but a knife block needs to be a pretty durable thing (as evidenced by the before picture) so I scrapped that idea. I even considered a monogram, but my husband has put a moratorium on “E’s.”  It’s not that he’s demanding, it’s that I got a little aggressive with our moniker and was slapping on “E’s” on anything that was holding still in the house. I even monogrammed the dog’s bed. It was getting a little out of hand.

Then I remembered the brilliant advice of my dear friend Rachael, “When in doubt, chevron it out” (or something to that effect). So, I finally decided to get out the painters tape and slap some stripes on this piece. [Rachael here… it’s so nice to know all my sage advice is remembered]

I had some chevron experience from the headboard that Rachael helped me with. Using the corner of a piece of card stock and a ruler, I taped off the design.

I remembered a handy trick that Rachael taught me and painted white over the tape edges to help prevent color bleeding. Then I added two quick coats of my favorite color blue and it looked like this:

 

I removed the tape while the paint was still a little damp. This is how it looked before I touched it up and waxed it:

Here is the finished beauty back at home on the counter top. SO.MUCH.BETTER!

And, though it pains me to look at the before picture again, just for the sake of comparison here we go we the side by side showdown!