Create while you isolate
Painting a piano, refinishing a dresser, building a feature wall: Canadians’ DIY pandemic projects
For more than 100 years, a black Palmer piano has been part of Alicia Doucette’s family history. Her grandmother tinkled its ivories, her mother grew up playing it, and Doucette and her siblings had their early musical training on the instrument.
“It was in my parents’ basement,” said Doucette. “When I was in high school, my parents bought an electric piano. Even though the old piano was out of tune and had no pedals anymore, I preferred playing it.” When Doucette and her husband Justin bought their first house in 2007, her parents gifted her with the piano. Doucette, who works for a nonbank mortgage lender, and her husband, who builds homes for Minto Communities, still have it in their current home in Scarborough, the third they’ve owned.
Her husband recently had the piano tuned and new pedals installed. Doucette decided to use her time staying at home during the pandemic to make the time-worn instrument
look as good as it now sounds — with a bright turquoise paint job.
“It really came out awesome. I wish we’d done this a long time ago,” she said.
Doucette is among the thousands of Canadians channelling their do-it-yourself skills into colourful and creative home improvement projects to stay busy during self-isolation in the fight against COVID-19. Toronto interior designer Crystal Collinson, of Crystal Collinson Interiors, said people are looking around their residences and saying, “That’s driving me crazy!” and refreshing their decor.
Hair stylist/educator Joy Heming can relate. “When COVID-19 hit and began to attack my creativity (her hair business had to close), and my sanity along with it, I decided to take a wander around my house and look for something that wouldn’t take a lot of time and required a lot of love,” Heming said.
She found the ideal project in a plain wooden dresser, given to her by friends five years ago, that sits in her spare bedroom.
Heming’s dresser project rekindled memories of working with her late father to refinish furniture. “We would go antiquing and I learned how to strip and refinish wood from him, then we started to design our own furniture. He would build it, I would finish it.”
She used regular acrylic paint for the stripes on the drawers, then a wood stain overlay for the sides of the drawers and the dresser base. All surfaces were finished with a high-gloss varnish.
“The artistic stuff actually came pretty easily, probably because I was so grateful for the opportunity to be creative,” Heming said. “The technical stuff is harder. I thought I might ruin it all in my efforts to get a smooth coat of varnish on!” The final result would make her father proud.
Although he now maintains the grounds of a cemetery, Dylan Thompson used to work professionally as a carpenter. He helps friends tear down old barns and recycle the weathered barnboards. He’s also a partner in a small sawmill in Pickering.
Thompson has created a feature wall in the living room of the 30-year-old Oshawa house he shares with his fiancée and their two children, using grey and brown barnboards salvaged from across the province, giving their home “a piece of Ontario.
“I had the time to do it now as usually I’m pretty busy. But when I can, I bang out little projects at home,” he said of his carpentry, which includes a live-edge dining room table. Thompson said installing the feature wall was “very easy.” He’s selling DIY kits to create similar walls for $500 for an 8-by-10 foot wall through his business East Wood Designs (he’s on Facebook). He said basic carpentry tools are needed for the installation, including a jigsaw or mitre saw. Boards in various shades come cut to size.
Paint is among the easiest and most affordable ways homeowners can give a room a fresh new look, Collinson said. An accent wall is a fast and simple way to add a bold pop of colour.
“You can also paint a graphic pattern on a wall or a geometric pattern,” she said. “You use painter’s tape to create the template for zigzag or stripes. The geometric wall uses two or three colours and is more intricate. Or you could create a glitter wall (paint stores sell topcoats that create an iridescent effect) or with foil tape.”
Some DIY projects, such as Doucette’s painted piano, serve more purpose than simply creating a pretty decor piece. She used three coats of chalk paint to give the piano its new turquoise shell and it fits beautifully against a serene white wall in her home.
“I find I’m playing the piano more now. My husband plays trumpet and we’re trying to learn a duet,” she said. “Music was a huge thing for my whole family and we all played in bands.
“I find if I sit down to play one song on the piano, I’ll keep playing it for an hour.”