Month: September 2016

My stay-cation week off from the day job went by really quickly, isn’t that always the case?  And I didn’t get nearly as many projects done as I’d hoped I would.  Of course.

But in addition to lots of little things, I did get a couple of bigger pieces of furniture finished including a lovely vintage dresser.  You may remember seeing the ‘before’ of this one a while back.

It had that orangey oak-y finish.  I have to say, this one had me a little stumped.  I kept looking at it out in my workshop and not feeling any inspiration.  Finally I decided I wanted to give it a farmhouse look, something old and chippy.  I mixed up some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Farmhouse White and I started painting.  The first coat didn’t cover well at all, but that’s to be expected with white milk paint.  The second coat wasn’t much better.  Not a good sign.  By the third coat, the coverage was still not up to my standards.  Plus, I wasn’t getting any chipping at all.  Argh!

I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to just cut my losses, so that’s what I did.  I got out the Fusion paint instead.  I had a little bit of Limestone (a warm creamy white) left in a jar, so I supplemented it with some Casement (a brighter crisp white) just to be sure I’d have enough.  And then one coat did the trick.  Now to be fair, I’m sure I would have needed two coats if I didn’t already have a base of white milk paint.

Still … once painted I didn’t have to wax or add a top coat (my favorite thing about the Fusion paint).

After the paint dried, I added this gorgeous French Laundry stencil using acrylic craft paint in a nice greige sort of color.  I wanted to keep it subtle.

I think this is one of the prettiest stencils I have, and it added just the little bit of extra something that this dresser needed.

Did you notice the screen hanging above the dresser?

I’ve always been fond of a pop of black in an otherwise mostly white space.  I even have a pinterest board devoted to the idea (here).  I didn’t intend for the screen to go with this dresser (otherwise I wouldn’t have used them same stencil on both), but I wanted to add that pop of black to my photos of this piece.

I think perhaps this is how this dresser was meant to end up all along, don’t you agree?

Remember my ‘find of the day’ from the MacGrove sales?

I love the delicate proportions of this pretty little desk.  Or at least I am calling it a desk.  It could be a console table, or a dressing table.

I had originally envisioned a refinished wood top with a chippy white base.  But after I’d stripped two layers of paint off the top, I realized that I didn’t like the ‘wood top look’ with the more French looking details on this piece.  So after all of that work, I sanded it down and painted the whole thing grey.  This is approximately a 50/50 mix of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Trophy and Schloss.

And I ended up with no chipping at all.  Once again the ability to predict chippy-ness eludes me.  I knew I wouldn’t get any chipping on the freshly stripped top, but I thought for sure that painting over existing paint would result in some chipping.  Nope.

You can see that I added a bit of Little Billy Goat Gold Leaf goat stick to the details

and also to the drawer pulls.  Aren’t these pretty?

I’ve played on the classic Grecian urn motif on the hardware, the drawer front and the cross piece at the bottom by hanging my favorite gold framed mirror above it for my photos.

These two pieces pair up so nicely that I’ve decided to offer the mirror along with the desk.

I never thought I would part with this mirror, but it seems like they belong together.

I almost hate to put a chair in front of this because I feel like it would cover up all of the pretty details.  Maybe it would be better as a console table in a foyer after all.

What do you think?

Remember way back to last year when my friend Terri gave me a bunch of stuff from her deceased uncle’s house?  They were cast off items that no one in the family wanted.

This small table was among the pile and it needed a little bit of repair.  A couple of the corner supports were missing and one of the supports at the bottom was broken where it attaches to the table leg.  Luckily I have my secret weapon, Ken.

He made short work of replacing those corners and repairing that cross piece.

Ken made these repairs in short order, but then I let the table sit for ages.

I finally pulled it out last spring and painted it with two coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue.  It started to chip like mad, and I felt like the red stain was bleeding through just a bit on the top.  So I shoved the table aside and worked on other projects because I didn’t feel like dealing with it.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this, right?

Flash forward another several months to a week or so ago.  I pulled this table out of the back of the workshop and realized maybe it wasn’t all that bad.  I sanded it vigorously to remove any chipping paint.

This photo shows a good example of what milk paint will look like on unfinished wood (the repaired corner piece) v. over previously finished wood.

Then I decided to add a stencil to the top.

I feel like the small amount of stain bleed-thru was totally negated by the heavy chipping and the addition of the stencil.

I finished the table with some Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax.

You may have caught a glimpse of the finished table last week when I posted the cane back chair.

It’s a sweet little side table that can be easily moved around to wherever it is needed.

It’s being added to the pile for my upcoming occasional sale!

For those of you who are local, the date has been officially chosen and is Saturday, October 8.  It’s only a month away, yikes!  Lucky I’m taking a stay-cation from the day job this week to get some stuff done.

My obsession with tiny furniture continues!

Who remembers this little number that I picked up at a garage sale in early summer?

It had an authentically aged original paint job, but I just couldn’t handle the red.  So I painted over the red with some Annie Sloan Duck Egg.  Then, the fresh coat of Duck Egg made the original cream exterior look seriously dingy and yellowed.  So I went over that with some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Linen.

I fully expected a bunch of chipping since I was painting over paint, but I didn’t get a single chip.  When I say that whether or not milk paint will chip can be unpredictable, I mean it.

Once it was painted, I also added a tiny little ’37’ rub-on to the top.

I know it can be hard to judge scale in these photos, but this little cupboard is just 18″ tall.  It’s the perfect size for placing on a dresser or table top and filling it up with some of your crafting supplies.

It’s kinda adorable, right?

I was contemplating keeping it and letting it join its brethren in the Q Branch (my study).

But I really don’t think I need another tiny piece of furniture!

So it will probably end up at my sale in October.  I think.  Maybe.  Yes. Probably.