30 Letters, 30 Days -- April is National Letter-Writing Month!

A big thanks to Hello Lucky & Eggpress for this free letter-writing kit to support my writing this month! 

April is the USPS's National Letter-Writing Month. The challenge is to write one letter every day of April-- #30letters30days. Personally, I have decided to take that a step farther and not only write a letter every day this month, but also one each weekday of this academic quarter. I am not wonderful at keeping up to thinks I have resolved to do, but I hope to be able to continue with this attempt.
I am choosing to write a letter every day for several reasons. One of these is that I simply need to reconnect with my friends and family. Too often I allow school and responsibilities to overwhelm my life and my mind becomes preoccupied; because of this, I neglect to check up on the lives of those close to me. A hope for this letter-writing period of my life is to strengthen my relationships.
This time will also hopefully lead me to writing more letters after my personal challenge ends. As a child, I loved writing letters fo my friends and penpals. Sadly, somewhere along the line, I lost the joy in that hobby. As I am now rediscovering how great it is to even write a tiny note to a friend, I wonder why I ever allowed myself to stop.
Letter-writing is also simply a very calming activity for me (and, I would guess, for many people!) This is making me very excited for the time of day when I can just take a step back and let the stresses of my day go onto the back burner for a second while I write.
A letter can be anything from a long missive updating someone on my life and asking about theirs, to a single sentence just telling someone how much you love or miss them. I have been writing many different kinds of letters, and only hope their recipients will enjoy them the way I appreciated my time writing them.

My First Furniture Reinvigouration: End Tables

I've always been very opposed to spending too much money for anything, and I feel no differently about that while I try to furnish my new apartment. That's why any offer of free or cheap furniture is something I can hardly turn down, and how I ended up with some very beat up end tables. I found these tables on a Facebook "garage sale" and picked them up at a small horse ranch (after they had been outdoors for several months.)

This is what they looked like when I got them... 

At least the sides are nice, right? The tops aren't so great. 

I've been reading DIY blogs and the like for years, so I thought this would be a piece of cake. I planned on just quickly sanding the top and then painting it white--no big deal! Or... so I thought. Apparently, reality is always a little more difficult than the imagined.

First I tried to use Old English to just shine up the top to see if that would look good. It didn't do much. 

Just a shot of the built-in coaster pullouts these tables have. 

After sanding them for about an hour, I realized I couldn't take off all that stain with just some sanding, so I left them for the day. Two days later, armed with more knowledge on the matter and some paint-and-stain stripper, I went at these end tables again. The can of stripper said to paint it on and let it sit for 15-30 minutes, then scrape it off. Naive as I apparently am, that seemed so simple and easy. I thought I'd be done with the stain stripping process in about an hour and ready to paint. However, it took FOUR coats of stripper and quite a bit of sanding after that to get to a paint-ready surface.

Ready to paint! 

It felt like it took forever to reach this point! (It was really four hours and fifteen minutes.) 

One week later (too much school and work to continue that day!), I finally got around to painting and sealing the tops of these tables. I used a Clark & Kensington Satin Enamel in White paint to prime the tops and then painted them with Valspar's Pure White (both 99c at Ace this month!). These are technically base paint samples to be tinted in store, but I needed a white, and they were perfect! I used an old acrylic brush to lay down the paint and then a tiny roller (from Roller-Lite's Tiny Touch-It-Up Kit) to even out the paint. Three coats was perfectly sufficient for these tables! After this was all dry and ready for finishing, I used a water-based polyurethane to seal the tables (Varathane Soft Touch Matte Polyurethane.)  I used that water-based poly because I have seen the results of an oil-based polyurethane on a light surface (so much yellowing!) For the polyurethane, I also did three coats, each very thin and done about 1.75 hours apart. I used a Wooster 1.5 inch tapered acrylic brush to apply the polyurethane.

At first I was not sure how I felt about the contrast...

Beginning to like it some more! 

I think this will look pretty nice in my living room, after all. 

I am thinking about switching out the metal hardware for one that complements the top more, but for now, I'm feeling pretty done with these! This might be a really easy re-do for some people, but since it was my first, it felt pretty difficult. Hopefully I will continue to do things like this and will be able to look back at this and realize how much easier I could have made it--but for now, this is what it is. I am excited to see them take their place in my new apartment once I move in (soon!)

Products Used: 

Klean Strip Strip-X Stripper

Klean Strip Paint Stripper After Wash

Clark & Kensington Ultra White (Tint Base)

Valspar Perfect Sample in Pure White

Roller-Lite 3-Piece Tiny Touch Up Kit

Varathane Soft Touch Matte Polyurethane

Wooster Pro Series 1.5 Inch Tapered Acrylic Brush