Shabby Chic?

This past weekend we worked on several projects that had been waiting for some attention around here.  One of those projects was our bathroom shelf.  This shelf originally came to us from my grandmother when Justin and I first got married, she had owned it for a long time so it's a little antique piece.  We have used this shelf in many different ways and it's been painted a variety of colors over the years.  One thing I've learned is that I despise painting this shelf - too many crooks and crannies to fill in.   But somehow I've painted it at least 5 times since we owned it.  It was most recently painted gray and wasn't working in our newly painted green bathroom.  I didn't want to go out and buy paint for this shelf and felt like white was the way to go anyway.  Luckily I still have plenty of white paint laying around the house from all of the trim painting we have been doing so that would work just fine.   Now, as these projects go sometimes this one did not work out the way I had planned it in my head.  Originally my thought was to paint it white using a combo of the white eggshell finish paint and mixing in some white gloss paint that we bought by accident.  The problem was my mixing consistency.  This paint did not cover well and I quickly realized I would have to paint 4 or 5 coats to get the finish I was looking for.  This was not working for me since I already hated painting this thing so my plan changed.  Why not shabby chic this thing?   Have I done this before - no.  But, it couldn't be too hard to make something look old and tattered could it?  Was it the lazy thing to do - maybe - but, I actually kind of like the result, at least for now.  Here are the steps in case you are thinking of trying something like this out:

So, first off it was already painted gray, here's the before pic.  And I will admit we weren't really concerned with what we were throwing on this thing so it looks pretty messy.

First thing I did was to mix my paint, half eggshell white (off the shelf) Olympic Zero VOC paint with half Olympic Zero VOC white gloss base.  Then I just applied a nice thin coat of paint.  I had glops and drips but I didn't really care once I realized how my original plan wasn't working.  You can kind of see in this picture (especially on the sides) the gray showing through.

After it dried I just took a low grade sand paper and sanded until it had the shabby look I desired.  These are just some up close shots so you can see the result:

If you look closely you can see a little bump in the shelf -that's a little bent nail and I love it, my dad put it there when he was a little boy.

And here it is now, in all of it's shabby chic glory.

Shabby, yes...chic, maybe.

So in thinking about this shelf today I started thinking about brokenness.  Brokenness, when it comes to our relationship with God.  There are times in our life when things happen, we mess up and instead of taking it to our loving Heavenly Father and being honest with confession and repentance we brush it under our rug and try to forget or move on by ourselves.  The problem with this, living with unconfessed sin, is that we now have something between us and God, we aren't fully relying on his forgiveness and power.  Then, our unconfessed sin turns into guilt.  We start wondering how we got so far away from God and feel like we will never be able to get back to having a close relationship with Him.  That's when brokenness needs to enter the picture.  Coming before your Savior and being honest and humble about your shortcomings and acknowledging your need for His grace and mercy is the only solution.  In that place of confession you will start to rely on Him and Him only and that's where your relationship with your Lord begins to grow.  Just like any other relationship, your relationship with God should be honest.  God is our trustworthy Savior and only his grace is sufficient.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9