Category: furniture.

Oh my gosh, I can hardly believe that it is September already.  Where did the summer go?  It started out with my two week trip in May.  Then there was moving my sister into her new house in June.  I spent a lot of time working on my master bedroom makeover in July and August.

In between all of that, I worked on this dresser and the summer just flew by.

But first, here is the ‘before’ photo.

This piece is large and heavy and I didn’t have the manpower to move it out of the workshop for a ‘before’ photo, so you’ll just have to excuse that.  I’d also already re-glued and patched some of the chipping veneer on the drawer fronts.  Ken had also already worked some magic on this dresser by re-attaching all four of the feet.  Two had come off when we loaded it in the truck, and the other two were pretty wiggly.  Ken added dowel pins and fresh glue and now those gorgeous feet will fully support the weight of the dresser.

If the style of this piece feels familiar to you, that’s because I’ve already painted its companions.  This small table …

and this small vanity …

As you can see, I got a lot of chipping on both of these pieces.  In fact, I even ended up re-doing the small vanity.  I had tried using General Finishes Flat Out Flat as a top coat over the milk paint and I discovered that rather than ‘sealing’ the chipping paint, it brought up more chipping.  I did that right before I left on my trip, and the photo above was taken then.  When I got back home I found that the finish had chipped even further while I was gone.  Basically I’d say about 80% of the paint had completely chipped off.  Unfortunately I didn’t think to take a photo of it at that point.  To salvage the piece I simply sanded off the chipping paint and then re-painted with the same Homestead House Stone Fence milk paint.  This time I added Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax as a topcoat.  Here is how it finally looked.

The good thing about discovering the propensity towards chipping on these two smaller pieces was that I was forewarned before starting on the large dresser.  I wanted some chipping, but I didn’t want to lose 80% of my paint.  So I prepped the piece really well by sanding it with 120 grit paper and then cleaning it thoroughly with TSP substitute.  That definitely did the trick because I ended up with just a very small amount of chipping on this one.

I painted it with Homestead House milk paint in a color called Bedford.  This is a lovely greige that is just a tad darker and a tad warmer than the Stone Fence.

I used another Iron Orchid Designs transfer on the front of the dresser.

If you look closely at the transfer you can see why I decided to call this madame’s dresser.  I thought about going with the full ‘dresser de madame la marquise de Cremy’, but that’s really a mouthful!

Once again I used the Real Milk Paint Co’s Dead Flat Finishing Cream on this piece.

I am really loving this stuff for pieces that I want to sell.  It’s nice being able to tell the buyer that the finish is washable.  And in fact, I was able to put that to the test on this piece.  When Mr. Q helped me move it into place for the photos he left a dirty hand print on top of the dresser.  It came right off with a damp cloth.

When looking at the ‘before’ photo you might have noticed that some of the trim at the bottom of this dresser was missing.  Some people have fancy ways of molding replacement trim out of bondo or some such thing.  I prefer to just fake it with paint.

I painted the trim with Homestead House Limestone milk paint and I just painted the areas of missing trim as though it was still there.

My staging of this piece hid the pretty trim at the back of the dresser top, so I took a quick photo after clearing it off.  I didn’t have to fake anything with that bit of trim.  It’s all there and isn’t it gorgeous?

The two little upper side drawers each have fun little coin/jewelry holders inside.  There was a velvet liner at either side of them that was pretty grungy though.  I thought I’d be able to remove the coin holders, replace the velvet and then put them back in.  I also discovered that one can’t get to the screws that hold the pulls in place because the coin holders block them.  Much to my surprise the coin holders were not removable.  At least not without leaving major damage behind.  I had Ken take a look and he thinks they are both nailed and glued into place.

So, I improvised.  I painted the drawer fronts with the pulls in place and I added fresh toile fabric over the velvet.  I used a little 3M spray adhesive to keep the fabric in place.

I had fun staging this dresser using old books, some hydrangeas from my garden, some pale roses from the grocery store and some ironstone.

We had a gorgeous sunny morning here yesterday so it was perfect for taking photos outside.

I may have gotten a little carried away with the quantity of photos, but I couldn’t help myself.  There is just something about these beautiful summer mornings in September.  They start to feel so fleeting this time of year.

 This is such a lovely piece of furniture, I’m sure it won’t last long.

This piece would work beautifully as a sideboard in the dining room or for storing clothing in your bedroom.  Be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details if you are local and in need of a gorgeous new dresser or sideboard!

You all know my opinion on matched bedroom sets, or as they called them back in the day, a bedroom suite.  I’m not a fan.  To be more specific, I’m not a fan of keeping them together and using them in one room.  On the other hand, I’m a big fan of buying them and separating the pieces.  It can be a tremendous value.

Even though I’ve already shared the ‘afters’ of most of the pieces in this set, I thought it would be fun to put them all together in one post so you can see just how far it went.

Funny enough, when I first looked at the ad for this set I was specifically trying to decide whether or not I liked the bed well enough for my own room.  I debated back and forth with myself on it for a while before I had one of those smack your forehead, duh, sort of moments when I realized that this set was a heck of a deal regardless of whether or not I was going to keep the headboard.  If I ended up deciding I didn’t like the headboard, I could still sell it along with everything else.

As it turned out, I loved the headboard and it is perfect in my master bedroom.  I altered it to fit my queen sized bed (read that post here).

I also love how the little nightstand/washstand turned out.  If I didn’t already have a similar piece that came from my grandparents, I would have been tempted to keep this piece myself.

I separated the mirror from the dresser, painted the dresser and added an IOD transfer.

Since I couldn’t use the foot board after converting the headboard to fit a queen sized bed, I decided to ask Ken to use one of the side rails to add a shelf to it.  I’d done this once before with a headboard and it was a great success.  This one turned out pretty awesome as well.

I made a Farmers’ Market sign out of the remaining side rail.  I currently have this hanging in my dining room, but it’s also listed on my ‘available for sale’ page because I don’t think it’s perfect for this spot.  I’ll continue to keep an eye out for just the right thing for my dining room wall.

 Finally, I turned the mirror frame into a chalkboard.

I didn’t share that makeover here on the blog since I’ve done several of these in the past and blogged about them here and here.  Usually I have Ken add a shelf to these, but this one didn’t have a good spot for the shelf because it has that raised panel at the bottom.

Here’s a close up so you can see the chippy, layered finish I achieved with milk paint.

That is a base layer of Homestead House Upper Canada Green milk paint with HH Limestone over it.  I used my secret weapon for perfect chipping, adding some HH Salad Bowl Finish (or Miss Mustard Seed Beeswax Finish, same stuff) between the layers of paint.

I finished with a top coat of Low Sheen Finishing Cream from the Real Milk Paint Co.

Currently this piece is hanging in my living room, but I don’t think this will be its permanent home either.

So, if you’re keeping track, I took this one 3-piece bedroom set and made six individual pieces out of it.  And technically I still have the mirror itself, which has a pretty frame.  I’m debating whether to turn it into a chalkboard also, or leave it a mirror.  So really, I will have 7 pieces in the end.  Like I said, a heck of a deal!

I showed you guys the full bedroom set that I purchased just to get the headboard for my master bedroom.

If you look just in front of the tall headboard you can see that the bed came with a foot board.  It also had side rails, but they aren’t pictured.

Since I modified the full size headboard to fit my queen size bed, I couldn’t use the side rails or the foot board, so I decided to re-purpose them.  I called Ken over for a consultation and explained that I wanted him to cut down one of the side rails and attach it to the foot board as a shelf.  Oh, and cut several inches off the legs.  Ken has gotten so used to me now that he doesn’t even question my crazy ideas anymore.  He just takes the pieces away to his workshop and a few days later brings them back completed.

And then I take it from there.

Initially I was going to paint this piece white.  I pulled out the packets of milk paint that Homestead House generously provided me with last winter to see what I had in white. I had Sturbridge White, a fairly bright white, and Champlain, which is more of an off white.  I also had a packet of Miss Mustard Seed’s Ironstone, also a bright white.  I knew I didn’t want bright white, so I chose the Champlain.

One thing you should know about the lighter colors of milk paint is that they sometimes will take on color from whatever is underneath them.  It’s not necessarily the same thing as when the stain bleeds through your paint because it’s more of an overall color not so much random spots of bleed thru.  This foot board had a very orange-ish colored stain on it.  That gave my Champlain a bit of a peachy look.  Ugh.  Not what I was going for at all.  So after two coats of Champlain, I switched gears and added a final coat of Homestead House milk paint in Stone Fence.

I love this color.  It’s a pale greige.  In hindsight this would have been the perfect color for something in my own bedroom!  It reminds me quite a bit of the Edgecomb Grey I used on my walls.

Once the paint was dry I sanded to distress, vacuumed away the dust, wiped it down with a clean cloth and then added an Iron Orchid Designs transfer.  I had to cut and paste the elements of the design to fit on the foot board, but that worked out perfectly.

I sanded over the transfer just lightly with 220 grit paper to take away a little bit of the shine.

Finally I applied some Dead Flat Finishing Cream from The Real Milk Paint Co.

A while back I tried the Low Sheen Finishing Cream from The Real Milk Paint Co and I loved it.  I wanted something just a bit more flat though, so I asked if they would be willing to send me a free sample of the Dead Flat in exchange for a review on my blog.  They were game and sent some out asap along with a brush for applying it.

The first thing that I really love about this product is how easy it is to apply.  It has the consistency of a thick body cream …

To apply I just dipped the end of my brush in the cream and then brushed it onto the surface.  You don’t have to work it in like wax, you don’t have to wipe away any excess like with hemp oil.  You just brush it on without over working it.  It dried quite quickly for me and I was careful not to over brush as it started to get tacky.

What I also love about this product is that there is very little smell.  I would definitely feel comfortable using this inside my house in the winter, which is an important quality for painters in Minnesota!  Furthermore this is a non-VOC product, it’s water based so you can clean your brush with soap and water, and after 24 hours drying time the finish itself is washable.  Also, you can paint back over the Dead Flat with milk paint as soon as the finish is dry.  That is not the case with wax or hemp oil.  That could be very handy if for some reason you need a do-over.  Say for example you realize that an IOD transfer looks terrible over dark green milk paint (been there, done that) and now you want to just start over.

I’d been looking for a finish to use over milk paint that is more durable than wax or hemp oil, but still has that matte look that I love and this one fits the bill perfectly.

I used an old galvanized tub full of Annabelle hydrangeas in my photos.

I’ve had this tub for years and I usually use it to hold shopping bags for my annual occasional sale.  Since I’m not having a sale this year, I decided I should dig it out and use it for something more decorative.  I filled it with flowers from the Annabelle hydrangea that is out back in my cutting garden.  This time of year the Annabelle’s turn really green, while the Limelights are starting to get a pink tinge.

Oh, and as for the other side rail from the bed, I turned it into a Farmers’ Market sign.  I painted it with the Homestead House Sturbridge White milk paint, stenciled it with Funky Junk’s Farmer’s Market stencil, sanded it lightly and then finished with the Dead Flat.

It would be perfect hanging above a sideboard in a dining room, don’t you think?

Since I don’t have an appropriate spot for either of these pieces in my own house, they are both for sale locally.  If interested, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

I gave you a little sneak peek at this cane back bench when I posted about my current mission, making over our master bedroom.

Here’s a proper full-on ‘before’ photo …

It’s a little dirty, the finish is dried out and dinged up, and see all of that stuff hanging down under the left side?  That’s because there is a big ol’ hole in the cane seat …

I purchased this bench from my friend Lisa.  If you think I paint a lot of furniture, well, I’ve got nothing on Lisa!  She often posts photos on Facebook of pieces she’s brought home to work her magic on.  When she posted a pic of this bench I knew I had to have it.  I asked her if she’d consider selling it to me ‘as is’, even though I knew her plan was to paint it and add an upholstered seat.  Luckily she said yes!

You see, I knew I wanted a bench to place at the foot of my bed, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to be painted.  You might be surprised to learn this, but I prefer a mix of painted and unpainted pieces in a room.  I like to have some warm wood tones mixed in with all of the painted pieces.  In the Q Branch it’s my desk top that remains wood.  In the living room it’s my factory cart coffee table.  Up until now it has been the bed in my bedroom.  But now I’m thinking it will be this bench (I plan to paint my new headboard, I’ll be sharing that soon).

So, keeping all of that in mind, here’s what I did with the bench.  First I cut out the bad portions of the cane with a utility knife.  You don’t want to see those raw edges hanging down under the bench right?

I suppose I could have removed all of the cane from the seat, but why bother?  This was much quicker.

Next I asked Ken to cut a piece of hardboard to fit the seat.

Then I used some Murphy’s Oil Soap and hot water and gave the bench a really thorough cleaning.  Once the bench was dry, I decided to try freshening up the finish with some Miss Mustard Seed hemp oil.

I’ll be honest, once I’d made the decision not to paint I didn’t even consider stripping and re-finishing.  That would have been a far too putzy job with all of the detail on this bench.  Plus, I didn’t know how to work around the cane.  In addition, I really didn’t want a brand new looking finish.  I wanted the bench to look old and worn.  That’s my favorite look after all.  But I did want to clean it up some.

So, I poured a little hemp oil into my measuring cup and applied it with an inexpensive chip brush that I use exclusively for hemp oil.  I let the oil saturate the surface and then wiped away the excess with a rag.

Here’s a semi-presentable photo of how much better the wood looks with a little hemp oil.  It darkened up quite a bit, and the oil adds a bit of shine.  You can sort of see how very thirsty this wood was!

Now, had I been planning to sell this bench, I would have used a sturdier piece of plywood for the seat.  Then I would have added some foam and batting and then upholstered it by stapling some fabric over it.  Finally I would have used screws to attach the new seat.

But since I’m keeping this, I’m cheating a little.  First of all, I know we’re never going to sit on this bench.  It will be at the foot of our bed and the most weight it will need to hold is a pile of clothes fresh from the laundry.

After splurging on an authentic European grain sack that I ordered from Etsy, I stuffed it with a couple of pillow forms.  Then I placed it on the bench and realized that it made the perfect slouchy cushion as is without requiring any sewing, cutting or stapling.

It completely covers up the hardboard, so I decided to just go with it.

By the way, how amazing does that wood look now?

I knew that you could refresh wood with hemp oil like this, but I am still wondering how long it looks this good.  How fast does it dry out again?  Well, we’re going to find out.  Since I’m keeping this bench I’ll be sure to report back with some updates down the road.

Now I know that some of you might be thinking ‘dang, that bench would look so amazing painted with some nice, chippy milk paint’, and I’m not going to disagree with you on that.  It definitely would.  But for my purposes right now I think it will work better in my room in its original wood.

But I could always change my mind down the road and paint it.  Once the hemp oil is cured, I could wipe this down with some mineral spirits or some TSP substitute and go ahead and paint it.  You never know, one day I just might …

I was so surprised by the outpouring of comments on my post about the dollhouse from Friday!  My dad would be have absolutely loved hearing all of the compliments from everyone.  A huge thanks to all of you for taking the time to leave a comment, I appreciated every single one!

Now, on with today’s post.

A while back Mr. Q brought home two dressers from the daughter of one of my blog readers.  The first was the french provincial dresser that I painted a couple of weeks ago, and the second was this one.

It’s a bit more traditional than the pieces I normally choose to work with, but it’s a  solid, well-made dresser.  I love giving pieces like this a new lease on life with some paint.  This dresser is going to last another 75 years easily.  It’s not going to fall apart in 5 years like inexpensive (or sometimes not so inexpensive) new furniture made out of particle board (not that I’m naming names, such as IKEA, or anything).

Ken helped me out with reattaching a drawer glide that had come free, but otherwise it didn’t need much work.  Ironically the aspect of this job that took the longest was removing the old contact paper that was lining the drawers.

I wish I had gotten a photo to illustrate, but basically that stuff came out in a million little pieces that I painstakingly scraped off with a razor blade.  And it left behind a sticky gooey mess that required a couple of applications of Goo Gone to remove.  This is exactly why I rarely choose to line the drawers of dressers that I sell.  Because I know that inevitably down the road someone is going to have to get that stuff back out of there and it won’t be fun (and oftentimes that someone  is me!).  The only time I line drawers is when the drawer bottom is too stained to salvage.

Funny little story though, I slogged through the first 7 drawers one evening after work.  Stripping out that liner, cleaning with Goo Gone, removing the hardware, sanding the drawer front and cleaning it with TSP Substitute.  I really wanted to finish all nine drawers that evening so I could start painting right away the next evening.  But as the sun was setting, I looked at those last two drawers still in the dresser and thought “nope, I just can’t face them, I’ll have to do them tomorrow” and I went to bed.  The next evening I went to pull out the first of the remaining two drawers and guess what?  It wasn’t lined!  Neither was the last drawer.  Ha!  Had I only looked inside the previous night I would have realized that I could easily prep them before bed.  Too funny!

Anyway, the next step was painting and that part was a breeze.  I used Fusion paint in a rich, dark grey color called Ash.

I painted two coats of paint, and shortly after the 2nd coat was dry I sanded the edges lightly to distress.

Just the other day my friend Sue was commenting on the fact that a lot of the furniture painters out there don’t distress their pieces.  She and I are of the same mind when it comes to distressing.  We are not fans of non-distressed pieces.  The only time I don’t distress is when I’m working on a mid-century modern piece with really clean lines.  Otherwise, in my opinion distressing is what really brings out the character of a piece.  I know it’s a personal preference thing though, and it just happens to be my preference (and Sue’s!).

One tip, you absolutely don’t need to add a topcoat over Fusion paint, but when I distress the edges I’ll often put a little Homestead House or Miss Mustard Seed beeswax on a cloth and run that over those exposed edges.  It will help protect that little bit of bare wood, but more importantly it will take away the ‘freshly sanded’ look of the wood and make it look more as though it was worn over time.

I have to tell you, I did absolutely nothing to the drawer pulls.  I didn’t polish them or even really clean them. Yet this next photo really shows how different they look on the grey.  Isn’t that kinda crazy?

So normally this is the point where I say “this dresser is available for sale”, but no, this one isn’t!  My sister stopped by shortly after I finished it, decided she really needed to have it for her new house and asked if she could get a ‘family discount’.  Naturally I agreed.  I’m pretty thrilled because she’ll be replacing an IKEA dresser with it!  My plan is to slowly work on her over time until her whole house is de-IKEA-fied.  I’m working on convincing her to replace the console thingie that her T.V. sits on next, but shhhhh, she doesn’t realize it yet so don’t tell her.

I posted all about our plan to makeover our master bedroom on Friday.  As is the usual case, the project has grown beyond its original boundaries.  When the college kids were out giving me a quote on the bedroom floor, they suggested I do all of the upstairs floors at once.  It makes sense since they all flow together.  Then, one thing led to another and since doing the floors involves moving all the furniture around anyway, we decided to swap the guest room and Mr. Q’s study.

Mr. Q’s study was in the smaller of the two rooms and he felt pretty crowded in there.  Our guest room, on the other hand, is only used once or twice per year and the rest of the year just lies idle.

There was one small … or kinda big … obstacle to this plan.  My dollhouse.  Yep, I have a pretty amazing dollhouse.  My dad made it after he retired.  He was bored and he needed a project.  When my dad took on a project, he pulled out all of the stops.

The dollhouse is big.  And cumbersome.  And bulky.  And any other word you can think of to describe a rather large item that takes up a lot of space in a room but doesn’t really serve any purpose.  The dollhouse was doing just that in the guest room.  Swapping the rooms is going to require relocating the dollhouse, but you’ll hear more on that plan later.  Today’s post isn’t about the dollhouse (but don’t worry, that will be coming soon), or about swapping the two rooms around, it’s about the dresser that the dollhouse sat on.  This may be the nicest ‘before’ photo of a piece of furniture on my blog ever …

I have to say, this dresser was pretty much invisible underneath that dollhouse.  I’d forgotten both how big it is and how pretty it is.

I don’t even remember how long ago I painted this piece.  I know it was quite a few years ago.  It was certainly before I knew about milk paint or Fusion acrylic paint, and even before I knew about chalk paint.  It’s from way back in the dark ages when I was painting with regular old latex paint.  I painted quite a few pieces in this color from Behr called Beluga (as in the caviar which is black, not the whale itself which is white).

The dollhouse did do a little bit of damage to the top of the dresser …

It left a couple of big scratches.  But the rest of the dresser still looked great.  So I decided to just freshen up the top with a couple of coats of Fusion paint in Coal Black.

I scuff sanded the top with some fine grit sandpaper, wiped it clean with a damp cloth and then added two coats of Coal Black.  Easy peasy.

Although the blacks don’t match precisely, it’s not noticeable at all.

The details on this dresser are really pretty.

Unfortunately, with the room switch taking place, I no longer have a place for it.  So I staged it up with my faux dress form, Lula, to get some pictures to use in my Craigslist ad.

Lula is made from an old yellow Styrofoam manikin body that I painted with black chalkboard paint, a lamp table base (also painted black) and an old black porcelain door knob.

One of these days I might change it up and paint her white and add an Iron Orchid Designs transfer … hmmm … I’ll just add that to my to-do list.

In the meantime, I got the dollhouse dresser all cleaned up and posted on Craigslist and it sold right away.

The new owner is going to add a sink and use it as a bathroom vanity!  Probably a much better use of this dresser than hiding it under a giant dollhouse, don’t you agree?