Month: March 2018

Do you ever make a decision to try something knowing full well that you are probably making a mistake but you just can’t help yourself, so you do it anyway?

You’re so excited to see the end result that you press on full steam ahead even though you know deep down inside that you shouldn’t?

Yeah.  I do that sometimes too and this is a story about one of those times.

You might have noticed the awesome antique piano stool in the photo of the desk that I shared a while back.

I purchased the stool last summer at a garage sale just down the street from my sister’s new house.

Here’s another ‘before’ picture.

I love the gorgeous ball and claw feet, don’t you?  Although gosh, I guess they aren’t really ball and ‘claw’ because those are actually bird beaks holding those balls, not claws.

Ball and beak feet?  Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

Anyway, I wasn’t quite sure exactly where I’d end up with a makeover on this stool.  I thought about painting the entire thing.  Or stripping and staining just the seat and painting the base.

However, when Prima Marketing sent me some samples of their Decor Transfers they included this gorgeous medallion transfer.

And it just happened to fit absolutely perfectly on the seat of this stool.  It’s as though it was meant to be.

I pictured it over a rustic wood seat, with the base of the stool painted black.

So I started by stripping the seat of the stool using Citristrip.  Then I sanded it down and realized it had some unattractive splotches and stains.  I didn’t want to go too dark on the finish because I wanted the transfer to contrast well with the color of the wood, but at the same time I wanted to blend those stains a bit.  So I thought that using Fusion furniture wax in Espresso would be perfect.  I waxed the seat of the stool which did work perfectly to blend the stains and make them less obvious.  But then this is where I made my fatal error.  I chose to immediately attempt to apply the transfer over the fresh wax.

Today’s q tip:  Do not apply transfers over freshly waxed pieces.  You will end up with a sticky gooey mess.  The more you rub the back of the transfer sheet (creating heat with friction and thus softening up the wax even more), the gooier your mess.

Normally you would wax after your add your transfer.  I knew this.  I’m still not quite sure why I did it this way.  But I was so excited to see the end result, so I just kept going even though there was a little voice inside my head that kept saying ‘um, I don’t think this is a good idea, stop now before you ruin a perfectly good transfer‘.

Yeah.  Ruin it I did.  The transfer just wouldn’t stick to the fresh wax.  The more I rubbed to try and make it adhere, the worse it got.

But even though this particular effort was a failure, I could see that the transfer itself was going to look amazing on the wood seat (once I got it right) and fortunately the people at Prima Marketing took pity on me and agreed to send me another of the Medallion transfers.

Thus it was time to start over!

First I had to remove the portions of the ruined transfer that did stick.  If you’ll remember back, I had to remove a transfer once before.  That time I had used one over a dark green color and it was also a fail (aren’t you glad you have me to make these mistakes for you, so you don’t have to waste a transfer on them yourself).  I tried using a razor blade to scrape it off, but that didn’t work at all.  Once these things are adhered, they are on there pretty good (which is a good thing usually, right?).  I ended up sanding that one smooth and then painting over it.

But in this case I didn’t want to paint over it.  I wanted to remove it entirely.  So I tried scrubbing with mineral spirits and a scrubbing pad.  After lots of elbow grease, I had made some progress but at that rate it was going to take me all afternoon to remove the entire thing.

  The mineral spirits did remove the wax though which was a good thing.

I finally decided to just break out my orbital sander and sand the heck out of it.  That did the trick.

If you’ve ever wondered how well the Prima Marketing transfers  will adhere to your finished piece, wonder no more.  They are stuck pretty good.  It takes 120 grit sandpaper and an orbital sander to get them off.

At this point the original patina of the stool’s seat was pretty much obliterated, so I stained it with Varathane Wood Stain in Early American.  Then I tried again with the transfer.

This time it went on beautifully and quite easily.  It took no more than 10 or 15 minutes to get the entire design transferred onto the stool.  Once that was done, I sanded lightly over the entire thing with 320 grit sandpaper and then added a Fusion’s clear furniture wax over the transfer and the rest of seat.

Ahhh, so much better.  And by the way, the base of the stool is painted in Dixie Belle’s Caviar.

I’m not sure if I’ll keep the stool or not.  I love the way it turned out, but it feels kind of small in front of my baby grand.  I usually have a chair in that spot.

Also, here’s a head up, Dixie Belle sent me all of the supplies needed to paint my piano black.  I’ve wanted to do so for several years now and just haven’t had the courage to tackle it.  It’s big and it has a lot of flip sides and insides and outsides.  But I’m working up the nerve.

But in the meantime, I love how the stool turned out, what do you think?

If you want to copy this idea on a stool or chair of your own, you can order the transfer via Amazon (here is a handy link).

And remember today’s q tip, don’t try to apply a Prima Marketing transfer over freshly applied wax!  Transfer first, wax second.

 

Several weeks ago one of my blog readers contacted me and asked if I was interested in purchasing some furniture she was getting rid of.  She sent me some photos and quoted a bargain price, so I said sure.  She lives about 40 minutes away, which is a bit far but worth it because there were three pieces, and as I said, there was also that bargain price tag.

So one Friday night Mr. Q and I headed out to pick up the furniture.  We headed straight up I35, took the exit for Wyoming, MN and headed due west down a dark, curvy road with a 55 mph speed limit.  One thing I’ve mentioned here on the blog before is that I am a city girl.  I like my roads well lit at night, and straight and familiar doesn’t hurt either.  I also find that when you are driving on these country roads, the locals behind you get quite impatient if you don’t go at least 5 – 10 miles over the speed limit.  You see, they know the road.  But I didn’t, so I was driving 55 and being very cautious, using my high beams every chance I got.

We made it safely to our destination and loaded up the three pieces, which fit perfectly into our van.  Then we headed back the way we came.  We were about halfway back to the interstate when we came upon an accident scene.  No emergency vehicles had arrived yet, however I could see flashing lights headed our way from further down the road.  The roadway was full of debris.  There were multiple cars pulled over on both sides of the road and people dashing around.  And did I mention how dark it was?  We couldn’t really see much, so by the time we realized what was going on it was too late for us to pull over, the shoulders on either side were full of cars.  So we kept going, driving very slowly through the debris field.  It wasn’t until we were almost through that I glanced over and saw the van that was on its side in the ditch.

As I mentioned there were plenty of people on the scene.  A police car was responding.  And Mr. Q and I have no special skills that we can offer at the scene of an accident.  So we just kept on going.  We would only have been in the way had we stopped.

All the way home we wondered what had happened and whether or not the occupants of the vehicle were OK.  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I learned that some of the passersby had put out a fire in the van using snow.  The driver of the van died on the scene.  His wife was airlifted to the hospital.  There was a second vehicle involved (we never saw that one) and that driver was also airlifted.

I really debated whether or not to share this story with you guys.  It’s so sad, and I really want my blog to be a happy place.  But I’m still feeling haunted by this.  Had we been on the road 10 minutes earlier, would it have been us in that accident?

My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one, and I am reminded to be incredibly grateful for the life that Mr. Q and I get to go on living.  And also for the reminder to drive cautiously on dark country roads at night, or really anywhere, anytime.  If nothing else, I hope all of you reading this will slow down, don’t use your phones while driving, and just remember to treat driving with the respect it deserves.  Driving continues to be the most dangerous activity that most of us participate in on a daily basis.  So please, be safe.

Now let’s move on to happier topics, shall we?

I’ve finished one of the pieces we picked up that night and I want to share it with you today.  Here’s the before.  The mirror is just leaning against the back, but later on you’ll see it in place.

I know I broke one of my photography composition rules with this photo, I took it from a standing position shooting slightly downward.  But I was trying to keep myself out of the mirror.  And hey, it’s a ‘before picture’, so I don’t have to follow the rules for that, right?  It’s supposed to look bad.

As you can see, the finish is rather beat up.  In addition, there is an unseen problem.  It was pretty smoky smelling.  But that just made this a great opportunity for me to try the BOSS that Dixie Belle sent to me a while back.  BOSS stands for Blocks Odors Stains Stops bleed-thru.

The instructions require two coats of BOSS followed by paint.  Logic dictates that in order to block the odor, I have to coat every surface inside and out.  To experiment with that I coated the insides of a drawer and then asked Mr. Q to give it the sniff test.  Sure enough, he agreed that the inside of the drawer no longer smelled of smoke.  However, turning the drawer over, the underside still smelled.

So, two coats on every surface.  I went through almost an entire 16 oz. jar of BOSS for this one piece of furniture.  The jar costs around $18.  When you are negotiating the price for a piece of smoky furniture, just remember that the smell can easily be dealt with using this product but be sure to factor in the extra cost if you are flipping the piece to sell.

The BOSS leaves a sort of tacky surface behind.  Perfect for hanging onto paint, but that also means you must put paint over it you can’t just leave it.  So that meant painting every surface as well.

Luckily Dixie Belle had just sent me a fresh batch of paint including a jar of Sea Glass, a beautiful blue green.  I knew it would work beautifully with some lovely jadeite knobs that I had in my stash.  I purchased them a while back from D Lawless.

While painting this piece I used the Dixie Belle method of dipping my brush into a cup of water first, then into the paint which basically results in watered down paint.  The paint goes on much smoother this way.  If you are one of those people who don’t like to see brush strokes, this is the way to achieve that.  I used two coats of paint on everything except the undersides of the drawers which only got one coat.

After painting the insides and outsides of each drawer, I also added a topcoat of Dixie Belle’s Flat Clear Coat and then lined them with scrapbook paper.

Now, here’s something I learned recently about Dixie Belle paint.  You don’t have to put a top coat over it.  What?  Do your eyes deceive you?  No they don’t.  It’s true.  Once the paint cures (in about 30 days) it is very durable without a top coat.  Eureka!  This was a revelation to me.

After learning that I decided to try a little experiment.  As I mentioned, I used the Dixie Belle Flat Clear Coat inside the drawers.  I also used it on tops of the two sides.  But then I left the rest of the piece as is.  I wanted to see if there was a noticeable color difference between the sealed areas and the unsealed areas and the answer is no.  At least that’s true with Sea Glass, it may not hold true for darker colors.  I’ll have to test that theory further.  I like having a little extra protection on the surfaces that might get spilled on, while knowing that I don’t have to clear coat (or wax) the sides, the mirror frame, the legs and so on.

The vanity didn’t come with a chair, but once I had it painted I felt like it really needed one.  I have a few chairs out in the carriage house, I’d picked them up here and there last year at garage sales.  It’s good to have single chairs handy to pair up with desks or vanities.

I used the top chair in that stack and I asked Ken to cut a piece of hardboard that I could upholster for the seat.  I painted the chair itself in the Sea Glass and upholstered the seat with some simple muslin fabric that I stamped with the Iron Orchid Designs Decor Stamps (see this post if you’d like more details on how to do that).

By the way, getting photos of pieces with mirrors straight on without getting yourself in them is tricky.

The angle was a little bit easier.

I staged this piece with a bit of pink which I thought looked very pretty paired with the Sea Glass.

This lovely sea glass vanity is for sale locally, so be sure to check my available for local sale page for more details.

This past Saturday I went to the Pink Martini concert at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (if you’re reading Kim, thanks for the heads up on that!).  If you’re not familiar with Pink Martini, they once said that if the United Nations had a house band it would be Pink Martini.  I love this quote from their bio:  “We’re very much an American band, but we spend a lot of time abroad and therefore have the incredible diplomatic opportunity to represent a broader, more inclusive America… the America which remains the most heterogeneously populated country in the world… composed of people of every country, every language, every religion.”  Saturday night they sang songs in Turkish, Armenian, Italian, French, Japanese and more.

Not sure that Japanese music would appeal to you?  Check out Zundoko Bushi.  Or perhaps an Italian ballad is more your style, if so check out Ninna Nanna.  They do sing songs in English too, and I always dedicate Eugene to my sister (because her ex is named Eugene and I enjoy teasing her about it).

Anyway, seeing Pink Martini perform is like taking a trip around the world without leaving Minneapolis.  I let that idea inspire the staging for the piece I’m sharing here today.

But let’s start with the ‘before’ pic …

Mr. Q and I risked life and limb to pick this up one cold evening last week.  It was being stored in the seller’s walk out basement so it required backing our vehicle halfway down an icy hill in the pitch dark, and then carrying the piece itself halfway up that same icy hill in the pitch dark to load it into the van.  And yes, in case you are wondering, it is as heavy as it looks!  Once it was all loaded up it took a couple of tries to get the van back up that icy hill.

But we survived to tell the tale and got this piece safely unloaded back at our house.

By the way, this dresser also came with two tall, skinny, side by side mirrors attached at the back.  You may be familiar with that style from the 70’s.  I took them off and will not be putting them back on.

I bet you can guess what I did with it next!  If not, you haven’t been paying attention lately.

Of course I painted it in Fusion’s Park Bench!  I warned you guys that I was going to bore you with repeats of this color.  The last two pieces I did in this gorgeous shade of green flew off the shelf, each one selling within 48 hours of being posted on Craigslist.  So when you have a winning combination you just gotta go with it, right?

I would say the design of this piece is somewhere between the sleek, modern, clean lines of earlier mid-century pieces and the chunky, Spanish Rivival stuff of the 60’s & 70’s.  Perhaps it was designed by someone who couldn’t quite embrace either style so they stuck with somewhere in the middle.

I really debated the fate of the hardware.  The original stuff wasn’t horribly bad.  There might even have been some who really liked it.  If the back plate had been plain instead of fussily engraved, I might have tried shining up the brass and keeping it.  Also, if the back plate had been a separate piece that I could remove and still use the pulls, I may have done that as well.  But they are one solid piece.

 So I really felt like the piece would be better served with new hardware, and since I’d gotten an excellent price on it I felt like I could spend a little bit more on new hardware.  Luckily Hobby Lobby is really stepping up their game on more modern looking drawer pulls.  There were several different styles that caught my eye, but I ended up going with some matte gold drawer pulls for the six drawers and some matte gold and clear acrylic knobs for the center door.

Also, I was in luck because last week knobs were 50% off at Hobby Lobby.  Great timing!

Seeing the new hardware in place, I know I made the right decision.  These pulls and knobs lend a bit more of a modern edge to the dresser.

If any of you are wondering about the details on this piece, I started by filling the old drawer pull holes with Dixie Belle’s brown mud.  Next I sanded lightly, vacuumed away the dust and wiped it down with TSP substitute.  I painted it with two coats of Fusion’s Park Bench.  As you know Fusion paint has a built in top coat, so I didn’t need to add one.  Finally, I drilled new holes for the hardware, and voila!

There are three more drawers behind that door in the middle of the dresser.

And as it turns out, I’m kind of a dork because I neglected to paint the inside of the door.  It wasn’t until I opened it to take photos that I realized it looked rather awful unpainted.  I had to slap a quick coat of paint on it for the photos while I still had some light, so the paint isn’t actually even dry in that photo.

And in case you are wondering, I’m also going to have to cut down the screws for the knobs  on the door so that they don’t hit those interior drawers.  I did some measuring and I will just be able to trim them down enough to fit.

So technically this piece wasn’t quite finished when I took the photos for the post, but I had to make hay while the sun shined (shone?) and get my pictures done during daylight hours.  I won’t be listing this piece on my ‘available for local sale page’ until it’s totally finished and ready to go.

But in the meantime, I thought I’d still share it with you guys.  What do you think?

Will this third piece in my Park Bench series do just as well as the other two?

Fingers crossed.  I need to add a little more cash to the travel fund so Mr. Q and I can plan our next real international adventure.