Cottage Cabinet to French Country Cabinet. and Ewe.... Budworm

 

Happy New Week Everyone.  I am changing up some things in my living room/dining room area.  I am going away from shabby chic cottage to French Country.

This is my white cabinet that we found a few months ago on FB Marketplace.  It was a deep oak color.  We painted it white with good cabinet paint.  It turned out so pretty and gave the cottage look.

Here is the chandeliers hanging in the dining room and living room.
With hanging these French chandeliers I wanted my TV cabinet to have a French vibe too.  Below are some inspiration pictures I found in Pinterest.

The prices on these cabinets is way out of my budget so I thought I would try and get the French country look on my own.

After looking on Pinterest I decided to experiment a little bit with my cabinet.

We decided to put an oil based stain on the cabinet.  Terry used a rag and cloth.  He put the stain on and then let it sit for a minute and then used a rag to  wipe off some of the stain.

You can use a gel stain or in our case we used an oil stain and poly together.  We used the color Mission Oak.  It looks dark but as you could see in the pictures over white paint it was light in color.

Your stain has to be gel or oil based to cover over paint without sanding your wood.  The Polyshade went on nicely an dried well.

After wiping down the piece with cloth and a little steel wool we got a light stained wood effect.

While Terry was at work I thought I would experiment a little bit to see what end result I could get using this Oil based Power Primer.  I was hoping it would give me the effect I wanted and not make the cabinet look re painted back to white.

Well it worked perfectly.  It gave me that French country stained look like my inspiration pictures.  I just love how this piece came out.  I surprised Terry when he got home from work and said I took over with an experiment and this was what I got.   He loved the look and I think was relieved he did not have to do anything else with this piece.

I also wanted this piece to go with my dining room table stain.  It could not be more perfect.  
We were short one roll of the paintable wallpaper so I am waiting on that to be delivered.  I will then show you how we cured the wall of the existing wallpaper to allow us to wallpaper over it.
 I don't know about you but removing wallpaper is tedious and long.  Again love IG and Pinterest I found a way to take care of the wall to allow the new paper to be hung without tearing out the old paper.  I will have that in a future post to show you how that all went and the outcome.

Now on to the ewe part of this post.  These next two pictures are of my beautiful petunia bags from just a few weeks ago.

I have so enjoyed watching these bags  continue to grow and flourish with many flowers.  Well........

When we came home from Nashville last week this is how the bags looked.  Something was eating away at the blooms.

What attacked my beautiful bags was not deer eating them but Bud Worms!!!  They are tiny worms that look like caterpillars and they eat all the flower buds and leave the greens alone.
My friend who has been gardening for years with beautiful flowers told me I had Bud Worms.  She showed me what spray she used to get rid of them.

I could not find the spray she used but I did some research and this came up as one of the best on the market sprays for bud worms.  The bud worms like to hide down in the soil and roots during the day and they come out at night and feast on the flowers.  I sprayed all my flowers with Captain Jacks and it seems to have worked and they no longer are eating what was left of my bags and have not moved to my other flowers.

The problem with getting bud worms at this point in the summer is that the flowers are not really in re budding mode anymore.  They are usually fully bloomed and then just maintain until the first frost.  To get them to re bloom after using the spray is a challenge.

I have given them TLC and bloom booster to try and help.

I am hoping with all hope that they will re bloom and I can enjoy their beauty for a few more months.  
I thought I would share this with you incase you see something like this happening to your flowers.

Just wish if those buggers were going to come and eat my flower bags they would have done it earlier in the summer.  These bags would have had a better chance to come back.
Time will tell.  I already have seen some improvement with more flowers opening.  Praying that is a good sign these bags will come around.

Happy New Week
Hugs,
Kris