April 2016 – Page 2 – q is for quandie

a chippy dresser and a clean floor.

Published on April 8, 2016April 7, 2016 by Quandie17 Comments

I mentioned a little bit ago that it has been nice enough to be back out in the photo cottage already this year. When I said that, what I meant specifically was that I could be out there taking photos without freezing my face off. But it wasn’t quite warm enough that I wanted to be out there scrubbing away the winter grime. Until last week (before we had another cold snap) when I came home from work one evening and it was 62 degrees outside. So I decided there was no time like the present to head out there with my bucket of water and my scrub brush. And now I have a fresh clean floor. I was so happy with it, that I tried to include a bunch of floor space in today’s photos.

chippy dresser 2

All this talk of a clean floor is meant to distract you from noticing that I don’t have a ‘before’ photo of this dresser.

Drat!

I thought I had taken one, but if I did it is lost in the sea of 100’s of photos that I take every week (thus the urge to organize my photos that I mentioned yesterday). This dresser has been patiently awaiting its turn to be made over, so it is possible that I took one some time ago and I just can’t find it!

Oh well, moving on …

I went with MMS milk paint on this one because I had a feeling it would get chippy, and indeed it did.

I mixed some French Enamel and some Lucketts Green together to make this color. I’ll be honest, I was expecting a much lighter color based on seeing what was said to be this same combination on a piece on pinterest. This is a good reminder to everyone that colors in photos often don’t translate to how they look in real life.

This photos of this dresser are a really good example of that. I think the dresser looks a bit more blue in the photos than it really is. If you are proficient in MMS milk paint colors, this color is a bit lighter and a tad warmer than Kitchen Scale.

chippy dresser 3

This dresser has the prettiest drawer pulls on the lower three drawers.

chippy closeup 2

By the way, I did strip the top and then wax it with Cece Caldwell’s Aging Cream.

My vintage gardening books were the perfect color to use for staging.

chippy dresser staging 1

And I threw in one of those sweet hand sewn baby dresses that I keep just for staging furniture.

chippy dresser corner

This lovely dresser is for sale. If interested, please feel free to leave a comment requesting the details or email me at qisforquandie@gmail.com.

garden questions

throwback thursday no. 1

Published on April 7, 2016June 9, 2016 by Quandie17 Comments

I was in the process of doing some photo organization last weekend, and I decided that it might be fun to share some things with you guys from my pre-blogging days. I started q is for quandie in November 2013, but I took lots of photos before that. Lots. So, I bring you … throwback thursdays! Yeah, I totally stole that from Facebook, but hey, I can do it too, right?

Our first throwback Thursday features the photo cottage before it became the photo cottage. Oddly enough, I didn’t share much in the way of ‘before’ photos when I made it over, just one quick photo of the emptied out shell.

summer house before

Yikes!

So let’s back up just a tad and take a look at the place before it was emptied out.

potting shed sofa

These photos were taken in 2010, way before I ever thought I’d have a blog. So yes, I had a ‘she-shed’ long before anyone even coined that term. Just for the record, I kind of get the heebie jeebies over that name. I don’t know why, there is just something about it that is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, how about you?

I called it the ‘summer house’ (a much prettier name than ‘she-shed’), and it was very girly.

potting shed dishes

The walls were pink. I remember the color was called Paris Pink, can it get any more perfect than that? And I had scads of floral china everywhere.

potting shed window

Much of this china was later used for my ‘words on plates’ projects.

I had an awesome chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but it was just for looks. I don’t actually have any power out there. It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but I took photo copies of old black and white pictures and wrapped them around the ‘candle tubes’ which looked really cool.

potting shed chandelier

I still have the chandelier in storage. I’m hoping that I’ll come up with the perfect spot for it again soon.

I had a green wicker chair in the corner next to a little metal garden table with a glass top.

potting shed green chair

See that wall sconce above the chair? Does anyone remember those mirrored sconces? I don’t know what the background story is on these, but they tend to be a dime a dozen at garage sales (were they from Home Interiors maybe?). They are usually black. I painted mine white and added the little green teacups to them. After taking them down, I sold them along with the green chair at my Carriage House sale.

CH3 Summer 2014

I also recovered the cane back sofa and sold it.

cane sofa

This cupboard is the only piece that I kept in place out there.

potting shed cupboard

I’ve spruced it up just a little when I made over the cottage by adding some vintage wallpaper inside the drawers …

studio cabinet drawers 2

and repainting the inside …

studio cabinet empty

you can read more about that {here}.

As much as I enjoyed styling this little cottage back then, the sad reality was that I rarely used it. I don’t have too much time to spend just relaxing, so when I do have time to just chill out I prefer to do so in maximum comfort. None of the seating in my summer house was very comfortable. It looked pretty, but didn’t function all that well. So I really never just sat out there. I have gotten a ton more use out of the photo cottage. Two years after making that decision, I know it was the right one!

photo cottage exterior

So photo cottage it remains!

I hope you enjoyed throwback Thursday. I’ve got lots of old photos to share, so next Thursday we’ll take another trip down memory lane, I hope you’ll check back.

nnk’s new kitchen.

Published on April 6, 2016April 5, 2016 by Quandie15 Comments

nnk kitchen title

For those of you who don’t know the story, nnK is my neighbor straight across the street (and also my number one Craigslist spotter). For a point of reference, you can see her bright blue front door in quite a few of my summertime outdoor furniture shoots …

In a Pickle farmhouse table

I call her nnK because when she moved in I already had a neighbor next door named Karen, so to tell them apart nnK became ‘new neighbor Karen’, then shortened to nnK. Even though the other Karen passed away over five years ago, nnK is still nnK.

nnK’s house is your basic 50’s ranch. It’s perfect for her because she loves mid-century modern. When she moved in the kitchen was pretty outdated and drab though. She made some cosmetic changes to tide her over until she could really remodel it. A couple of years ago she asked me to take some photos of the kitchen that she could submit to one of those kitchen make-over shows. She had her fingers crossed, but she was not chosen for the show. But luckily I hung onto the photos, so now I can share some good ‘before’ shots with you.

nnk kitchen before 1

It was a classic 50’s kitchen. You gotta love those cabinets with the big chrome knobs. nnK added the black & white vinyl floor and the orange walls. She also painted the cabinets white, they were originally that medium toned maple colored stain that you see on the window trim. The window in the photo below looks out onto the breezeway that connects the house to the garage.

nnk kitchen before 2

That fridge was super tiny, but she couldn’t swap it out for a larger one without ripping out cabinets, so it stayed.

The dishwasher that is sitting next to the stove had to be wheeled over to the sink and connected up to the faucet to run.

nnk kitchen before 3

Now some people (like me) could get along just fine with an itty bitty kitchen like this. My kitchen is just a glorified spot for storing dishes, keeping my lean cuisines frozen and making coffee. But nnK actually likes to cook. And when she cooks, she makes enough food for an army so she likes to share. I gained 20 lbs in the first year after she moved in!

Honestly, I can’t believe that she lived with that kitchen as long as she did. But finally last fall she bit the bullet and remodeled. And this wasn’t any simple little remodel, this was a bump out the wall 6′ sort of remodel.

Basically everything from that wall this side of the fridge in this next photo is new space.

nnk kitchen 2

It’s truly amazing what 6′ can get you, isn’t it?

The oven is actually still in approximately the same spot where the old oven was … only now there are two ovens and a bank of cabinets. One more thing about this next photo, see that round thing that looks like an over sized canned light fixture in the ceiling (just in front of the ovens)? Yeah, that’s not a light fixture. It’s a sky light that somehow magically amplifies the natural light coming in (I think it’s done with mirrors and a little pixie dust). She has two of them, so even though this room faces north it is flooded with light during the day. There are no ‘lights’ turned on in any of these photos.

nnk kitchen oven wall

The window into the breezeway has been replaced by two under-cabinet windows (only one pictured).

nnk kitchen breezeway window

Just beyond this row of cabinets is a new door out to the deck, which will be super handy for grilling.

nnk kitchen door

Gone is the dinky fridge, and just check out the wall mounted TV …

nnk kitchen fridge wall

No makeover in our ‘hood would be complete without something from Ken! In this case, it’s that cabinet under the TV. nnK wanted something that would just fit into that narrow spot so she and Ken came up with plans for a wine rack. It wasn’t deep enough for the wine to face forward, so it goes in from the side.

nnk kitchen kens cabinet

Clever, right? Ken was very proud of this plan!

My sister is positively drooling over this kitchen. She would love to have one this size.

nnk kitchen 10

I’m still waiting for my next invite to dinner. nnK seems to have just enough space at the counter to include me and Mr. Q now.

nnk kitchen 11

nnk kitchen 12

So what do you think? Are you the kind of cook who would love to have this much space? Do you have enough pots and pans to fill up all of those cupboards?

Or are you more like me? You just need a microwave and a decent sized freezer?

a quick folding chair makeover.

Published on April 4, 2016April 3, 2016 by Quandie37 Comments

Last year I purchased these painted folding chairs at one of my favorite neighborhood garage sales, Bryn Mawr.

bryn mawr chairs (2)

They are fairly small, not the typical size of today’s folding chairs. I liked the colors, but I didn’t especially like the way the vinyl seats were painted. I knew from experience how to re-cover these though, so I thought I’d share that process with you today.

blue metal chair before

Here’s a close up of the seat.

blue metal chair seat before

Since normally I’m a fan of crackly and chippy paint treatments, I can’t really explain why this seat wasn’t working for me. It was a little too far gone maybe.

If you flip one of these chairs over, you’ll see that the seat ‘cushions’ (I put that in quotes because these are hardly cushion-y, but what else should I call them?) are held in place by little metal tabs that are folded over.

blue chair tabs

It’s easy to just pry those upwards using a screwdriver and then take the seat right off.

blue chair without seat

I had some pretty vintage tea towels on hand that I also purchased at a garage sale to use recovering these chairs. So I pulled one out and cut it to fit.

blue chair supplies

Normally I would pull out a staple gun for recovering a chair seat, but in this case the seat was made out of cardboard! So instead I pulled out some tape and I just used my gift wrapping skills to cover the seat.

blue chair seat tape

By the way, when you have a seat cushion that is curved in the front and only goes on one way, try to pay attention if your fabric also has a ‘top’ and a ‘bottom’. I was reminded of that when I put the cushion back in place.

blue chair backwards

Ooops. That doesn’t look right!

I took it all apart and switched it around.

Ahhhh, better.

blue chair final

What do you think? I haven’t done the pair of green chairs yet. I’m debating, will they be more marketable with a paint job? Do I leave them green and recover the seats with vintage fabric? Or do I remove the seats entirely and turn them into chalkboards, like these …

chalkboard pair

What would you do if you were me?

miniature budapest.

Published on April 1, 2016March 30, 2016 by Quandie8 Comments

Today I thought I would share with you a really special project I’ve been working on lately, a 1″ scale model of Budapest’s Castle Hill!

mini budapest street

Bwa ha ha ha … April Fools! Did I have you going for maybe just a split second?

Of course that’s actually the real Budapest, but I’ve used a new ‘effect’ available on PicMonkey to make it look miniature.

I’ve mentioned before that I do most of my photo editing on PicMonkey (I am not affiliated with them in any way, and this post is not sponsored by them). They have a free version, but I pay the extra $33 per year for the Royale version which gives me access to extra features such as this one. It’s worth every. single. penny.

They frequently come out with new stuff. Either new fonts, such as the Lato (budapest in) and Coffeebreak (miniature) that I used on this photo …

mini budapest

… or new effects that are just plain fun to play around with.

Recently they added the ‘miniature’ effect. Maybe you’ve seen this effect on TV commercials, where they make something normal size look like a miniature scene. Well, you know me and my uncontrollable attraction to anything miniature! So I pulled up some of the photos from my trip to Budapest in 2014 and started experimenting. I didn’t even save my first couple of attempts and I was ready to chuck it entirely, but then I read some of the tips (yes, when all else fails, read the instructions); use a photo with good depth (one that has a foreground and background) and is taken from slightly above the scene. As it turns out, I didn’t have very many photos that perfectly fit that description. This train photo turned out pretty cool, but doesn’t quite look miniature to me. If I had taken this from a little higher vantage point, it would have been awesome.

mini budapest train