Author: Quandie

modernized traditional.

Published on by Quandie19 Comments

A while back Mr. Q stopped off at the thrift store to drop off some things and while he was there he decided to take a look at the furniture for me.  He ended up purchasing this piece.

Funny, I didn’t realize exactly quite how long ago it was until I dug out the before photo and realized there were no leaves on the trees yet!

Anyway, the piece is pretty traditional and not quite my normal style but I decided to modernize it a bit with Fusions’ Ash, a beautiful dark grey.

I’d done a similar piece in the same color last year and it turned out gorgeous (my sister ended up with that one).

This was a fairly simple makeover.  My handyman Ken had to re-glue a couple of runners for the drawers first, then I sanded the entire thing down to try and smooth out some of the more obvious scratches in the finish.  I cleaned the piece with TSP Substitute and then painted it with two coats of the Ash.

Once that was dry I sanded just the edges very lightly for some subtle distressing.

I was determined to keep the original knobs and pulls because there are 14 drawers on this thing!  The cost for new ones would add up rather quickly at that rate.

I love using the Fusion paint on a large piece like this because you don’t have to add a topcoat which saves a lot of time, effort and money.  Once cured, the Fusion paint will be fully washable as is.

I did use a little bit of the Homestead House Salad Bowl Finish around the distressed areas to protect any bare wood that was exposed.

A little bit of this stuff goes a long way.  I’ve had this one small 1.75 oz jar for ages and have used it on many pieces, yet it is still more than half full.

The peonies were in full bloom when I took the pictures of this piece last weekend and I thought the varying shades of pink worked beautifully with the color of this dresser so it was a no-brainer to use them for staging.

The white, dark pink and medium pink peonies are all from my own garden while those gorgeously subtle pale pink ones are from nnK’s garden.

We’ve had some relatively cool weather lately so it seems like the peonies are lasting just a little bit longer this year.

There’s nothing like a whole bucket full of peonies to make your house smell amazing!

As you can see, things have changed a bit around here since I took that ‘before’ photo.

The trees definitely have leaves now, and everything is a lot greener!

And I think the dresser itself is much improved as well.

This piece is available for sale while it lasts.  Check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page to see all of the pieces I currently have in stock.

a painting fairy tale.

Published on by Quandie24 Comments

Once upon a time in a land far, far away (Stillwater) I saw a beautiful painted dresser in a shop.  The color was a gorgeous, deep, dark blue-green.  I ask the proprietress of the shop if she knew what paint was used on the dresser and she said it was milk paint from The Real Milk Paint Co.  Sadly though, the evil queen had cast a spell upon her and she couldn’t remember exactly which color it was.

OK, I made up the part about the evil queen, but the rest is true.  The shop owner thought it was either Dragonfly or Peacock, but she just wasn’t sure.

So I embarked upon a quest to find that magical color and paint something with it myself.

I started with Dragonfly …

But it was clearly way too blue.

Next I tried Peacock …

It was much closer, definitely the same level of darkness, but it was a bit too green.

Trying to recreate a color exactly like one on a piece that you’ve seen, in person or even worse, online, can be rather difficult.  Especially so with milk paint which is far more translucent than other kinds of paint.  Sometimes the original color of the wood that you are painting over will make a difference in the look of the final color.  I’ve also found that there can be pretty wide variations from package to package of the same color of milk paint (well, that can be true of other paints too).  In addition, the topcoat you use can also really affect the color.  In the case of that Peacock dresser, I think the hemp oil topcoat combined with the orange-ish color of the wood really brought out the green.

Still hoping that I would be able to find that magical color, I tried The Real Milk Paint Co’s Blue Spruce next.  But as it turns out, this was no fairy tale.  The third color I tried was not ‘just right’.  Instead it was even more green than the Peacock.

After giving it some more thought, I realized that the original dresser I saw in that shop was probably painted in Peacock.  Maybe it just didn’t have a hemp oil topcoat?  I had enough Peacock left to give it another go, so I pulled out this dresser that I purchased at the Linden Hills sales.

Before painting it I stripped the top using Citristrip.  While the Citristrip was working its magic, I started prep on the drawers.  I grabbed my screwdriver so I could remove those wooden knobs for painting.  Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find screws on the back.

Turned out that the knobs themselves just screwed into the drawer.  Pretty cool, right?

After the top was stripped and I’d prepped the rest of the piece by sanding it lightly and cleaning it with TSP Substitute, I mixed my paint.  That’s when I had what turned out to be kind of a dumb idea.  I decided to mix a little blue milk paint into the Peacock to ensure it would be a little less green than last time.  So I pulled out some of Homestead House’s Homestead Blue.  I didn’t add much, maybe a heaping tablespoon of Homestead Blue to a quarter cup of Peacock.

And after two coats of paint and a top coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s clear wax, here’s the color I got.

Hmmmmm.  In case you are in doubt, this is nowhere near the color I wanted or expected.  How did it end up so light, and so very blue?  What happened to the green?

For a minute I even thought maybe I confused the Dragonfly for the Peacock while I was mixing, but no, I checked.  This was definitely the Peacock.

Go figure.

Did that heaping tablespoon of Homestead Blue really make that much of  difference to the Peacock?  Or was it the clear wax topcoat?  Honestly, I’m baffled.  This color not at all what I envisioned for this dresser, so I’m having trouble being happy with how it turned out.

But I’ve realized that even though this isn’t what I expected, it is a pretty color.

The moral to our fairy tale story is that you don’t always get what you wish for when mixing your own shade of milk paint, so you have to be flexible and willing to just go with the flow.

The top of the dresser turned out beautifully.  As I said, I stripped it.  Then I sanded it a bit and finished it with Miss Mustard Seed’s Antiquing Wax.  I love that it has some dings from many years of use, but looks clean and fresh with the wax.

I staged this piece for a laundry room complete with my new dress form, Collette, and some pretty vintage linens.

I’m going to be bringing some of these linens to Reclaiming Beautiful to see if they will sell.  I’ve always sold pretty vintage pillowcases, napkins, tablecloths and sheets at my own occasional sale so I’ll see if they sell well in a shop or not.

These are all in incredibly good condition, which tends to mean that the owner received them as a gift and never used them.  I hate to see them wasting away in a linen closet, so I hope someone buys them and uses them.

I hope you enjoyed today’s painting fairy tale.  I’ve got another for you on Friday!

 

And in the meantime, if any of you locals need a pretty blue antique dresser be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ page!

 

collette.

Published on by Quandie47 Comments

You’ll remember the dress form that I purchased at a garage sale a week or so ago.

Her knit jersey outfit had certainly seen better days.  Not only did it have some holes, but it was really filthy dirty.

So first things first, I stripped her down.

Her fabric was glued along all of the edges of each piece, but on the inside not the visible outside.  So it was fairly easy to cut most of the fabric off and then just rip the edges from where they were glued.  This worked for most of it, but there were a few spots where I had to use a razor blade to cut away the fabric.

Her shiny chrome topper was a bit too shiny and modern for me and I knew I wanted to swap out the knob part for something else with a little more detail.  So this past weekend while garage saling (in the rain again) I was on the lookout for some type of wooden finial that I could paint.  When I came across this pair I thought one of them might just be perfect for the job

I started with having Ken cut the unpainted one down a bit because it was obviously too tall.  Then I painted it with Dixie Belle’s Caviar.  I also painted the chrome that remained behind with the Caviar.

Once the Caviar was dry, I sanded the finial to distress it and added some of Fusion’s Espresso wax to it.

As for the remaining chrome around her neck, I added some of Prima Marketing’s Metallique wax in Bronze Age over the Caviar paint.

I simply used a q-tip to apply the wax all over the painted metal.  Then I immediately blended it by rubbing it lightly with a paper towel.  I usually wait until the wax has dried to buff it with a soft cloth, but since I was working with a larger, flatter surface this time I found that it worked better to immediately smooth it out.

The Bronze Age wax worked perfectly to make the metal look more like old aged bronze rather than shiny modern chrome.  Having the black paint underneath helped give some depth to the bronze and to make sure none of the chrome would be peeking through the wax.

If you’ll remember back, Prima Marketing sent me several of their metallic waxes to try out and I have found them to be indispensable.  They are great for sprucing up old drawer pulls and knobs, they work beautifully on old ornate frames, and now I’ve used them for this project as well.  Also, as you can see in my photo of the wax itself, a little goes a long way.  I’ve used very little of the wax so far, and I’ve completed several projects with it.

Once all of that was done, I had one of those ‘light bulb going off’ moments.  I really can’t even say how this idea came to me, but I thought to myself what if I put a Prima Marketing rub-on transfer right on the cardboard dress form?  That could potentially look amazing.

But first I thought it might be wise to test a portion of a transfer on the back just in case it went horribly wrong.  So I pulled out a left-over section from a transfer and I added it to the dress form’s behind.

And it worked beautifully!  If anything, it went on even easier than it does on furniture and walls.

So I pulled out the full Prima Marketing Catalogue transfer.  I cut it up into various pieces and sections based on where they would fit best on the dress form.

You guys, I honestly think this might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever concocted.

I absolutely love how it turned out.

Seriously, how frickin’ amazing is that thing?

Since the transfer I used is written in French, I decided my dress form needed a french name.  So thus, Collette it is.

If you happen to have one of these dress forms lying around you should be running out to get your own Catalogue transfer right now.  Just google ‘Prima Marketing Catalogue transfer’ and you’ll find multiple options for purchasing one on line.

As for that dresser, I’ll be sharing that on Wednesday so be sure to stay tuned!

Linking up with the Vintage Charm Party at My Thrift Store Addiction.

crafting a.d.d.

Published on by Quandie21 Comments

I think it’s possible that I have crafting attention deficit disorder (a.d.d.).

On a rainy day during my staycation last week I decided to organize the q branch, and most especially my giant English cupboard.

It hasn’t looked that neat and tidy since I first brought it into the room.

I started going through my supplies and deciding what to keep and what to throw.  I came across a couple of scraps of vintage wallpaper from past projects and decided to toss them.  I was trying to be merciless about getting rid of stuff I’ll never use.

But then I also noticed a couple of my scrapbooking punches that needed to be put away.

And I had a thought.

Why not create a little vintage wallpaper flag banner for my pretty green birdcage?

That would be so much more fun than continuing to organize my cupboard!

So I punched some flag shapes out of the wallpaper scraps …

Then I punched some holes in them and strung them up on some pink and white butcher’s string.

Easy peasy.

I started out with a banner that had two sizes and shapes of flags …

But after studying it for a bit, I realized I didn’t like the larger flags so I swapped them out for all small.

Ahhhh … much better.

I never really did finish organizing that cupboard.  That’s just how it goes when you are afflicted with crafting a.d.d.  Anybody else out there with this condition?

the old switcheroo.

Published on by Quandie33 Comments

In the past I have always gone to the ECCO neighborhood sale the first weekend in June.  I’m not going to lie, I mainly go for the tacos.  There is a family in that neighborhood that makes authentic tacos and sells them out of their garage during the sale.  But early this past Saturday when I printed out their map just before heading out I discovered that ECCO had only 21 houses participating this year.  I’m not sure what happened with that, but when you’re used to sales with 80+ participants, 21 is a small number.

So I did a little googling and discovered that the Kenny/Armitage neighborhood had moved its sale from Memorial Day weekend to this past weekend instead.  I always wondered why they chose a holiday weekend in the past.  It can’t have been good timing for many.  It was obvious that more households were participating as a result.  There were 74 homes on their list.

So I pulled a last minute switcheroo.  Instead of ECCO, my sister and I headed to Kenny/Armitage.

The weather forecast was fairly dire.  The chance of rain starting by 9 a.m. was 80%, 100% chance of rain by noon.  So we went prepared with hats and rain jackets, but we actually stayed fairly dry until about 11 a.m.  We had a few things in the car by then but we were hardly full up.  Still we thought about packing it in at that point.  But then we saw just one more sign, and then just one more, and, well, you get the picture.  A little rain never hurt anyone, although it does make life difficult for those having a ‘yard sale’ rather than a ‘garage sale’.  Besides, I feel really sympathetic for those people who have gone to all the work of having a sale only to have it rain on their parade.

Some of our best bargains of the day were found after the rain started.  One plus to a rainy garage sale day is that it keeps the crowds down.  There were very few shoppers out and about in Kenny/Armitage.

Our very first purchases in the morning were hostas.

Probably not terribly exciting for you guys to see, but these were probably one of the best bargains of the day.  The small ones were $1 and the larger ones were $2.  The guy selling them had a gorgeously landscaped garden full of a variety of hostas.  He was just dividing off some of them to control their size.  I bought three, but my sister bought six!  These weren’t your run of the mill boring hostas either.  One of mine is a Sunpower, and my sister got a couple Guacamole’s.  I’m a big fan of ‘garage sale gardening‘, why pay $20 for a hosta when you can get it for $2?

It was a sort of garden-y themed day.  I also found this fab garden pedestal for $15 …

By the way, that is my own Guacamole hosta there on the right, and June on the left.

Another garden item I purchased was this clay pot brush.

I never knew they made such a thing, but it has a really stiff bristle that is designed to brush the dried dirt out of your clay pots.  How fab!  It was just $2.

I also purchased this vintage enamelware pitcher for $2.  You don’t normally see them with a flower design on them.

I thought this one would make a great vase for my peonies, which are just starting to open.

However, as is sometimes the case with vintage pieces like this, this one was not watertight.  So I thought I’d share my trick for dealing with that.  Just use a jar that fits inside to hold the water and the flowers.

I’ve learned the hard way to always test vintage containers for their water tightness before I fill them with flowers and place them on my table!

The last garden-ish find of the day was a box full of glass cloches.

OK, a couple of them look more like cake stand domes rather than cloches, but potato-potahto.

I love using these to bring more interest to a vignette.  Everything seems slightly more important when it’s under a glass cloche.

Even just a simple photograph.

You may have noticed that I used the largest one while staging the Bunker Hill Blue buffet that I shared on Monday.

A couple of you left comments about my luck in finding a mannequin at the Roseville sales last week, but you’ll never guess what.  I found a genuine dress form this time!

She’s wearing a rather unattractive and slightly holey grey jersey right now, but once I get that off you won’t even recognize her.  I’m saving that transformation for another post.

The guy I bought her from said he found her in the attic of his house.  Every time he went up to the attic to look for something he was freaked out by seeing a headless woman out of the corner of his eye, so he had to get rid of her.

As for the desk, it was such a good bargain that I couldn’t possibly not buy it.

It’s going to need just a little help from my handyman Ken in the form of some glue and clamps.  But aren’t those knobs kind of fantastic?

I’ve reserved ‘find of the day’ status for this amazing vintage portable typewriter.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

It’s quite small and even fits on the Colliers’ Atlas that I purchased last week.

The gal who sold it to me said that her grandmother used to type all of her letters on this typewriter!

All in all, my sister and I had a great time at the Kenny/Armitage sales despite the rain, although we did miss those tacos!

 

the bunker hill blue buffet.

Published on by Quandie26 Comments

One very blustery sub-zero day last January my neighbor nnK called me to let me know about a buffet that was listed as ‘free’ on Craigslist.  Normally I shy away from the free stuff for a few reasons.  First, they are often in rough shape and need too many repairs.  Second, I usually can’t get there fast enough to be the first in line.  Third, the people giving away stuff for free are usually not terribly accommodating … and why should they be?  After all, they are giving it away for free (I’m pretty sure my mother told me never to do that).

This time only two out of three were true.  The buffet was in pretty rough shape, and the people weren’t very accommodating.  They weren’t willing to help with the loading at all.  However, it was located right on my way home from work and I was leaving work in about 20 minutes, plus Mr. Q was available to meet me there so that we could carry it out of the person’s walkout basement, through someone’s icy backyard and to our van.  Perhaps the frigidly cold day worked in our favor because we were the first people who called and said we could pick it up right away.

And here is the piece we brought home that day.

I know some people might like this look but I find it quite hideous.  There is something about that mix of dark and light finishes that just does not appeal to me.  I knew I could make it pretty though.  But first I had to store it in my carriage house until it warmed up enough for my handyman/neighbor Ken to fix it up.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when it finally warmed up around here.  Ken came over and did some repairs to the drawers.  He and I then worked together and glued some of the feet back together.  Next I stripped the top of the piece using Citristrip.  And then after cleaning the piece with some TSP substitute, I finally got to the painting.

I painted the outside lower body of the buffet in Dixie Belle’s Bunker Hill Blue.  This is an interesting paint color.  It looks very bright in the jar, and it also looks quite bright going on.  So much so that you might be a little worried about your choice at first.

But it does dry quite a bit darker.  To tone it down just one step further, I used Dixie Belle’s black glaze over the paint (paint and glaze were provided by Dixie Belle).

The glaze was super easy to use.  I brushed it on with an inexpensive chip brush and then wiped it back with a clean cloth.

But I have to say, the look of the color really depends on the lighting.  When the light hits this color just right it looks much more like a cobalt blue than a navy as you can see in this next photo.

As you may have noticed, I changed out the knobs.  One of the originals was damaged beyond repair, plus they were kind of ugly.

I found these simple knobs at Hobby Lobby.  They were large and heavy enough so that they didn’t get lost on this big ornate piece, but I think their simple look allows the rest of the buffet to take center stage.

The insides of this piece were definitely in need of a little TLC too, so I painted them with Fusion mineral paint in Coral.

I kind of love that unexpected pop of color when you open a drawer or one of the cupboard doors on the side, don’t you?

I finished the top of this piece with Fusion’s furniture wax in Espresso.  Although I absolutely love how creamy and easy to apply the Fusion wax is, I think I may go back over it again with Miss Mustard Seed’s Antiquing Wax which is a bit darker in color.

This buffet is definitely not short on detail, but I think my favorite are those little finials that hang down from the trim below the side doors.  Aren’t they sweet!

I think this buffet has an entirely new look with its vibrant Bunker Hill Blue paint job.   I hope I’ve encouraged some of you to give this color a try.  Don’t be afraid if you think it looks a bit too vibrant in the jar, and remember you can always tone it down a bit with the black glaze or with some dark wax.

If you are local and in need of a beautiful blue buffet, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details!

ladies who lunch.

Published on by Quandie27 Comments

When I was a bit younger if you’d asked me if I wanted to be one of those ‘ladies who lunch’ I would have answered with an emphatic ‘yes’!

Who wouldn’t want to be free as a bird every day, with the disposable income required to meet your gal pals at fancy restaurants for lunch.  I could totally see my future as a lady of leisure.

But in reality I’ve pretty much had a full time job since I left school.  That was … um … egads … 37 years ago.  However, every once in a while I take a staycation and try to pretend for a week that I live that way all the time.  You know, I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that I’ve been off work all of this week!

But I should have known that I’m not really cut out to be a lady who lunches.  I’m much more of a lady who skips lunch to go to garage sales!

So yesterday my friend Meggan (a.k.a. the thrift doctor) and I headed out to the Roseville city-wide garage sales for the day.  It was a total luxury for me to be able to go to a neighborhood sale that started on a Thursday!  This was the second time Meggan and I have done this sale, we did it two years ago too.

Once again we had a great time and we managed to fill up Meggan’s SUV, and in fact Mr. Q and I had to go back later with our van to pick up this pair of twin beds that I found.

Aren’t they going to be amazing with a coat of paint or two?

I also brought home a mid-century piece.

Technically I think it’s a table and it has these clever little pop out leaves that make it bigger, but I think this would work beautifully as a desk.  The blonde ‘wood’ is all Formica, and the legs are metal.  I’m debating painting the legs … maybe?  Or maybe just cleaning them up.  Either way I’ll definitely clean the piece up a bit, stage it as a desk and then see if I can flip it on Craigslist.

I also ended up with a bit more mid-century glassware.

The crazy thing is that I first purchased the set of tall glasses with a matching ice bowl at one sale, and then found the matching shorter glasses at another!

Seriously, what are the chances?  Cocktails anyone?

I mainly purchased this gorgeous Atlas for the color.  It’s the most lovely shade of green.

But it also has some gorgeous blue and green colored maps inside that would be awesome framed.

I also found this set of books that will be perfect for staging photos, or for filling up a bookshelf.

Obviously I couldn’t resist this little doll sized dresser.  It’s the perfect shade of aqua blue, and you know I’m obsessed with miniature furniture.  Since it was only $5, it had to come home with me.

As for this toy truck, the fact that it was the perfect shade of “Millennial Pink” sold me on it.  It’s missing its cab, but hey, it’s a Ford.  I can see it filled with succulents, or maybe with some pink vintage ornaments at Christmas.

I brought home a few other odds and ends as well like this sweet little copper watering can and a perfectly lovely little Oxalis plant that was only $2.50.

I also found my Lula’s sister …

She may not look like much yet, but I’ll work her over and add some vintage details.  After all, the original Lula started out in similar shape to this and now look at her.

I found a few more bits and pieces that I didn’t have time to photograph, so all in all it was another successful neighborhood garage sale.

All things considered, I think I’ll stick with not being a lady who lunches.  It’s so much more fun this way!

 

 

 

 

 

peony season.

Published on by Quandie29 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for a couple of years or so, you probably already know that peonies are one of my favorite flowers.  They have just two downsides; first, their blooming season is way too short (I wish they would last all summer) and second, ants love them.

I have quite a few old fashioned pink double peonies.  When we purchased our house about 30 years ago there were two of these plants in the existing garden.  Since then I’ve divided them many times, shared them with friends, and moved some back to the cutting garden behind the carriage house.

They are very reliable bloomers and really don’t require much care back there.  I find that the old fashioned varieties of most plants are usually less temperamental than the newer hybrids.  I like to have these out of sight in the cutting garden because then I don’t feel guilty about cutting them all off and bringing them in the house (shaking off the ants first).

I’ve also added a few other varieties to the garden over the years.  The white are definitely the most fragrant.

But my absolutely favorite peony is this gorgeous bright pink variety that I planted about 4 years ago.  I think this is going to be the first year that I get a really good quantity of blooms on the plant.

The color of these peonies just glows from the garden in the evening.  They are so vibrant!

And I think that is exactly what drew me to Dixie Belle’s paint color called Peony.

I wonder if whoever created and named this color also has these peonies growing in their garden.

By the way, I’m faking you out a little with all of the peony photos.  They are from previous years because this year’s peonies aren’t blooming quite yet.  Although they will be soon with this ridiculous heat we’ve been having!  But even though my peonies aren’t quite here, this gorgeous paint color is!  Dixie Belle was kind enough to provide me with some of this paint for a dresser makeover I have planned.  But whenever I try a brand new paint color that I haven’t used before, I like to test it out on a smaller piece before I put it on a large piece of furniture.

So I pulled out one of the chairs that I purchased at the Tangletown sales.

It’s another bottomless chair that is destined to become a planter chair.

So why not go with a vibrant pink!

Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, first I went with Rachel Ashwell chalk paint in a pale blue which was very pretty, but then I opted to try sealing it with Miss Mustard Seed’s Tough Coat Sealer and the original stain on the chair bled through the paint.

This brings me to a good q tip.  If you aren’t familiar with this phenomenon, sometimes even though a pre-existing stain didn’t initially bleed through your paint, once you add a water based sealer over it, the sealer will draw the bleeding stain through the paint.  This can be a huge bummer when you’ve painted your piece and it looks amazing and you’re at the final step of sealing it and bam!  Bleedy stains all over the place.  I don’t really have a great tip for preventing this (unless you want to pre-seal every piece just in case, but that seems extreme to me), but if this happens to you there are a couple of options for dealing with it.  1)  seal the piece with a stain blocking sealer (like Dixie Belle’s BOSS for example), re-paint and then add your water based sealing top coat.  2)  continue on with the water based sealer and once dry paint again, and then add a wax topcoat.  Waxes will not pull the stain through like a water based top coat will.

Or, you can do what I did.  Go with an entirely different color and then seal it with wax.

Speaking of wax, you know how chairs are so much easier to paint if you spray them?  Well, when I went to wax this chair I remembered that a while back Dixie Belle had sent me some of their Easy Peasy spray wax.

It occurred to me that … duh … this stuff would be perfect for chairs!  And it was.

Simply spray it on, wait 10 to 15 seconds and then wipe away any excess.  It truly is Easy Peasy.

So I’ve tested the Peony and I love it, but you probably won’t see that dresser for a couple of weeks.  In the meantime I’ll have a lovely buffet and a couple of other fun projects to share with you first.  So be sure to stay tuned!

patina.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

For those of you in the U.S., I hope you are enjoying the long Memorial Day weekend.  I don’t exactly know what happened here in Minnesota.  It feels like we went right from winter to summer without stopping at spring in between.  Our temperature is supposed to hit 97 today, while a mere six weeks ago we had blizzard conditions.  Seriously, what is up with that?

So, I’m curious, how many of you have come across this photo on pinterest?

Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe I’m the only one who is utterly obsessed with that gorgeous color and that amazing authentic looking chippy patina.

I pinned that photo way back in the day when pinterest was new and you had to be invited to join, does anyone else remember that?

It took a bit of digging to find the origin of the photo.  I started by following it back to whomever pinned it, but that just led back to someone’s tumblr account.  Next I checked out the watermark, aprilpizana.com and found the photographer who took the photo.  I kept digging and finally found the answer.  April Pizana was hired to take photos at Rachel Ashwell’s b&b in Texas and that’s where this photo was taken.

So it’s a Rachel Ashwell piece.  Of course it is.  It has Rachel written all over it, doesn’t it?  The color, the gorgeous floral wallpaper, the fresh flowers.  The whole shabby chic-ness of it all.

But sadly, my research did not lead where I hoped it would.  To a blog where someone listed precisely what brand and color of paint is on that dresser.  In fact, I suspect it’s an original 60+ year old paint job.  So I gave up on finding this precise color.

But then I saw the Sweet Pickins color called Patina.

It’s pretty close to the same color, right?  A bit brighter, and with a bit more blue perhaps.  So I ordered some to use on an antique Eastlake style dresser that I’ve been hanging onto for a while.  However, once the paint arrived I simply could not wait to paint something in it, and the Eastlake still needs some repair work, so I pulled out this dresser instead.

This one also needed a few repairs, but my handyman/neighbor Ken had already done them.  The main problem with this dresser was the broken top.

Ken did a great job re-attaching that broken piece using dowel pins and glue and it’s firmly in place now, but the crack is still pretty obvious even though I filled it with Dixie Belle mud before I painted.  The entire top of the dresser is warped and Ken struggled with getting it to lay flat again.

Ironically the crack is not very visible in any of the photos I took, but trust me, it is much more noticeable in person.

But I’m hoping that someone else out there will appreciate this piece despite its flaws, even embrace them because they add character to the piece.

I ended up having to put three coats of the Patina on this dresser to get good coverage, but it did start out pretty dark.

I really expected it to have better coverage than that, but I could still see streaks of the original dark color after two coats.  So three coats it was.

I sanded to distress and then used Miss Mustard Seed clear wax as the topcoat.

When I purchased this dresser I thought those knobs on it were just simple wooden knobs that I could paint.  But when I went to remove them I realized they were metal.  Very plain, boring, solid metal knobs.  Obviously not original to the dresser.  In fact, if you go back to the ‘before’ photo and study them, the scale is just a bit too small.  Luckily I have a rather large stash of wooden knobs that I’ve taken off other pieces and I happened to have 10 of them that were a better fit for this dresser.

I painted them up and I love how they look!

I didn’t do anything fancy with this piece.  I felt like it had a simple vintage farmhouse vibe and I wanted to retain that feel.  The color itself has enough impact, wouldn’t you say?

The next time I use this color I might try to mix in just a bit of a more pale, minty color to get just a little bit closer to my Rachel Ashwell inspiration piece.  We’ll see how it goes.

But for now I have to say I am loving the Patina on this dresser!

quickie garage sale makeovers.

Published on by Quandie18 Comments

I was hoping to have a fabulous vintage painted dresser to share with you guys today.  And actually, the dresser itself is done.  However, I haven’t had the chance to take photos of it yet.  I could have raced through some not very well staged photos in the driveway, but this particular dresser deserves better.  I kind of love how it turned out and I want to do it justice, so you’ll have to wait until next week for that.

Instead I’m going to share a few quickie garage sale makeovers today that I’ve finished in the the last couple of weeks.

I purchased this trio of goodies at the Tangletown sales back at the beginning of May.

The vintage chalkboard was the easiest makeover.  The chalkboard portion itself was in pretty rough shape from what I can only imagine were years of abuse.

So I sanded that down with my orbital sander and repainted it with Rustoleum chalkboard paint.

You might be wondering why I didn’t use milk paint for this chalkboard and the simple reason is that I wasn’t sure it would stick to this surface.  I’m not even really sure what the surface of this chalkboard is.  The label calls it a ‘slated blackboard’, but it didn’t feel heavy enough to actually be slate.  What is a ‘slated’ chalkboard anyway?  Do any of you know?

The Rustoleum chalkboard paint worked well on this surface, regardless of what it is.

Aside from cleaning it a little, I left the frame of the chalkboard ‘as is’.  I love how worn and well used it looks.

Once the chalkboard paint was fully dry, I seasoned the chalkboard by rubbing chalk all over it and then wiping it away with a dry cloth.  Next I used one of my favorite stencils to outline some lettering and then filled it in with chalk.  I added some butcher’s string to hang it, and that was it.

While I had the chalkboard paint out, I also added some to the kid-size folding chair.

Here it is before.

In addition to turning the seat into a chalkboard, I also added some Tim Holtz number rub-ons to the chair back.

Then I used one of my favorite methods for adding a chalk drawing.  Check out my ‘how-to’ post on that by clicking the photo below:

You may recall the chair in that post hanging on the wall in my kitchen …

I just love it, so when I saw the nearly identical little chair at the Tangletown sales I knew I had to buy it and make another.

Last up is the random piece of paneling that I purchased for a dollar.  I really don’t know what this came from, but I thought it would make a great sign.

I started off giving it a paint job.

I was playing around a bit with using water and chalk paint and blending two colors into each other.

I used Dixie Belle’s Stormy Seas and Savannah Mist which work beautifully together.  I don’t think I’m ready to attempt this technique on a piece of furniture yet, but it was fun to practice with it on this paneling.

Once I had achieved a look I liked with the paint I let it dry and then added a Prima Marketing transfer.  You can find this particular transfer on Amazon.com for $10 right now.

Part of the reason I purchased this piece of paneling in the first place was because I already had this transfer and I thought it might just fit perfectly … and it did.

In fact the design of the transfer mimics the raised detail on the paneling almost exactly.

I could not have planned this better if I’d tried.

Now I just have to head to my local hardware store and figure out some way to add hangers to this piece.  It’s pretty thin so my normal options won’t work.  It’s also pretty light, so I don’t need something heavy duty.  I’m thinking some sort of adhesive hanger will do the trick.

Be sure to check back next week when I promise I really will share that dresser, and as a bonus I might also have a gorgeous sideboard that I’ve been working on finished too!