Month: September 2016

When we moved into our house nearly 30 years ago, the carriage house came with three built in workbenches.  Kind of overkill for us.  One of them sort of stuck out into the space in an awkward way.  Despite the fact that every winter I had to angle my car just so to fit it inside because of that one bench, a bench that I never used except as storage and display space for my sale, it never occurred to me that we could just rip it out.

Duh, right?

I can’t really explain it, but I tend to be guilty of this sort of blindness when it comes to the carriage house.  I just never think about the fact that I can alter it to suit my needs.

After the light bulb went off in my head about removing the bench, I had a second revelation.  I have ship lap behind that bench.  In fact that whole side of the carriage house has ship lap walls!

Huh?, you say.  How is it possible that she has ship lap and didn’t know it?  Must be the blonde hair, right?

Of course I knew what my walls looked like, but I’ve had these walls for nearly 30 years.  The ship lap revolution is fairly new, I’d never even heard of that term until I started watching Fixer Upper last year.  Apparently I had ship lap before Joanna Gaines made it cool.

Down came the work bench and up went some white paint.  And then it struck me that I had effectively removed a big chunk of shelving that had previously displayed quite a few of the ‘smalls’ at my sales, thus giving me a legitimate reason to do some craigslist surfing.  I needed a hutch of some kind to ‘replace’ the shelving for display, and preferably a piece that I could then sell leaving plenty of space in my carriage house for the car this winter.

It only took me a few minutes of searching before I found this amazing piece …

It was located just a few miles away and the price was reasonable.  Really, I would have purchased this one even if I didn’t need a display piece for my sale.  In order to secure the purchase, I had to run over and buy it on my lunch hour then return later in the evening with Mr. Q and a truck to pick it up.

By the way, I have a little trick that I use when I do that.  Maybe you know this one already.  Here’s what you do, take a drawer with you after you pay for it.  I learned this tip from a friend who had a piece of furniture sold out from under her at a garage sale.  Even though she had paid for it, when she went back to pick it up later in the day it was gone.  If you take a drawer, it’s pretty hard for the seller to sell to someone else.

Anyway, I decided that Annie Sloan’s French Linen would be perfect for this hutch.  However, when I pulled out my can of paint I realized it was only about half full (or for you pessimists out there, it was half empty).  I knew I’d need more paint than that, so I improvised.  I pulled out a half can of Cece Caldwell’s Young Kansas Wheat and I mixed the two together to create a mostly full can of paint.

I tried to come up with a creative name for this color.  Young Kansas Linen?  French Kansas?  Young French Linen?  French Wheat?  Hmmm, that has a ring to it.  I googled French Wheat just to see if anything would come up only to discover that there are currently some serious problems with the wheat crops in France.  Who knew?  But I didn’t find any paint colors called French Wheat.

The color turned out lovely.  French Linen is a warm greige on its own and the Young Kansas Wheat is a warmer  beige-ier color.  Thus I give you French Wheat …

And there are those ship lap walls that are now white.  If I had better lighting in the carriage house, this might become my new photo staging area!

As it was, the lighting was a serious challenge and I’m not entirely happy with any of the photos I took.  But this is the best you’re going to get.  After moving this piece multiple times while working on it, I am totally not in the mood to try and move it somewhere with better lighting just for some photos.  It is seriously heavy and awkward to move.

By the way, you are looking at the preliminary set up for the Carriage House sale here.  All of the items pictured are for sale; the chippy white chairs ($18) and windows, as well as this cute little chalkboard hanging from a knob.

Lucky thing I didn’t try to stretch my half can of French Linen, because I used every last drop of paint on this piece, so nearly a full quart sized can.  I did need two coats of paint to get good coverage.  And that was without painting the inside of the bottom section and the inside of the middle section.  These sorts of pieces can be deceiving.  There is a lot of painting when you’re doing the outside, plus the insides of two areas, plus shelves, plus the inside of the ‘secretary’ drawer.

Oh, didn’t I mention that this is technically a ‘secretary’ desk?  Yep, it is.

That upper middle drawer flips down and becomes the the writing surface and there is a little drawer and cubbyholes inside.

Let’s talk about the grain sack doors.  If you look back to the ‘before’ photo you can see that the two middle doors originally had a chicken-wire-ish metal mesh instead of glass.  It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t great.  I tried painting it, but still didn’t much care for the look of it.  So instead I decided to go with grain sack inserts.

I am absolutely in love with this look.  I’ve done it a few times and I love it every time.

This time I used authentic grain sack, but still added the ‘1902’ stencil.  I think the mended spot is absolutely charming.

If you aren’t a fan of things that show their age, you are probably reading the wrong blog … and I’m not necessarily referring to just the furniture.

I’m going to give up on trying to come up with a non-grainy, white balanced, clear photo of this hutch now and just leave you with this last picture …

And then remind you that you can see this French Wheat hutch in person at my upcoming Carriage House Sale if you live anywhere nearby.

 

Fusion has new colors, Fusion has new colors!

I’m like a kid in a candy store with paint colors, and it’s even more fun when Fusion offers to send me some of their new colors to play around with.  Thank you Fusion!

They’ve arrived while I am in the thick of things prepping for my upcoming sale, but I couldn’t resist cracking one of them open and doing a quick makeover on this oak office chair that I picked up at the St. Anthony Park sales.

This chair was crying out for a make-over, but I almost didn’t buy it.  The car was pretty full, but I convinced my sister that I could cram it in and I went back for it.  I’m so glad that I did!  It’s super sturdy and it looks awesome with it’s new paint job.

This delicious color is called Brook and is part of the new Penny & Co. Collection.

It took no time at all to paint two coats of paint on the chair and then distress the edges a little with sandpaper.

Brook is the perfect color for my bedroom.

Although I originally planned to sell this chair, I think I’m gonna have to keep it for now.  Wouldn’t you agree?

If you’re a local, you can find Fusion paint at Salvaged with Style in Hudson.  They charge $19.95 for a pint and $5.95 for a sample sized jar.  They will be getting in the new colors by the end of next week or so.  I totally recommend checking them out!

I tell you, there is nothing like an upcoming occasional sale to get me motivated to finish some pieces!

This is another one that has been cluttering up my workshop half finished for a good chunk of the summer.  I’ve mislead you with that first photo though, this is really just a little toy sized high chair.  I picked it up at the Linden Hills neighborhood sales back in May, you can see it sitting on top of the washstand in this photo …

I purposely bought it to showcase one of Fusion’s Tones for Tots colors, Little Teapot.

I painted one coat, and then it sat … and sat … and sat.  Finally last weekend I finished it up with a second coat of paint.

I can’t claim all of the credit on this one, my sister was over helping me get ready for my sale and she did the distressing.

She did a great job, didn’t she?

Once it was all painted up, I wanted to add a little something to back rest so I pulled out my rub-on’s.  I thought I had some that were more kid-friendly but I couldn’t find any, then I realized that this Gerald’s Cafe rub-on from 7 Gypsies was kind of perfect.

Now this sweet little high chair is the perfect spot for feeding Gerald the fuzzy elephant at all hours.

Pretty adorable.

I brought this dresser home way, way, way back last winter.

At that time I was considering using it to demo the Rachel Ashwell paint that I was giving a test run.  But the RA people only sent me one color, and although I chose a very lovely pale blue, I didn’t feel like pale blue was right for this one.

So I tucked this dresser out of the way and went in another direction with the Rachel Ashwell paint.  Then come spring, I shoved it into a corner of the workshop and there it sat all summer.  The poor neglected thing.

I think I kept putting it off because it needed more work than average.

First, the legs needed to be re-glued.  I’m not sure if you can see what’s going on in this photo, but the front legs must have been made from two pieces of wood that were glued together, and they had come unglued.

So I glued them back together again.

Next I attempted to re-glue this pretty trim back on the top drawer.

 And that didn’t quite work.  The pieces were rather warped and wouldn’t lay flat, so in the end no amount of re-gluing would do the trick.  Denied.

Finally I wasn’t sure how I wanted to address the significant veneer issues on the top of this one.

While you’re admiring that picture of the chipped veneer, also pay attention to all of that reddish looking staining.  Yep, I suspect that had I tried to paint this one a light color I would have ended up with bleed-thru.

You might be wondering at this point what exactly I was thinking when I purchased this dresser.  Trust me, I have been wondering the same.  I really overpaid for a piece with this many issues.  Live and learn.

So in order to save myself any further heartache over this piece, and in order to just get it done before my upcoming sale, I decided to paint it black to avoid stain bleed-thru issues, remove the decorative trim that wouldn’t stay glued and use my decoupaged book page method for the chipped veneer (I first used this method here).

If I’d had more time to futz with it, I think it would have been pretty painted a creamy white like the last book page dresser.  Maybe next time.

You may have noticed that I saved some gold details on those columns on either side of the dresser’s front.  The patina on that gold was really lovely, so I made sure to save it.

And I filled in the chipped veneer on the top with pages from an old Swedish bible.

It was fun staging this piece simply with stacks of books including some of the books I painted and stenciled a couple of years ago.

And all in all, I think it turned out quite lovely.

If you are local and you’re coming to my sale on October 8, you can be the judge of that yourself!

Every girl should have at least one l.b.d. in her wardrobe.  They are so versatile.  I’d say the same can be said about this l.b.d, or little black dresser.

It can go anywhere, bedroom, foyer, dining room, kitchen, living room.

This particular l.b.d. came from my friend Sue’s sister.  I seem to have completely forgotten to take a before photo, but it’s your basic oak serpentine dresser.

I stripped the top and painted the rest in Little Billy Goat’s Old Pickup.  I waxed the body with black wax.  I really liked the contrast between the lighter top and the black paint, so I kept the top light by giving it a coat of clear wax followed by a coat of white wax.  So far nnK, Ken and Mr. Q have all made it clear (pardon the pun) that they are not on board with this decision, but I love it.  To me the wood top looks pickled or lime waxed.

I feel certain that there is going to be a buyer out there who loves this top as much as I do.

I believe at some point in its life someone hacked an inch or two off the feet of this piece.  It was obvious looking at the saw marks on the bottoms, and the dresser itself seemed a little stumpy.  So I added casters and that helped immensely.

 

I used portions of two different stencils on the front.  I love the subtlety.  As usual, when I’m stenciling on black, I used acrylic paint in a dark grey shade.  It comes across as ‘white’ without being glaring.

How do you like chair no. 6?  This chair used to be in my kitchen, but I replaced it with a blue chippy stool.  I’ve cleaned it up, re-glued its joints, recovered the seat and it’s in the pile for my upcoming sale.

I have no idea why I chose to put a ‘6’ on the back.  I went through a number phase where lots of stuff got numbers added.  Six seemed like a good choice for this chair.

I have to say that if I had a need for a l.b.d. I would be keeping this one.  I absolutely love how it turned out.  But, alas, I already have a gorgeous l.b.d. in my guest room.  I really don’t need two.  This one is for sale.  Be sure to see my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more info.

One of the fun things about my little furniture restyling hobby is that friends and family tend to offer me their cast off furniture.  Often it’s either me or the Goodwill (or possibly the dumpster as my friend Terri mentioned with the Parisian table).

You’d think that ‘free’ pieces are always good, but that’s not necessarily the case.  In the past I’ve taken on free furniture and wound up spending far more time on a piece than it’s worth.  Time is the one commodity that I can not get more of so I tend to be a bit stingy with mine.

So way back last winter when my friend Nan asked me if I wanted this mid-century modern blonde dresser I hesitated a little.  It’s doesn’t look too bad from this angle …

But here’s what the top and sides looked like …

Yikes!  Leopard print wallpaper!

I wasn’t sure how hard it was going to be to remove that stuff.  But I decided to take it home anyway.  And that lead to a lot of procrastination on my part.  Like about 9 months of procrastination.  It’s a big piece and it was taking up a huge chunk of floor space in my workshop, but yet it just sat there all summer.

I was determined to get it done during my recent stay-cation and yet even so, I put it off until the last two days.  It may not even have gotten done then, except I pulled the old Tom Sawyer ‘painting the fence’ trick.  You know that one, right?  You convince people that the work you’re doing is so much fun that they just have to join in.

Mr. Q and I pulled the dresser out into the yard and then I coerced my sister into helping me strip off that wallpaper.  Once she and I got started, nnK and Ken’s wife Arlene both came over.  Once they saw how much fun we were having, they were drawn in as well.  Soon all 4 of us were attacking that wallpaper.  We had it off in no time!  We found that just getting the paper wet and then using a scraper did the trick.  It came off in small pieces, but eventually we got it all off.

Once we had the wallpaper off, it was a simple job to sand the dresser down a bit and paint it.  Sort of.

I started with the gorgeous mint color on the body of the dresser and the two outer columns of drawers.  This is Dixie Belle’s Mint Julep, by the way.

Then I ran into some trouble on that center column of drawers that I painted in Annie Sloans’ Old White.  The finish bled through the white.  A lot.  But, no worries, I added a coat of Rachel Ashwell Clear Primer and tried again.  That did the trick.

I thought it was a bit odd that the finish only bled through the white paint, and not the mint.  Sure enough, when I inspected more closely I found that there were just a couple of small bleed thru spots on the top of the dresser too, so I handled the top in the same way.  A coat of clear primer followed by another coat of Mint Julep.

I finished with Annie Sloan clear wax.  I chose that brand of wax because once buffed it has a little more sheen than some of the others.  I like a little more shine on mid mod pieces.

Since my sister was still hanging out after we got the wallpaper off, she also helped me polish up the drawer pulls with some Brasso.  They cleaned up quite nicely.

I love being able to retain the original hardware on mid-century pieces especially.  They usually add so much character and this dresser was no exception.

I think this piece would work beautifully in a nursery.  It’s a great height to function as a changing table, it has tons of storage and it can be transitioned into a dresser down the road.  Check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more info if you’re in the market for some mid mod mint.

The clean lines of mid-century pieces appeal to me more and more these days.  How about you?  Mid-century modern, yes or no?