A few weeks ago my picker, Sue, sent me an ad for an estate sale that was just a few blocks from our office at the day job.  The ad included a photo of a gorgeous dresser that would have been beautiful painted.  I had some other things on my to-do list for my lunch break that day though, so I didn’t think I’d be able to get there.  And can I just add in, it’s super frustrating that so many estate sales are only open 9 am to 3 pm on weekdays, thus making it impossible for any of us 9 to 5-er’s to get there!

I didn’t pay too much attention to the location of the sale thinking that I didn’t have time for it anyway.  As it turned out, I did have an extra 15 minutes after running my errands, so I decided to swing by after all.  Except then I couldn’t find it!  It should have been easy, just look for a sign right?  And I mean an actual sign, not a sign from above.

I knew the general vicinity, just not the exact location.  Except there was a garage sale sign at the corner of every single street along the way!  So.  Many. Sales.  Which one was the right one?

After stopping at three sales, none of which were not the right sale, my fifteen minutes ran out and I never did find the sale I was looking for that day.

The next day was Saturday though, so I decided to try again and just see if the beautiful dresser was still there.  I recruited my neighbor, nnK, to keep me company.  When we got there, there were quite a few things in the driveway, but not the furniture I was looking for.  I assumed it was gone, so disappointing.  Then I noticed the sign that said “more furniture inside”.  Eureka!

Sure enough there it was, inside the house.  Unfortunately, it was part of a set.  The bed was also gorgeous and I would have loved to have it.  The third piece to the set was a dressing table.  I could have made that work.  Then I saw yet another sign.  This time it said “bedroom set – $500”.

After all of that, the dresser was ultimately way, way out of my price range.  True, there were three pieces, but that still would have made each piece $167.  I just can’t justify spending that much on pieces when I know I can find other pieces to work on for much less.  And in case you are wondering, yes, I do sometimes ask if a seller will take less for something, but in this case it would have needed to be much less and I was getting a definite ‘antiques are valuable’ vibe from these sellers.

I was about to just walk away from the sale empty handed when I noticed they had a couple of mid-century pieces for sale as well.  And guess what, they were only $35 each.  Clearly they did not consider them ‘antiques’.  This price was much more in line with what I like to pay for things.  So they came home with me instead, sort of like a consolation prize.

This past week I painted one of them.

It’s your typical Bassett mid-century tall boy, but what I really loved about it was the hardware.  Aren’t those awesome drawer pulls?

I decided to go with one of my favorite colors for mid-century pieces, Fusion’s English Rose or as I like to call it, Millennial Pink.

I did my usual prep, a light scuff sanding following by a good cleaning with TSP substitute.

It took three coats of paint to get good coverage.

I spruced up the hardware by cleaning it with dish washing soap, then once dry I added some of Prima Marketing’s Art Alchemy Metallique wax in Vintage Gold.

Normally I stage my mid-mod pieces with more period appropriate props (say that 10 times fast!), but this time I went vintage using this adorable baby dress.

I used to have several of these, they all came from Sue originally.  She tried to sell them at one of our occasional sales …

But they didn’t go.  So I purchased several of them myself.  They were all hand stitched and absolutely beautiful.

I’ve sold most of them over the years though and this is the only one I have left.  I hang onto it just for staging photos.  It’s hanging from a vintage hanger that I dressed up with one of the Prima Marketing knob transfers.

Can you just imagine the patience it takes to stitch that?

I tried to replicated that amazing original paint color on the hanger on the little chair that is also pictured.

This is a custom mix of milk paint that I couldn’t recreate if I tried.  I just kept throwing in a little of this and a little of that, using leftovers of both Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint and Homestead House milk paint that I had on hand.

The chair is also dressed up a bit with some Prima Marketing transfers from their Delicate Fleur collection.  I’ll most likely take the chair to Reclaiming Beautiful to sell.

I tend to have good results selling these pink mid-century pieces on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, so fingers crossed that this one sells quickly.

As always, thanks to Prima Marketing for providing the transfers and metallic wax.  I purchased the Fusion paint at Reclaiming Beautiful this time around though.

If you’re local and in need of a millennial pink mid-mod dresser, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details.