Month: July 2015

getting dirty.

Published on by Quandie25 Comments

Are you one of those people who love to dig through piles of dirty, gunky, rusty, smelly stuff at garage sales?  Do you feel a special thrill knowing that you might unearth some fabulous treasure from the mound of unrecognizable stuff?  Do you love getting dirty?

Well, quite honestly, I don’t.  I often walk away from what are probably great deals because I just don’t want to get my hands dirty.  Or more importantly, I don’t want to encounter any big hairy spiders or scurrying mice!

But I made an exception the other day.  My friend Sue texted me to let me know that there was a garage sale just a block over from my house, and they had lots of old rusty junk!  I was in the middle of painting something, so I was dirty already anyway, so why not?

I called up nnK to see if she would be my partner in crime.  Her mom, we call her “the Jude”, was visiting so she let us take her beautiful, clean convertible.  That Judy, she is a saint.  She is also my number one packer at my Carriage House Sale, FYI.

Anyway, we popped over to the sale.  The first thing that drew my eye was a crate full of old blue canning jars.  Then I saw another, and another!  There were 4 crates in all, full of totally filthy blue canning jars.

Ball jars

I am so tempted to make a comment about dirty Balls here.  What is wrong with me today?  But I have to tell you, these Balls were super dirty.  Luckily nnK helped me dig through them because all of the ones with lids were at the bottom.  I brought home 20 of them.  I washed them up and now they are sparkly clean, but you should have seen the sludge that was left behind in my kitchen sink.

This ended up being one of those sales where they have some really cool stuff that unfortunately wasn’t taken care of and now was mostly ruined.  I hate seeing that, don’t you?

However, while looking through all of the items on the $4 table, I couldn’t help but take a closer look at the table itself.  It was kind of ‘vintage farmhouse fabulous.’  There was no tag on it though.  So I asked, “how much for the table itself?”  The sellers kind of looked at each other, and then the wife said “well, I guess it’s $4 too!”

dirty farmhouse table

Sold!  To the girl who doesn’t like to get dirty!  One small problem, how were we going to get it home?  I voted for nnK and I carrying it the one block home on foot.  It was pretty filthy, and the Jude’s car was shiny clean and all leathery and stuff.  But no, she insisted, ‘just pile it on’.  So, we did.

Judy and the table

Yep, that’s Judy back there under the table.  See what I mean?  She’s a trooper.

Ken had already left his mark on this table before I got around to taking the ‘before’ pictures.  He has shored up the legs, added supports under the drawers where there were none, and covered up a gaping hole above the middle drawer.  Now I just have to work my magic on it.

The first step will be giving it a bath, and then I’m going to try to salvage the very stained top.

dirty table top

And then I’m going to treat it to a milk paint makeover.  Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

summer porch update.

Published on by Quandie15 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’m never 100% happy with the decor at my house.  There are always just one or two things that I’d like to tweak (or sometimes much more).  I showed you my front porch last year …

front porch 1

And it wasn’t until I looked back at the above photo that I realized exactly how much I tweaked!  Maybe we should play one of those games where you pick out all of the differences between the two photos.

summer porch

Well?  How many did you find?

Let’s start with the obvious.  You might be tempted to think that I painted the Adirondack chair, but no, I switched it out entirely.  Ken makes these chairs.  It all started with a garage sale chair that my friend Sue had.  She sold it to nnK.  nnK kept it in her yard for several years, but it was getting pretty rickety.  Thing is, it was super comfortable.  Definitely the most comfortable Adirondack I’ve ever sat in.  So nnK asked Ken to make her another one.  Ken took the whole chair apart, made a pattern, and whipped up a matching chair.  That started an Adirondack chair explosion.  I have two, nnK has two, her brother has two (or maybe four?), my friend Sue has two, my friend Terri has two.  And as of this summer, my sister has one also!  We also sold a couple at the Carriage House sale.

porch adirondack

And now I have three!  The chartreuse chair was always meant to be outside, along with a 2nd chair that matches it.  That color looks great in the garden.  But Mr. Q found it so comfortable that he insisted on having it on the porch.   I tried to make the chartreuse work out there, but it just didn’t.  So I commissioned chair number three from Ken and painted it white.  I also added a black and white pillow from H & M Home.

The next really obvious change?  I sold the little pale green washstand that was next to the chair, and replaced it with the black cupboard that used to be in the Q Branch.

porch cabinet

The black cupboard has a lot more presence than the washstand did.  It is filled with my ever growing collection of vintage cameras.

Another major change was selling the very pretty china cabinet that was on the west end of the room.  Having two glass fronted cabinets so close to each other was a bit redundant.  It was a really pretty piece, but I let it go to one of my favorite customers!  I haven’t actually found a permanent replacement for that spot.  I know the perfect piece will come along eventually, but for now I have a small farm table set up as a desk.

porch desk

porch desk close up

This spot works incredibly well for photos shoots of small items.  Such as my fab two new vintage scales.

porch scales 2

The taller one I snagged at my own sale (much like the blue and white truck from last week), the shorter one was a gift from Sue!

It even still has its tag …

porch scale close up

Another tweak to this room was adding a stencil to the front of the small trunk that sits between the two chairs.  I’d been meaning to do this for quite some time, but just hadn’t gotten around to it.  I picked up this trunk at a garage sale (naturally).

porch trunk before

It came just like this, complete with chippy white paint job and rusty wheels.  And check out the inside.

porch trunk interior

Isn’t that insert just fantastic?  It’s hidden away in there just waiting for me to find the perfect use for it.

But meanwhile, I added a stencil to the front.

porch trunk

porch trunk 2

While sitting on the front porch, you also get a great view of my front window box just outside.

porch window screen

I feel like my porch looks a bit more pulled together and cohesive this year.  Not as cluttered.  I’m really happy with all of the changes I made.  Speaking of which, how many changes did you spot?

I’ve got the blues.

Published on by Quandie18 Comments

Yep, I’ve got the blues.  The vintage blues!

vintage blues

I have become a big fan of rich, saturated blue hues like Miss Mustard Seed’s Artissimo, Flow Blue and French Enamel.  And I used all three of them on this dresser!

But let’s start at the beginning.  A couple of weeks ago on a beautiful summer evening, Mr. Q, my sister and I hopped into the truck and took a little road trip to Somerset, Wisconsin to pick up this dresser.

empire before

It was about dusk as we headed back home and we were dodging deer right and left on the road.  Luckily though, no deer were injured in the making of this blog post.

We got the dresser safely home and once I got a good look at it in the daylight, I realized it was really orange.  Gack!  It was definitely time for a change.

I stripped the top, sanded it down, added some Varathane Dark Walnut gel stain, and then waxed it with Cece Caldwell’s Aging Cream.  This is rapidly becoming my “go-to” process for tops.  I love the color of the Dark Walnut and the finish I get with wax.  I’ve tried the Wipe On Poly, but I’m still a wax girl at heart.  There is something very organic about the look of wax that I prefer over a harder finish.

blue dresser top

Once that was taken care of, I painted the body of the dresser in MMS Artissimo, a very dark blue.  I then used Vaseline to help make sure this undercoat showed through in some strategic spots.  Next I mixed Flow Blue and French Enamel together, about 2 to 1, and painted one coat of that over the Artissimo.

blue dresser close up

These photos are looking very bright on my computer.  This dresser is a rich shade of blue, but not super bright.

The hardware on this dresser was a bear.  If you refer back to the ‘before’ photo, you can see that it came with mismatched wood knobs (the bottom two were painted pale pink!).  Boring.  I originally planned to replace them with glass knobs, but I was in a hurry and couldn’t find the right size for this piece.  I purchased 3 different sets of potential knobs for this dresser and disliked all of them once I got them on.  At one point, I thought these funky white key hole knobs from Hobby Lobby would work, but I only had two of them.  When I went back to get two more, I bought the wrong kind.  Plus, the white really stood out too much next to the blue anyway.

In the end, nnK convinced me to pull out my stash of vintage hardware to find something that worked with the cute bird knobs that I used on the top drawers.  I had four matching drawer pulls that were perfect.

blue dresser corner

Now what am I going to do with the 26 knobs I purchased that I didn’t use?  Oh, I’m sure they’ll find a home eventually.

Before we go any further, have you noticed anything in my photos so far?  Like my amazing vintage blue and white toy truck?

I picked it up at my favorite occasional sale, which happens to be my own sale.  Ha!  No really, that’s only because I get first dibs on everything that my sale co-host brings to the sale, and that included this super darling toy truck this year.  I snatched that up before it was half way out of the box.

blue truck

Mr. Q brought this dresser, along with a few other pieces up to Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater where it is for sale.  If you are local, be sure to stop up there if you’re interested in purchasing it!  They are open all weekend!

Dresser painted in custom mix of MMS milk paint blues.

what to do with extra paint.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

Remember the little chairs I picked up while garage saling last week?

lunchtime finds

Well, as it turned out, they are the perfect solution for using up some left over milk paint.  As most of you know, milk paint comes as a powder and you mix it up as you need it.  Once mixed, it only has a shelf life of about a week.  Although I’m pretty good at judging how much paint to make, there are usually a few tablespoons left over.

So after a recent dresser make-over (soon to be revealed), I pulled out one of these chairs to use up the extra paint.

blue chair on the wall

I simply sanded down the existing blue paint, then painted a couple coats of MMS’ Artissimo on the chair.

blue books

The Artissimo worked perfectly with the lighter original blue color of the chair peeking through.

blue chair on the wall 2

Once painted, I sanded the chair again and then added Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax.

I staged it with some fabulous vintage blue books and a Cornishware pitcher.

blues

 Did you notice how perfect these little chairs are for hanging on the wall and using as a shelf?

In the end that might be the fate of all three.  I’m still working on that idea a bit.  Stay tuned.