Month: August 2015

That title really doesn’t have much to do with this dresser makeover.  I just happened to notice that the clock I used in my photos was set to 5:00 and it reminded me of the song.  I’ve had a soft spot for Jimmy Buffet ever since I lived in South Florida.  You can’t grow up down there and not turn into a Parrot Head!  My favorite Buffet songs are a little more obscure though, such as Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On …

I bought a cheap watch from a crazy man
Floating down canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says now
Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And If I have trouble the warranty said
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On

Somehow I just love the idea of a watch that just says “now.”  I often need to be reminded to live in the moment.  Someone should make watches like that, don’t you think?

Alas, I don’t make watches!  But I do make-over dressers.

This is the last piece in the bedroom set I purchased a while back.  I’ve already painted the bed and the mirrored dresser, and now I’ve painted the tall gentlemen’s dresser.  Here it is before.

I decided to paint it with Miss Mustard Seed’s Artissimo, a beautiful dark blue.  Unfortunately I had a really difficult time capturing the color correctly.  This photo looks kind of awful.  It was so much better in person, I swear.

In fact it was so much better that it is already sold.  One of my favorite customers, Susan, came to pick up the Almond & Ironstone dresser and she saw this one and had to have it too!  Susan has very good taste 😉

This next photo is the only one that comes close to showing the true color.  Just squint a little and imagine this color in the rest of the photos.

Much like with the other pieces in this set, a coat of paint really brought out the details.  Aren’t those feet and the trim at the bottom to die for?

The varnish on the top of this dresser had some ‘alligatoring’.  I don’t know if that is truly a term or not, but do you know what I mean?  I wanted to save that because I love the look of it, so for that reason I chose not to strip and wax the top, but to paint it this time.  The milk paint does a great job of bringing out that look.

Ugh.  The color.  Still not good.

Well, I’m taking a look at my watch and it’s telling me that “now” is the first day of what looks to be a fab weekend.  Summer is coming to a close, but I’m going to live in the moment and enjoy every beautiful minute while it lasts.  Who’s with me?

So, I know a lot of people have asked the question “does a chippy milk painted piece continue to chip after it is finished?”  Well, I thought I would give an answer to that question based on my own experience.  Disclaimer:  these are only my own opinions based on my own experience with milk painted pieces, this is not a sponsored post.

It’s not a simple yes or no answer though (it never is, is it?)  The answer is yes, and no, and it depends.

Let’s start with the “yes” answer.  If your piece is (1) fairly chippy, and (2) you haven’t thoroughly removed all chipping paint, and (3) it gets a fair amount of use, and (4) you haven’t sealed your piece with something like poly or Miss Mustard’s Tough Coat Sealer, then yes, your piece will probably continue to chip.

An example of this is my French cane back chair.  I painted this piece back in February 2014 (here is the original post) and this is how it looked then.

As you can see in the above photo, it’s nicely chippy.  Not extremely chippy, but there is definitely some chipping.

For about a year the chair was not used much, but then I moved it into the Q Branch in January 2015 and have been using it quite regularly since then.

And here is how it looks now.

I’d say it has lost a fair amount of paint, especially on the cane back, but also on any raised areas or areas where the chair is handled a lot.

Personally I love this look!  The more worn the better, this is what I’m aiming for on pieces that I’m keeping for myself.  This chair was finished with wax, by the way.  It has not been sealed.  I haven’t ever felt like there are paint chips on the floor every day or anything like that, but over time I clearly have lost some paint.

Here, I’ll make it easier for you to see with a side by side comparison …

The cane was also painted with milk paint.  I painted this chair in the winter, so I couldn’t use my cheater spray paint method on it (I don’t like to spray paint in the house).  I’ll have to keep an eye on my new cane back dining chairs and see if the spray paint holds up better on the cane.  I suspect it will.  Maybe I will regret that down the road, because I’d be happier if my dining chairs did look this chippy and shabby.

My next example of chipping is the French Market sign in my kitchen.  This was uber chippy when I finished it.

I have it leaning on the back splash of my kitchen counter.  It also just happens to be where we lean freshly washed dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher, or as I like to say my dishwasher is named Mr. Q), and as it turns out, damp conditions will definitely contribute to continued chipping.  Here is how it started to look after being there for a few months.

I knew that if I tried to sand and/or scrape off these chips I would have barely any paint left.

So instead, I added a coat of Miss Mustard’s Tough Coat Sealer.  And it no longer chips at all.  We still lean freshly washed dishes on it with no problem.  The Tough Coat Sealer does add a little shine to the finish, but just a little (you can’t even see it in the photo).  Here is how it looks today.

It sort of ‘glues’ the chips into place.  So if you have a really chippy piece, and you want to keep those chips, then this is a great option for you.

Then there is my “Kitchen Scale” buffet.

You can see that it has a decent amount of chipping around the edges.  This piece was thoroughly sanded, vacuumed and finished with hemp oil.  I believe I got all of the loose paint off when I finished it almost two years ago.  It also gets a fair amount of use.  In the winter I store my paint inside this (some people store dishes in a buffet, I store paint!) and I constantly push it out of this spot so that I can use the spot for photo shoots of finished furniture.  So it gets manhandled fairly often.  Yet I have not had any continued chipping on this one.

So, to recap.  If your milk painted piece turns out really chippy and you don’t remove absolutely all of the flaking paint, it will continue to chip (unless you seal it with Tough Coat Sealer or something similar).  Also, if your milk painted piece is exposed to damp conditions, it will likely continue to chip (again, unless you seal it).  In addition, if your piece is going to get heavy use (like a chair that one sits in for many hours while posting on their blog) you may get both additional chipping and general wearing off of paint.  However, if you’ve done a good job getting all of the flakes off to begin with, and your piece stays in a fairly dry area, and it’s only manhandled once in a while it shouldn’t chip more down the road.

And finally, just for the record, I love the chippy look, so I generally don’t use a sealer on my pieces (I stick with wax and hemp oil).  I also don’t usually sand every last scrap of chippy paint off, because I want to see those flaky bits left behind.  To me that is the beauty of milk paint!

If you don’t love the chippy look, I’d recommend using chalk paint or Fusion paint.  Why bother with milk paint unless you are going for a chippy look?

 

Sorry to say, I neglected to get a before picture of the dresser I painted last weekend.  But there wasn’t much to see.  It wasn’t hideous and it also wasn’t a piece where it was hard to see the potential.  This one went in with lots of potential and it lived up to it beautifully.

After patching a couple of spots of chipped veneer on the drawer fronts, I stripped the top.  I wasn’t sure if the wood was going to be very pretty with just the CeCe Caldwell Aging Cream, but decided to give it a go.  I’m so glad I did.  My sister was sharing my workshop while working on her china cupboard (soon to be revealed), and she was amazed by the transformation with just a little wax.  A while back one of my readers, Teri, asked me to show pictures of just such a transformation in progress, so here they are!

Here is the top after stripping (using a citrus based stripper), sanding with 220 grit sandpaper and wiping clean with a little TSP substitute (phosphate free, I use the spray and get it at Mendards).

It looks very dry and not terribly pretty.

Then here I am applying the Aging Cream with a piece of old flannel sheet (action shot taken by my sister, note my paint splattered fingers!) …

So, just to be clear.  I am simply rubbing the Aging Cream (a.k.a. dark wax) into the wood, and it brings out that much gorgeousness!  Please note, the use of ‘lint free cloth’ is recommended for waxing, but I am a rule breaker!  Since I had sanded this wood smooth, I thought the flannel was a safe bet and it worked for me.

After rubbing the wax on, I usually wait about 10 minutes or so and then wipe away the excess with a fresh, clean cloth.  Here it is after that step.

If you want more shine, you can go back after 24 hours and buff to a shine.  I usually skip that step, I’m just not a ‘shine’ girl.

I can remember back to before I tried this myself.  I had no idea that you could simply use wax to achieve these results.  No stain, no poly.  Of course, the results depend a bit on the natural beauty of the wood you are working with, so keep that in mind.  Also, a waxed top will not be as durable as a poly’ed top.  I think that is perfectly acceptable for a dresser, but maybe not as good for a desk or table top depending on how much wear they will get.

So … here’s what I did with the rest of the dresser.

I painted the body of the dresser in Miss Mustard Seed’s Marzipan (which is an almond color).  I really love this color, which is kind of strange since it’s a glorified beige and I’m not really a beige girl.  But, this is a warm, rich, almond-y color, not a pinky, peachy, beige-y color.  So much better.  It took three coats to get this coverage.

Next I added some Miss Mustard Seed Ironstone on the two medallions on the top drawer.

I finished with Miss Mustard Seed clear furniture wax.  I wasn’t sure I would put the original hardware back on at first, but in the end it was perfect with the new color of the dresser, so I kept it.

Although I didn’t get any chipping on this one, it did distress beautifully along the edges.

My Perfect English Farmhouse book and some crazed and stained ironstone were perfect for staging this dresser.

And the chair that makes its way into so many of my photos looks great next to this dresser too.

And here is one last look at that waxed top.

This beautiful dresser is for sale, if you are local and interested in the details, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you!

Linking up with Finding Silver Pennies.

Sometimes I think it may seem as though I decide to makeover a room and then I just whip it up in no time.  That’s not really how it goes.  I usually think about it for a long time, and then I try to work up the gumption to get ‘er done.  That can take awhile.  I’ve been wanting to perk up my dining room since last winter.  I knew I wanted new chairs, and as I mentioned last week, I specifically wanted french cane back chairs.  I’ve been watching craigslist for them since last spring.  I finally saw a set that I liked, but not only were they expensive ($75 each), they were also all the way out in Mound, MN.  Still, I decided they were too good to pass up.

I recruited my sister to drive out there with me.  It should have been about a 50 minute drive, but since we missed our turn off, it ended up taking more like an hour and 15 minutes to get there.  But, it was worth the drive.  These chairs are perfect.

First of all, they are really well made and very sturdy.  The cane is in perfect condition.

They have really nice proportions and they are very comfortable.

And best of all, they have seats that can be recovered with just some stapling skills.  No fancy reupholstery required.

The piping around the edge tricked me at first.  I thought maybe these were non-removable seats.  So I was thrilled when I turned them over and saw the screws for removing them.

The only thing wrong with these chairs was their shiny orange finish and unappealing fabric and those are easy to fix!

After removing the seats, I used my favorite cheating method to paint the cane.  Spray paint!

Painting cane with a brush can take forever.  So instead, I spray paint it first.  In this case I used Rust-Oleum in Heirloom White with a satin finish.  Once I had the cane fully covered in the spray paint, I let it dry.  Then I went back over it with the paint I was using on the rest of the chair.  In this case, Annie Sloan’s Old White.  Now the white matches, and I only needed one lightly brushed coat on the cane.

The rest of the chair took two coats.  Once the paint was dry, I sanded by hand to distress.  Since these chairs were for me, I could distress to my heart’s content.  I like my pieces to look a little beat up.  Once sanded, I vacuumed off the dust and waxed with Miss Mustard Seed’s furniture wax.  Let me take a minute here to talk about using a brush to wax.

I think I’ve already established that I am kind of a cheap skate.  I don’t like to spend much on tools and supplies (well, on almost anything really except trips to Europe and good hair products) and this Miss Mustard Seed large wax brush was priced over $30.  I will tell you that I probably never would have ended up with it except for the Round Barn’s going out of business sale.  It was half price, so I decided to splurge on it.  Yes, I purchased this brush myself, this is not a sponsored post in any way.

And I’ll tell you what, this brush was worth every penny (and would have been worth paying full price for actually) when it came time to wax these chairs.  It got in all the nooks and crannies easily, it maneuvered around all of the curves and bends, it even worked beautifully on the caning.  If you do a lot of waxing and you don’t already have one of these, get one, stat!  So much easier than trying to use a rag to wax these chairs.

I debated a couple of different options for seat upholstery.  I thought about using drop cloth fabric and stenciling it with a grain sack like I did on these folding chairs.

I also thought about using one of my many European stencils instead of the grain sack stripe.  But since I already have a European style stencil on some other pieces that are in going in the room, I felt like that would be overkill.  In the end, I just went with authentic grain sacks.  And I LOVE them!

I purchased 4 of these grain sacks from 3:17 Vintage in Afton.  Each one is a little different and they are exactly what I wanted on the chairs.  Well … wait a minute … to be honest, exactly what I wanted was a fabulous European grain sack with an awesome blue grain sack stripe down the middle.  But have you priced those?  For the price of just one of those, I was able to get 4 plain old mid-western grain sacks and still have some change left over.  And if I had splurged on the European version, I probably would have never let anyone sit in the chairs.  This way I’m perfectly fine with using them, and if they get spilled on, no problem!  They are pre-stained!

I have to admit, Ken the handyman totally rolled his eyes when he saw these.  He simply can not fathom why I would want stained old grain sacks on my dining room chairs!

But in case you missed it the first time I said it, I LOVE how these turned out, stained grain sacks and all!

I had set myself some lofty goals for this past weekend.  I wanted to finish the chairs, plus paint two dressers.  I didn’t quite get there.  The chairs are all painted, sanded and waxed, but I still need to upholster the seats on the other three.  It won’t take long, but they weren’t quite ready for this post.  As for the rest, one dresser is completely finished and needs a photo shoot, the 2nd dresser is painted, but needs to be sanded and waxed.  So, I have my work cut out for me this coming week.

I’m also going to keep moving on the dining room makeover.  Things are starting to come together, more ideas are percolating, and I hope to share more on that with you soon.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, my sister and I blew off our visit to Oronoco Gold Rush.  There was a heat advisory here on Saturday.  Gold Rush can be overwhelmingly hot even on a cooler day.  The combination of no shade, lots of pavement and lots of people results in heat overload.  And let’s not even think about the condition of those porta-potties in that heat!

Last Sunday one of my fellow vendors at Reclaiming Beautiful posted a quick heads up about a garage sale in Stillwater on Facebook.  Mr. Q just happened to be free, so as an experiment I sent him by himself with strict instructions to text me photos and prices before buying anything.  One of the pieces he sent a picture of was this mid-century modern desk.

Lately the mid-mod stuff has just really appealed to me, and when he told me it was $10 I said “yes!”

Unfortunately, what I couldn’t see in Mr. Q’s quick phone photo was the water damage.  See it on the legs?  Yep, that’s water damage.  There is also some fairly significant veneer damage around the edges of the top.  Basically both of these factors rule out refinishing this piece with some Dark Walnut stain, which was originally what I wanted to do.  The drawer fronts were in pretty good shape though, so I stripped and stained those, and painted the rest.

I also painted the handles on the drawers.

I’m still not sure about that choice.  Maybe I should have left them wood.  And maybe I should have painted the desk in a more subdued palette.  Dark grey?  Black?  Oh, but what’s the fun in that?  This is painted in Fusion’s Laurentien, one of my favorite aquas.

Obviously the chair I’ve used for staging my photos is all wrong.  This desk needs a mod chair, like an Eames style chair …

Or this pretty aqua chair …

Use this picture of the desk without the chair to imagine it paired with one of these more modern chairs.

Yep, better, right?

This desk is priced to sell at $125.  Anyone need a sweet little mid-century modern desk?

A while back my sister-in-law Tracy texted and asked if I wanted a dresser that was ‘free to a good home.’  She included a picture.  I’ll admit, I didn’t immediately love it.  It seemed uninspiring and maybe a bit too traditional for me, and it was hard to see the details on my phone.  But hey, it was free!  So I said yes.

And before you think I am insulting my sister-in-law, I have to point out that she works in a senior care facility and this was a piece from her work, not from her own home.

When we got there to pick it up, she told me that I could also have the matching nightstand if I wanted it.  Sure, why not?  In for a penny, in for a pound.

I decided to start with the nightstand since it was small.  I pulled out my Fusion paint in a color called Inglenook that I hadn’t tried yet.  I lightly sanded the whole piece, and then I painted two coats of Inglenook on the outside.  I painted the interior in Fusion’s Limestone for some contrast.  That took three coats to get good solid coverage.

Once I got a closer look at the hardware on these pieces, I decided I had to keep it.  It has great detail.  I added some gold Rub ‘n Buff to spruce it up.

I put the hardware back on, and I was bedazzled.  Truly.  This was one of those amazing transformations.  I’ll admit, I did not see it coming.  The piece went from really traditional (like something that my mother would have in her house) to really pretty and very French.  I hadn’t even noticed the French-ness, but it definitely came out with the paint job.

Before I continue on to the dresser, I have to tell you about that suitcase.  I came home from work one night and there it was on my porch.  I don’t know how it got there.  I must have had a visit from the vintage suitcase fairy!  So I threw it into the photo shoot.  In hindsight, maybe it was a weird addition to the photo.  If you are my vintage suitcase fairy let me know so I can thank you properly!

I had originally been planning to paint the dresser in a pale grey, but having seen how gorgeous the Inglenook was, I had to go with that again.

Have I mentioned, by the way, that this thing is ginormous?  It is nearly 6′ wide!

There are four different types of hardware on this guy.  The drawer pull on the top middle drawer matches the nightstand and is the most detailed.

My reader Victoria calls these “mock key knobs”, which makes sense since it’s supposed to look like a key that has been inserted into a lock.  These are some pretty gorgeous mock key knobs, right?

The two smaller side drawers have a very simplified version of the mock key knob.

The lower drawers have regular drawer pulls rather than mock key knobs.

But they also have a faux keyhole in the middle of each drawer.  When I pulled these off I found that the original manufacturers (I assume) had put a little piece of black electrical tape behind the opening on these escutcheons to make it look like there was really a keyhole behind them.  I decided black electrical tape just did not cut it for me, so I added old book pages behind them instead.

I love adding these kinds of details to my pieces.  I don’t know if anyone even notices them, but I hope they do.

If you’ve ever used Rub ‘n Buff, you probably know that you just put a little on your finger, rub it on, and once dry, buff to shine (hence the name).  After doing all of these pieces of hardware, I had one seriously gold finger … which was ironic because there was a Bond film festival on TV while I was working on these and I watched Goldfinger not just once, but twice in one day (well, OK, I did nap through some of it the 2nd time around).  Ahhh, Connery at his finest.  But seriously, how did they get a character named Pussy Galore past the censors in 1965?

Anyway, I staged both of these piece simply with some Vanilla Strawberry hydrangeas, some Rachel Ashwell books and one of my favorite vintage clocks.

Both of these pieces are available if anyone out there wants to add a little je ne se quoi to their home.  Local sales (Twin Cities area) only I’m afraid.  It could never be cost effective to ship these!  The larger dresser is $295 and the nightstand is $95.  Sorry, these pieces are already sold!  As I suspected, they went really quick at these prices.