Author: Quandie

First things first, the winner from last Monday’s drawing was Paulette.  Congrats to Paulette, and thank you so much to everyone else for all of your wonderful comments!

For today’s post I’ve done something I don’t do very often, I’ve painted a matching set.  If you’ve followed me for a while you might know that I’m not a fan of matchy-matchy furniture.  I prefer a more ‘collected over time’ look.  But, in this case I decided to paint both of these two pieces in the same color, just in case some future buyer wants to keep them together.

These pieces were originally part of a 3 piece set that I purchased a while back.  I’ve already painted and sold the matching washstand.

The bed is the one that didn’t fit in our van and I had to go back for it with nnK’s dad’s truck.

It’s a little hard to judge the scale of this piece by that photo, but that headboard is 73″ tall!

The foot board needed a little work after I got it home.  It had been inexpertly repaired in the past and had some drippy glue spots and some oddly placed nails.  My handyman/neighbor Ken loves these projects, he treats them like puzzles.  He takes the entire piece apart and then puts it back together again with fresh glue.  He’s a firm believer that glue (when used properly) holds better than nails any day.

Once those repairs were complete, I sanded the piece lightly and then painted it with two coats of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.  Dixie Belle has two shades of black, Caviar and Midnight Sky.  I’ve used quite a bit of the Caviar, and I do love it.  It’s a deeper black than the Midnight Sky.  I used the Midnight Sky on my piano and was drawn to its slightly more subtle shade, so I decided to go with that on this set. Although honestly, you can’t go wrong with either color.

Once the paint was dry, I sanded the bed to distress and then added a top coat of Dixie Belle’s Best Dang black wax using one of Prima Marketing’s new wax/stencil brushes.

Let me tell you, that was a workout, talk about functional fitness!  That headboard is huge!

By the way, this is a full size (or double) bed.  However, it could be easily modified to fit a queen bed using an adapter (like this one from Rockler).

This bed would be an amazing statement piece.  I’d definitely keep it if we didn’t live in a 1 1/2 story house.  In case you didn’t know, the ‘1/2’ means that we have slanted walls in our upstairs rooms, which is why we had to cut down the headboard we used in our bedroom (and that is a full size headboard paired with a queen size mattress in our room) …

OK, enough about the bed, well, OK, here’s one more photo …

Let’s move on to the dresser.

That is not a truly legit ‘before’ photo of the dresser.  It actually came with a huge framed mirror attached that matches the headboard.  However, I find that dressers sell better without their mirrors, and mirrors turned into chalkboards sell really well too.  So I’ll be turning that mirror frame into a chalkboard down the road.  In the meantime, Ken had to do a few repairs on the top of the dresser where it was missing a couple of chunks of wood at the back.  The damage was hidden by the mirror, so once I removed it we had to do something to fix it.  I suspect that the weight of that mirror had done the damage.  Ken also added a new trim piece at the back to make up for the missing mirror.

Unfortunately, those fixes meant I had to paint the top.  Otherwise I definitely would have stripped and waxed it and just painted the body of the dresser.

I followed the same process to paint and wax the dresser that I did on the bed.

Then I cleaned up the original hardware and put it back on.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I did not find too much at the Kenny/Armitage neighborhood garage sale last weekend.  Just a couple of gems, including a set of old bugles.

Wouldn’t these be great for Christmas decorating?  Either added to a wreath or tucked into your tree?  I’ll probably hang on to these until the Christmas season and then take them to Reclaiming Beautiful to sell.

But in the meantime, I used one of them to stage my photos of this dresser.

The warm aged brass of the bugle worked perfectly with the dresser’s hardware.

I almost forgot!  These pieces came with the most fabulous original metal casters.

Even the bed has them, but I totally forgot to put them on before staging my photos.  Here are the casters for the bed, they are huge …

So, there you have it, a matchy-matchy set.

Thanks to Dixie Belle Paint Co for sponsoring this post with free product, and thank you to Prima Marketing for sharing their new wax/stencil brush with me.

If you are local and ready for a change in your master bedroom (I’m just talking new furniture here people), be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details on these pieces.

Remember this dresser that I painted last fall?

It simply wasn’t selling.

I’m not sure if it was the color, or the floral transfer, or the mirror, or simply a combination of all three.  But after six months of watching it gather dust in my dining room I was ready to give it a makeover.

I mentioned it in front of my niece one day and she said ‘nooooo … I love that one.’  Then she asked if I’d be willing to trade her for the dresser that I painted for her a couple of years ago instead.

I thought about it for about a second and then said ‘sure, why not?’  As much as my niece loved the Miss Mustard Seed’s Luckett’s Green paired with purple flowers, I didn’t think that combo would be a big seller in my market at large.  But I was going to be repainting a piece either way, so why not repaint this one?

So we traded.

The teal blue dresser went to my niece’s house, and the green one came home with me.  To prep this piece for a fresh paint job I sanded it fairly heavily to make sure I’d get good adhesion.  Then I cleaned it and painted it with two coats of Fusion’s Park Bench.

I’ve had great success selling mid-mod pieces painted in this color.  Although this dresser isn’t classically mid-century modern, I knew I could pump up the modern quotient a bit with new hardware.

These knobs are all from Hobby Lobby.  I’ve used them before on pieces painted in this gorgeous shade of green, so I knew they’d be perfect on this one too.

I staged this piece super simply with some postcards that I bought in Montenegro when we were there last November, my green Collier’s World Atlas and some vibrant impatiens.

Now don’t tell my niece, but I think I just may have gotten the better end of the bargain in this trade.

What do you think?

So, here’s the deal.  As I’ve mentioned many times, my blog is not monetized.  I prefer not having any ads to bog you guys down.  To fund the blog (ie. my hobby), I sell my furniture.  My main goal is to not lose money, and my secondary goal is to have enough left over to fund our travel habit too.

But that means, I have to actually be able to sell my furniture.

That can sometimes be the tricky part.

I frequently find myself torn between painting something in a unique, artistic way, perhaps using a new technique or product that I can share here on the blog, or painting something in a way that I know will sell.

The first option is always more fun.  Who doesn’t love getting creative and trying new things, especially pretty paint colors?

Or trying a new technique with a transfer?

I also think sharing a new color or technique here makes my blog more interesting and gives you guys a reason to keep following me.

The problem is that these pieces tend to take much longer to sell for me.  I’m in the mid-west.  In general people here tend to be a bit on the conservative side when it comes to decorating.  They don’t embrace loud florals, bright colors or lots of frou frou details.

Note that I specified ‘in general’.  I’m not saying that nobody here likes those things, just that the market for those things is smaller and thus they take longer to sell.  Maybe that’s true everywhere, I don’t know.  If you’re in another part of the country, or even the world, you tell me.  What sells in your market?

I have to admit, I was relieved when my latest milk painted washstand sold right away because no matter how much I loved it, I was worried the color was going to make it a tough sell.

Of course there are always exceptions to every rule.  The mid-mod pieces I’ve painted in Fusion’s Park Bench have all sold like hotcakes too.

However, typically it’s the pieces in neutral colors that sell quickly for me.  In other words, white …

Or black.

Both of which tend to sell almost instantly.

I also have pretty good luck with dark grey …

And navy …

So I’m always trying to finding some balance between getting a little more daring with my color choices or new techniques and falling back on tried and true styles and colors.

I had a real dry spell over the past six months when it comes to selling furniture.  Things are starting to pick up, but are still somewhat slow.  As a result, I’m feeling the need to go back to my time tested neutrals.  Hence the Laundry Co dresser painted in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth from a week or two ago.

Later this week I’ll be sharing another piece painted in the Park Bench green, and then the following week I’ve got some more Dixie Belle Midnight Sky black pieces.  I hope I won’t be boring you guys with repeats and neutrals, but I’m feeling the need to stick with what sells for a bit.  Here’s hoping you’ll stay tuned!

Recently my bff, Vonda, and her husband downsized.  They moved out of their huge four bedroom home into a two-bedroom place.  As a result, they had to downsize their belongings as well.  I’d always admired this vintage dresser, so when Vonda offered it to me I jumped on it.

I have to say, that is a terrible ‘before’ photo.  I don’t always follow my own outside photo taking rules when doing a ‘before’ photo, and this one is particularly bad.  You can barely tell that the dresser was green.  Well, mostly green with some drips of white here and there.  I thought the floral decals were pretty sweet though.  Funny enough, it wasn’t until I sanded them down a little that I realized the decals were covering up key holes as well as extra holes where there were once drawer pulls with two screws instead of knobs.  Now that I know that, when I look at the ‘before’ photo I think ‘duh, of course they were.’  Just look back at that photo, see what I mean?

Anyway, when I brought this piece home the top of the dresser had split at a seam and a couple of the drawers had seen better days.  My handyman Ken made quick work of repairing those problems.  He removed the top, glued it back together and then re-attached it with dowel pins which makes the entire piece much sturdier.

He also re-glued both of the bottom drawers.

Once that was done, I sanded the piece well and then painted it with two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, which is a warm, creamy white.  When the paint was dry, I sanded the edges to distress.  I wanted to allow some of that pale green to show through, as well as some of the light blue that was under the green.

There’s nothing like layers of color to lend a sense of age to a piece.  In this case, the layers … and the age … are genuine.

Next I added a coat of Dixie Belle’s flat clear coat.  Once that was dry, I added Prima Marketing’s Laundry transfer.

Once that was in place I felt like the bottom half of the dresser looked really plain, so I pulled out a leftover bit from the Seeds transfer and added that to the bottom drawer.

Over time this dresser had gotten a little beat up, been a bit neglected and thus had lost some of its original charm, but I think I brought it back (what do you say bff?).

It would be a great piece for a laundry room (if you are blessed enough to have a size-able laundry room that is pretty, mine is a dingy corner in my cellar-like basement).

But it could just as easily work in a bedroom.

Or really anywhere!

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Prima Marketing Laundry transfer check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth or flat clear coat, you can shop with them directly online or find a retailer near you.

And finally, if you happen to be local (Twin Cities, MN) and in need of an adorable cottage style dresser, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.