Hello, Readers!
We’re getting closer to completion on our renovation, although we’ve run into some roadblocks, primarily in the kitchen department. The butcher block portion of our island didn’t work out. Let’s just say our contractor isn’t as skilled as he’d led us to believe. It’s been installed, but it didn’t live up to our expectations. We’ve scrapped the idea for a number of reasons and are now looking for a new contractor and fabricator to replace the butcher block with Caesarstone to match the rest of the island.
We’re also still waiting for the delivery of our built-in convection microwave in the custom “Wasabi” color. We’re told it will be in this week. Fingers crossed. *sigh*
There will be glorious photos of the finished rooms, rest assured. In the meantime, I’ve prepared a number of little tutorials with tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way and new pointers I’ve picked up from my good friend, interior stylist—and creative genius—Victor Underhill. Here’s a sampling about the glories of steel wool. Gotta love it.
The following are two little projects in which I used the magic of steel wool to safely transform vintage metal objects into ones that look new—or a heck of a lot better—again.
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| Vintage trivets: 25 cents for all three at a garage sale! |
Let’s start with these adorable trivets with yellow plastic feet, which I nabbed at a garage sale for 25 cents. That’s right, readers. I got them for 25 cents for the set of three! As you can see, they were grubby. Some of the black paint was loose and chipped. They were awfully sticky, too.
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| Trivets before |
First, I soaked the feet in some warm, soapy water to cut the grime. I was pleasantly surprised when they came out looking new.
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| Superfine (Grade #0000) steel wool and high-heat paint |
Then I took out my secret weapon: superfine (Grade #0000) steel wool. I gently rubbed the metal until all the grime and loose paint was gone. I covered the yellow feet with painter’s tape and spray-painted the metal with high-heat spray paint.
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| Vintage trivets after restoration |
Voila! Take a look at the finished project. These little guys are so atomically cool that we display them on the counter, and we use them all the time to hold hot dishes straight from the oven. Form and function. What’s not to love?
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| Eames shell chair before restoration |
Our second project involves this delicious Eames shell chair, which we purchased years ago at a furniture sale at the Palos Verdes Library. The chair’s chrome legs didn’t look terrible, but they had some corrosion and needed a little help. Steel wool to the rescue!
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| Notice the difference between the two legs |
Again, I used the same superfine steel wool, which I gently rubbed on the legs and watched most of the corrosion disappear. (In the photo at left, the left leg has been treated with the superfine steel wool; the right leg has not. Notice the remarkable difference in shine and texture.) This took some elbow grease, I’ll admit, but it was worth it. A word of warning, though, with a project like this: Wear a mask—the inexpensive type that can be had at any hardware store. Using steel wool on chrome does create a fine dust, which is best left outside of one’s lungs.
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| Eames shell chair after restoration |
Once I finished sprucing up the legs, I cleaned the upholstery up with saddle soap, which I’ll talk about in another post. Saddle soap is a great tool to have in your vintage-furniture arsenal. If you haven’t used it, you won’t believe what it can do.
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