I think I’ve already mentioned that over the last year or so I’ve been trying to work my way through my stashes of stuff out in the carriage house.  For any of you who might be new to my blog, this is the carriage house …

It has a 2nd floor that we use for storage.  It sounds like an amazing set up for someone like me who does furniture makeovers, but the stairway to get upstairs is steep and has a turn in it and as a result we never haul any of the larger/heavier pieces of furniture up there.  I do have a few smaller things in a pile up there though.  A couple of chairs, small tables, and other random stuff.

One of the random bits of stuff was a fun half-chair shelf that a friend of mine made.  Way back when I hosted an occasional sale out of the carriage house she had brought this chair/shelf over to sell.  It didn’t sell, but she never came back for it.  I reminded her a few times that I still had it.  That was nearly five years ago.  We’ve since lost touch.  Meanwhile, the chair/shelf has been sitting there taking up space and collecting dust for all of that time.

So I figure the statute of limitations is up.  This piece is now mine to do with as I please.  So I gave it a little makeover last weekend.

I neglected to get a ‘before’ photo, but it was painted in a glossy-ish black.  Too shiny for my taste.  It also had book pages glued to the seat, but they were mostly falling off, so it was easy to remove them completely.  Once that was done, I decided to just work with the black so I painted over it with Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky to give it a flat finish.

But then I decided that black just wasn’t going to cut it.  It’s such a funky piece, it needed more of a statement color.  So I mixed up some Sweet Pickens milk paint in my favorite of their colors, In a Pickle.

I added two coats of the milk paint over the Midnight Sky.  I was surprised to find that I got quite a lot of chipping.  I didn’t think the fresh Dixie Belle paint would resist the milk paint this much.  And much more so in some areas than others.

In hindsight, I wish I’d put a different color under the green.  Had I predicted this level of chipping, I definitely would have.  I’m not really loving the black and green combo, but I decided to work with it, instead of against it.  So, I added a section of black wording from re.design with prima’s Everyday Farmhouse transfer to help tie in the black.

Once I had that in place, I added a top coat of Dixie Belle’s Howdy Do Hemp Oil.

My q tip of the day;  always apply a transfer before you apply wax or hemp oil.  You will struggle to get a transfer to adhere over freshly applied wax or hemp oil.  If you have a piece with a wax or hemp oil finish already on it and you badly want to add a transfer, you should wait until the finish has cured a full 30 days.

It wasn’t until I actually tried to hang the shelf for a photo shoot that I realized that it wasn’t going to be very structurally sound using the hardware that was already on it (three strategically placed saw tooth hangers).  I was able to hang it long enough to get some photos, but I wouldn’t have wanted to put anything breakable on it, just in case.  So now I’m going to add a couple of ‘L’ brackets to it before taking it in to the shop to sell.  I want it to be functional as well as pretty.

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for supplying the Howdy Do Hemp Oil and to re.design with prima for supply the transfer.