September 2014 – q is for quandie

vintage sleds.

Published on September 30, 2014September 29, 2014 by Quandie11 Comments

I just happen to have three vintage sleds for sale at the Carriage House on Saturday. Are you wondering what you can do with a vintage sled? Besides sledding, that is. I visited pinterest for some inspiration to share with you today.

First, there is your basic winter decoration idea (I happen to also have a sweet red & green tin box for sale!). I pinned this last year mainly because I think the picture is gorgeous, but wouldn’t something like this be fab on your front porch to greet your holiday guests?

Or, you could think outside the box and do something creative with your sled, like re-purpose it as a pot rack.

Or perhaps you are pretty handy and can turn it into a clever shelf for displaying your vintage stuff.

Might be fun to paint it a fab turquoise.

Maybe you should buy all three and stack them for impact!

Or, if you just want to display it outside your front door, you can just purchase this one that is ready to go, complete with ice skates.

There are lots of fab ways to use an old sled. Maybe you can pick one (or three) up at the Carriage House Sale this weekend!

phew.

Published on September 29, 2014September 28, 2014 by Quandie13 Comments

This past weekend I put my nose to the grindstone to get ready for my sale. The weather in Minnesota totally cooperated by giving me 3 straights days (I also took Friday off at the day job) of solid sunshine and highs of 80. Definitely not our normal late September weather; it was divine.

On Friday I finished up three pieces of furniture. Yep, it was a marathon. I just couldn’t help it, I wanted to get them done for the sale. I’ll post each of them individually with before & after pics later on, but for now, here are all three.

The yellow dresser is $225, the rustic farm table is $60 (vintage typewriter: $40, chair: $12), the book case is $165.

I don’t feel like the pictures do justice to any of these pieces. The perfect chippy-ness that had been eluding me all summer was back in all of its glory on all three of these. You must see them in person for the full effect, so I hope you can make it to my sale!

On Saturday I completely emptied out the Carriage House, went through with the shop vac to beat back the cobwebs and swept out a summer’s worth of paint dust. Next, I figured out where to place all of the furniture. Fortunately, Mr Q helps me with the heavy lifting. I got a fantastic break from the work on Saturday evening when my BFF had us over for fondue night. We fondued steak in red wine, vegies with batter in oil. Her mom & dad were in town, so her dad made his famous Brandy Alexanders for dessert. Delish! Mr. Q and I really feel like part of the family at her house. All three of her adult children were home, her mom & dad, her sister. It was awesome.

Sunday morning I was back at it. Arranging all of the rest of my things in the Carriage House, making sure everything had a price tag. Finding little bits and pieces that needed tweaking. Then setting up a little preview photo shoot of the goods as a teaser for you all.

Don’t worry, even though I am in my ‘blue period’, not everything is blue!

I have to admit, I am totally exhausted. Why do I work this hard? Anyone know? There must be just a little ‘type A’ in my make up somewhere, pushing me to put on the best little occasional sale that I can muster up.

This is always the part of the process where I start to get pretty excited about the sale. I can’t believe all of the fab finds I have put together, and I don’t even have my sale partner’s stuff here yet. When Sue brings her stuff, it’s a little like Christmas as I get to unwrap all of her finds out in the Carriage House. I’ll try to share more pictures in a few days.

Meanwhile, I hope if you are nearby, you are saving the date!

my blue period.

Published on September 26, 2014September 25, 2014 by Quandie5 Comments

I figure if Picasso can have a blue period, then so can I. Right?

Of course, Picasso’s blue period works were somber and desolate. Plus, he had trouble selling them in his lifetime, it was only later that they became popular. Hopefully none of that will be true of my blue period!

Much like a lot of other furniture painters out there, I do seem to be drawn to blues of all kinds this year. From the deep, rich indigo of Miss Mustard Seed’s Artissimo …

to the gorgeous paler blue green of Annie Sloan’s Duck Egg …

I was inexplicably drawn to these blue motel chairs at a garage sale.

My recent attraction to blue even inspired the ‘save the date’ card for my upcoming sale.

And now I seem to be enamored with Annie Sloan’s Aubusson. First the little cupboard I salvaged, and now … the mirrored dresser that was part of the two-fer.

I have to say, I went around and around about what color to paint this dresser. There were just so many possibilities. MMSMP in Mustard Seed Yellow with white accents? Trophy with a stencil on the front? Another custom mixed Minty Green? Black?

In the end I had to tell myself to snap out of it and remember it was only a dresser, and it wasn’t the last one on the planet. Another dresser will come along to be painted, so for now, just pick a color for gosh sake!

And so, I picked Aubusson with the details highlighted in MMSMP in Linen. I knew that I wanted the eye to be drawn to this gorgeous detail at the top of the mirror.

I actually started with outdoor photos for this one, but the blue seems far too bright in these. It’s not that bright in person.

As you may notice in the before & after side by side, I changed out the hardware on the lower two drawers for some much prettier stuff that suited the dresser. The knobs it came with were definitely not original to the piece. And if you are wondering about that scroll-y trim around the bottom two drawers, the previous owners had removed all of it. What you are seeing is the shadow from where it was.

This dresser will be available at the Carriage House sale!

are you flippin’ kidding me?

Published on September 24, 2014September 23, 2014 by Quandie27 Comments

Remember my inadvertent mid-century flip from last spring? I purchased a Lane cubist credenza for $20 and sold it in the same day for $175. Only to find out later that the guy who purchased it was a dealer and had it listed in his shop for $550.

Well, I said ‘live and learn’, and I think I got a little smarter the next time around.

I purchased two American of Martinsville mid-century pieces (after nnK spotted them on CL) and I flipped them. I made a little nicer profit this time. Even so, the impossibly hip couple that bought the credenza told me they were going to take it to Manhattan. I have a feeling that they were going to make a tidy profit also.

Here are the pieces:

I’m definitely not a mid-century modern expert, but I know enough to sometimes recognize a good thing when I see it. And these were gorgeous.

The other day my friend Sue stopped off at a garage sale near our work. It was one of those “diamond in the rough” sort of sales. A lot of junk, a big dumpster in the driveway, nothing marked or even really set up, just piles of stuff. Luckily Sue is an intrepid garage saler. She goes beyond the surface. She asked if they were selling any furniture, and sure enough they said almost everything inside the house was for sale too. Sue happened to notice that they had a couple of mid-century pieces, so when she got back to work she told me about them.

Actually, to be precise, she left a note on my chair that I promptly sat on without noticing, how embarrassing.

I did finally get the message though, and I popped over to the sale myself. This story is becoming long winded at this point, but let’s just say several phone calls, 2 trips, some help from Mr Q’s strong heavy lifting friend and some sneaking around grandma later and I was the proud owner of these two pieces.

But the best part of the story is still to come. You see, hanging on the wall above the credenza was a large metal pom pom wall sculpture.

Classic 1970’s. On a lark, as part of my negotiations for the furniture, I asked if they would throw that in. Absolutely! They needed to have the entire house cleared out in 3 more days, “take it”, they said!

I’m pretty sure this is where Mr. Q earned sainthood. Picture him kneeling on top of the credenza trying to unscrew this thing from the wall with metal pom poms stabbing him from every angle. But, he did it, without a single complaint.

Turned out it was ridiculously heavy and nearly impossible to grab onto without getting stabbed, but we hauled it home where I promptly tossed it on the lawn and hosed off 35 years worth of dust. This was the point where I thought “what in the world is wrong with me? I am totally going to be stuck with this thing. What was I thinking?”

Actually, I had gone into it thinking I could just use this piece to stage future mid-century pieces, but in reality it was just far too heavy to even consider hanging it in the photo cottage. I was then tempted to put it at the curb with a free sign.

Instead, I googled it. After several attempts at trying to find something similar, I ended up finding Curtis Jere. And from there, I found the exact same piece for sale at 1stdibs online for … wait for it … drum roll please … is the suspense killing you? … $5,900.

Yep. I kid you not.

I did read online that it was imperative that the piece be signed. A true Curtis Jere was always signed. You should have seeing me going over that thing with a fine tooth comb looking for a signature. I thought for sure it would be on the back (although in hindsight, what artist signs his work on the back?), but I could not find a signature anywhere on the back. Finally Mr. Q said, “too bad, it’s just a knock off.”

But I did not give up. I flipped it over, and kept looking. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, there it was! A signature! Not just a signature, THE signature.

Yep, I have an authentic Curtis Jere mid-century metal pom pom wall sculpture worth $5,900. Are you flippin’ kidding me?

Now what?

painting on paint.

Published on September 22, 2014September 21, 2014 by Quandie5 Comments

I know others have a lot of success re-painting an already painted piece of furniture, but I really try to avoid it. I don’t like stripping paint, I find it time consuming and messy. I also don’t like painting over latex with milk paint. It can be done, but it gets even more unpredictable than usual. I’m also kind of picky about the color of an undercoat that is sure to show through whatever I put on top of it, at least on the distressed edges. So, keeping all of those factors in mind, I usually pass on already painted pieces.

However, last winter after probably one too many cocktails in Las Vegas, I texted Mr. Q and sent him off to pick up a dresser/nightstand combo while I was off visiting my mom. They were already painted white. But I thought I could work with the white.

Here is what they looked like when I got them.

They came as a pair, so I was stuck with the chunky nightstand, even though it obviously doesn’t really match the dresser and it’s not something I would normally grab. As for the dresser, the hardware was all wrong, the existing white paint job was poorly done and, you can’t see it here, but there is a coat of garish green under the white.

Upon returning from Las Vegas I took a look at them, and then promptly stored them in nnK’s garage for several months and forgot all about them (sorry nnK).

I brought them back over to my place earlier this summer though, and still couldn’t find the motivation to work on them. Finally, I told myself that I had to get these done before my sale. Nothing like a deadline to get my mojo going. I decided to work with the white by freshening it up with a coat of American Paint Company’s mineral/chalk paint in Navajo White. The next step was to add a stripe to the drawer fronts using Annie Sloan’s Louis Blue.

I started with the night stand. I used yellow Frog tape (the one for delicate surfaces), taped off some stripes on the drawer front, painted the blue, and pulled off the tape. Ack! The tape pulled the paint off right down the to wood. I am guessing this is because the original paint used on this piece was probably latex. And it didn’t stick. In the end, I just touched up the paint, added some Louis Blue to the top, added a vintage glass knob and called it good.

It has a sort of beachy vibe, don’t you think?

Definitely not my best work ever, but hopefully someone out there will want a beachy keen nightstand.

Meanwhile, there was no way I was going to try using tape on the dresser, so I went back to the drawing board. It then occurred to me that I should get out my stencils. Duh. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

And voila! The finished dresser.

Seriously, isn’t it amazing what a fresh coat of chalk paint, some stenciling, and some new hardware can do for a dresser?

Here is a peek at the inside.

I’m thinking maybe I should have numbered those interior drawers.

What do you think? Should I add numbers?

You may have caught a glimpse of this tiny dresser that I used for staging …

Yes, my addiction to tiny furniture continues. I plan to paint this one too … but maybe after the Carriage House sale!

mac grove.

Published on September 21, 2014September 20, 2014 by Quandie8 Comments

And the award for most fashionable garage sale goes to …. drumroll please … MacGrove!

MacGrove is a charming neighborhood in St. Paul that includes Macalester College and St. Thomas University. Yesterday some of my garage sale pals and I spent the morning there for their neighborhood garage sale. It has a very collegiate vibe. They used to hold their sale in August, but for some reason they moved it to September this year. The most noticeable change was the quantity of students that were milling about near the schools.

Once again, we had picture perfect weather, and we found some great things. We also came upon the most fabulous garage sale set up of the season.

It was like a party!

And he had some very clever signage.

“These lamps don’t get paid … but that doesn’t mean they don’t work!”

We all enjoyed the festive atmosphere. Here is the crew, Sue, Jan & Cathy.

I also found my best find of the season at this very same sale. A fantastic vintage ice cream scale (who wants to weigh their ice cream? not me!) in my color, aqua.

I will be finding a prominent location in the pantry for this bad boy!

Unfortunately, I was so exhausted when I got home that most of my pictures of the rest of my finds turned out pretty awful. But here is a picture of a fantastic book shelf that Sue spotted for me, and I quickly snatched up.

Won’t this be a charmer once it is painted? Those details down the side are just going to pop with a little paint. I’m still contemplating what color I’ll use on it, but I know it will get milk paint.

Unfortunately, the pic is a little blurry and you can’t appreciate it properly, but the fabric that is folded on the shelf is vintage bark cloth with adorable farm scenes. I just couldn’t pass it up.

Here, you can see the detail a little better in this photo of some vintage light sconces that I also picked up.

I did come home with a nice little pile of great finds. Some will make their way into my own home, some will end up in my workshop to be revamped, and some will be headed to the Carriage House sale!

the fall window box.

Published on September 19, 2014September 18, 2014 by Quandie12 Comments

Remember I told you I have a short attention span when it comes to gardening? Yeah, I haven’t done a lick of gardening in weeks. Fortunately, we are seeing signs of fall everywhere here in Minnesota, so it’s OK. I can start tossing the summer annuals and throw in some fall updates and call it good.

First up, the front window box. As you may remember, I tried something new this year, a monochromatic look of all white and green. Here is how it looked when I planted it in May.

And here is how it looked by the end of August.

The Euphorbia ended up doing really well. In the end though, the white impatiens were the star of the show.

Then, the impatiens all kacked. I find that not many of my fellow gardeners are aware of this, but there is a virus that has been sweeping the nation and it attacks impatiens. One moment they are full of blooms and looking gorgeous, and a mere week later they are nearly dead. The flowers fall off first, then the leaves and you are left with nubbins of stems. You will be tempted to believe that some kind of creature came and ate them, but no, it is a disease. I hadn’t been planting impatiens for the last several years because of this, but last spring someone told me the virus had been ‘cured’. This was bad info. In reality, they have not found a cure. According to my super scientific google research, the virus remains in your soil and will infect any impatiens you plant in that spot next year. It also is airborne, infecting neighboring plants. The double whammy of plant viruses, I guess.

Well, live and learn. Next year, no more impatiens and I don’t think I’ll do the same monochromatic look. It looked great close up, but from the street it lacked punch and without the impatiens, it just didn’t have much impact.

So, I yanked all of the remaining stems (bagging, sealing and tossing as recommended) and replaced them with white mums and some white pumpkins in keeping with my monochromatic look. And here is how the window box looks for fall.

The ferns, ivy and caladium are still going strong, so they stayed. I added two white mums (flowers not quite open yet, and they better be white like the label says!), two white pumpkins, and some cut flowers from my Annabelle hydrangea. My Annabelle’s turn a lovely chartreuse in the fall, do yours?

It’s an interesting twist on fall, not the traditional fall colors of yellows and oranges, but I love it.

I found the mums, kale and white pumpkins at Menards this week. The mums were $3.98 each, the kale was $3.99, and the white pumpkins were $4.59 each. So for about $33, and with the help of my prolific hydrangea bushes, I was able to give a both my large window box, and my two galvanized boiler pot planters a pop of new life for fall.

Hey, wait a minute, I don’t think I’ve ever shown you these. Ken built them for me. Both of the boiler pots came from garage sales and were super cheap because the bottoms were rusted out. Ken added some wood slats, and then mounted them for me. One on the Carriage House and one on the Photo Cottage.

I used the kale in this planter and added some Strawberry Vanilla hydrangea blooms, some Sedum flower heads, and some dried Astilbe flower heads.

Here is a better look at the arrangement.

I really enjoy being able to use stuff from my gardens in my window boxes for both fall and winter. I’m hoping that these arrangements continue to look good for the next two months or so. Or at least until the Carriage House sale. Then sometime in early to mid-November I will switch them up again for winter. I’ll be sure to share them with you again then!

turning a foot board into a chalkboard.

Published on September 18, 2014September 16, 2014 by Quandie8 Comments

I picked up this foot board at a garage sale. The seller was the man of the house who explained that his wife went off on a girl’s weekend and left him in charge of the garage sale! He had no idea why they had just a foot board, but his wife had stripped it and then never finished whatever project she had planned for it. So he was selling it. Cheap.

I made a snap decision to buy it because I loved the detail at the top, it was already stripped, I had plenty of room in the truck and I knew I could come up with some idea for it.

I was showing it to nnK, and she said “why don’t you turn it into another chalkboard?” Duh. Why didn’t I think of that? Brilliant idea.

So that is what I did. I painted the frame with a base coat of Sweetie Jane milk paint, followed by a top coat of MMSMP in Linen. Then I painted the inset part with chalkboard paint.

I added a couple of vintage hooks, and an upside-down cup pull to hold the chalk.

I love how it turned out. But then, I am a big fan of chalkboards. I have several of my own, and I have several for my Carriage House Sale.

You will see this one at the sale, if you happen to be there!

aubusson.

Published on September 17, 2014September 14, 2014 by Quandie13 Comments

Remember the whole ‘my computer died and I haven’t been able to retrieve my photos yet’ thing? Yeah, well, I haven’t made that a priority. With my sale coming up, I am mainly focusing on getting furniture done. This is further exacerbated by the fact that fall is in the air here in Minnesota. I know I only have another month or so before my summer workshop in the Carriage House is closed up for the winter. I’ll have plenty of time after the snow flies to concentrate on indoor projects … like figuring out how to retrieve my photos from an external hard drive (snore.) And cleaning.

Meanwhile though, that means I don’t have a ‘before’ picture of this project for you. Let me try to paint a picture. One afternoon my pal Cathy texted me and said “I have a piece of furniture for you, I’ll drop it off.” She came by with a little washstand in her car and a tall tale about how she wrangled that thing into the back seat all by herself. You see, she saw it at the curb with a “FREE” sign on it. It was in a sad state of affairs. It had the most hideous replacement hardware ever, one caster was missing, the veneer on the top drawer was totally buckled.

But, Cathy saw through all of that and she knew this little cupboard could be salvaged! So she manhandled it into her car and brought it to me. The furniture whisperer.

Where do I even start with this one? First of all, the hardware that came with it went right into the trash. This is practically unheard of for me, but seriously, this stuff was butt ugly. Bad, bad, bad 70’s hardware. I felt that it was my responsibility to protect humanity from ever having to lay eyes on such a hideous sight ever again. Fortunately, I had these vintage glass pulls and knob on hand to use as replacements. Ahhhhh, so much better.

Once the hardware was gone, I made the decision that the top drawer was beyond salvage. Or at least not worth the trouble. Instead, I had Ken put a shelf in that spot. He also cut a hole at the back for electrical cords, thus making this piece functional as a TV stand.

I actually kind of loved the wood top on this one. It was pretty beat up, and the veneer is buckling on top too. But I kind of dig the aged, beat up look. I had to strip the top because it had some paint drips and splats on it from it’s previous life. Once stripped, I gave it a quick sand and a coat of dark wax.

Next came the paint. I had picked up a quart of Annie Sloan’s Aubusson while my sister was here visiting. I’ll be honest, when I first opened that can of paint I thought “what was I thinking? why in the world did I buy this color?” But I realized that I must have seen it on something in the store, and I must have loved it. I decided to go for it. Two coats of paint, followed by a coat of dark wax.

Sidebar. When I say ‘dark wax’ I am referring to my own concocted mix of Johnson’s Paste Wax and Briwax in Dark Brown. When I first purchased the Briwax, I didn’t realize how really, really dark it would be. I toned it down by mixing it with clear paste wax. I ended up loving this combo. Plus it is a great way to stretch the more expensive Briwax with the really cheap Johnson’s (about $6 a can). However, FYI, the Johnson’s is very stinky. I never use it indoors.

Anyway, guess what? I do love Aubusson. It’s a nice, rich blue.

As a last final touch, I lined the bottom of the cupboard with some vintage wallpaper that matched perfectly.

I think I will save this little cupboard for my upcoming Carriage House sale. Hopefully someone there will want to give it a new home.

a two-fer.

Published on September 15, 2014September 13, 2014 by Quandie18 Comments

You gotta love a two for one. In this case, two dressers, one trip. I saw the first dresser on craigslist and when Mr. Q and I went to pick it up, the buyer just happened to say “you know, I do have another dresser that I want to get rid of.” I love when people say that. Usually it’s a good thing … and in this case it definitely was.

I honestly liked the 2nd dresser even better than the one I drove out for. But I purchased both of them, naturally.

I started with dresser no. 1. Mr. Q prepped it for me by removing the hardware, sanding it down and cleaning it. Then I painted it with a custom mix of MMSMP 2 parts Trophy to 1 part Grain Sack. Now, I could fib here and say I planned this color, but in reality this was the last bit of Trophy I had on hand with a little Grain Sack mixed in to make it stretch for the entire dresser. In the end, I think it worked well for me. The grey is gorgeous.

As I was digging through my stencils the other day, I came across this damask stencil. I had forgotten all about it! I just knew it would be perfect for an overall stencil on the drawer fronts of this dresser. The pattern of the stencil almost mirrors the design on the backboard perfectly.

I used Martha Stewart craft paint in Lake Fog to do the stenciling. It might just be my own opinion, but I think this sort of stencil looks best as an overall pattern filling in all of the space on the drawer fronts from edge to edge rather than just a centered pattern down the middle. I feel the same way about the french poem stencil that I have. In fact … I might just be bringing that one out of semi-retirement soon.

Once the stencil was complete and dry, I sanded everything lightly and finished with hemp oil.

I had planned to keep the original hardware, which is actually quite lovely. But once I saw the results of the stenciling I knew that I needed some hardware that didn’t visually compete. These clear knobs do the job perfectly. They are nearly invisible in fact. I’ll save the other hardware for another dresser.

In some of these close up photos, you can see that this was another crackled milk paint finish. I am starting think my theory about humidity might be right. It was quite humid when I painted this one. Have any of you had any experience with MMSMP giving you more of a crackled finish when you paint in humid conditions?

This dresser is more petite than it looks in pictures by itself. I paired it up with my cane back chair to give you an idea of the size.

This dresser would work well next to a tall bed as an alternative to a traditional nightstand. Or wouldn’t it be lovely in a baby’s room? There are so many options for a versatile dresser like this one.

So how about it? Anyone out there need a lovely little stenciled dresser? This one is for sale, if interested email me for the particulars.