Category: furniture.

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?

I didn’t mention it earlier, but the washstand that I painted in Grain Sack a couple of weeks ago was part of an entire bedroom set.  There it is in the front.

I purchased this entire set for the bed.  I have plans for that bed.  You’ll just have to wait for that.  But in the meantime, I’ve given the dresser (just behind the washstand in that photo) a makeover.

Here’s a better look at just the dresser ‘before’.

Although it came with a mirror, the two will be parting ways.

I knew I wanted to use milk paint on this one, and I also wanted to use an Iron Orchid Designs transfer.  I’ve mentioned before that you have to be a little careful with this combo.  If your milk paint is too chippy, it’s hard to get the transfer to stick to the paint rather than the paint sticking to the transfer.  So I gave this one an extra good scuff sanding and then cleaned it with TSP substitute to help control the chipping.

I also decided to go with a wood top on this dresser, so I stripped the original finish off the top which was pretty scratched up.

Next I mixed a custom milk paint color, mainly to use up a few partial packets of paint I had on hand.  I started by mixing equal parts Miss Mustard Seed’s Eulalie’s Sky and Shutter Gray.  The resulting color was just a bit too blue for me, so I then added another equal part MMS Grain Sack to both lighten it up and add a little more grey.

I love this color!  I’m going to keep track of this color recipe for future use.

After the paint was good and dry, I added the Iron Orchids Design’s Seeds transfer.

I had to ‘cut and paste’ it a bit to fit the dimensions of this dresser, and also to avoid the rectangular drawer pulls.  Your hardware probably won’t be in place when you are adding a transfer, so don’t forget to take it into account.  In this case I had to move “Autumn Catalogue” up a bit to avoid the pulls.  The entire transfer didn’t fit on this dresser, but this is most of it.

I mentioned in my last post about the furniture transfer fail on the Bayberry dresser that Sally at IOD recommends distressing the transfer lightly with fine grit sandpaper to reduce the ‘halo’ effect.  I gave that a try with this transfer and it definitely minimizes it. That ‘halo’ is most apparent when looking at it from an angle, so here’s a good angle shot so you can see what I’m talking about …

It’s practically invisible looking at it straight on.

I decided to go a little old school on finishing the wood top.  After stripping and sanding, I stained it with Varythane Dark Walnut gel stain and then added a couple coats of Minwax Wipe on Poly in a satin finish.  By the way, I used Homestead House Beeswax finish over the milk paint and the furniture transfer.

I focused on the ‘seed catalogue’ garden theme of the transfer when choosing my props for these photos.

I really love how this piece turned out.

What do you think of it?

If you are local and interesting in purchasing this one, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.

While I was inspired by all of the shades of blue I saw in Norway on our recent trip, in Scotland it was all about the greens (and maybe the sheep!)

So when I saw this pretty green transferware platter at the Barn Chic Vintage sale, I snatched it up and decided that I needed to paint something green.

Mr. Q had recently brought home this tall serpentine dresser with lovely claw feet.  His step-dad’s ex-wife (is there a better title for that relationship?  step-ex maybe?), who is also a very supportive follower of my blog, snagged this for me from her neighbor who was having a garage sale (thanks again Sherry!)

It needed a little work.  Ken replaced a drawer bottom that was damaged beyond repair and I dealt with some veneer issues by patching with wood filler.

Next I pulled out my paints to see what my options were for green and I had quite a few.  I had some of Miss Mustard Seed’s Lucketts Green and Boxwood.  I also had several shades of green milk paint that Homestead House sent me, Upper Canada Green, Gatineau, Acadia Pear.  In the end I opted for Homestead House’s Bayberry.

I found it a bit challenging to get a photo that shows the true shade of this green.  It’s a deep green that leans more towards the blue side rather than yellow, and with a grey undertone.  I added a topcoat of hemp oil, which deepened the color quite a bit.

While working with the Bayberry, I discovered it makes the perfect ‘chalkboard green’.  That’s it on the gold framed chalkboard, without hemp oil and after being ‘seasoned’ with chalk.  From now on rather than mixing MMS Boxwood and Artissimo to make green chalkboard paint, I’ll just use Bayberry straight up.

I also tried a little experiment on this dresser.  I added part of an Iron Orchids Design furniture transfer.  I wasn’t sure how well it would show up on a dark color like this, and I knew I was taking a chance that it wouldn’t work at all and I’d have more work to do to correct it.

And as it turns out, transfers and dark colors don’t mix.  I expected that the transfer wouldn’t be as obvious over a dark color, but I didn’t expect that that filmy sort of white halo would be so much more noticeable.

Speaking of which, after getting a question from Nancy recently about the ‘cloudy halo’ that you can see with the IOD transfers, I reached out to Sally at Iron Orchid Designs.  She told me they are working on improving their product to minimize that halo, but in the meantime the transfers are best suited for light colors.  In addition, she said that a little light distressing with a fine grit sandpaper can help blend it more on light colors as well.

OK, so next came the ‘fix’.  I was hoping I could use a sharp razor blade to remove the transfer without damaging the paint too much.

Nope.  That didn’t work.  That transfer was stuck good.  Really, that’s good news since it means the IOD transfers are pretty durable and won’t just easily peel off your surface.

On to Plan B (or would it be C at this point?)  I knew this was going to be dicey at best, but it was worth a shot.  I sanded down the two drawers with the transfers, sanding off the transfer as well as most of the hemp oil.  Then I wiped them down with TSP substitute to further reduce the oil.  I had a little bit of my mixed paint left, so I stirred it well and added a fresh coat to the two drawers.

I’ve had issues in the past with getting different shades of green doing this.  I posted about that here.  Over time as green milk paint sits it tends to change color slightly.

So, I do know better.  But I thought I might as well try it since I had the paint.  Worst case scenario I have to re-do ALL of the drawers.

Yep, worst case scenario.  It’s not a really glaring difference, but enough of a difference that it bugged me.

So, back to sanding and cleaning each drawer with TSP substitute, mixing up a fresh batch of Bayberry paint and repainting each drawer.  I didn’t have to do the body of the dresser, just the drawer fronts.

In the long run it would have been smarter to try this experiment with Fusion acrylic paint or chalk paint.  That way I could have gotten away with just repainting the two drawers.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  I hope that by sharing my failures in this way, you guys can learn from them and not make the same mistakes.

To recap.  New lesson learned:  don’t use IOD transfers on dark colors.  Old lesson reinforced:  paint your milk paint pieces all at once, you can’t go back later and just paint one or two drawers.  Got that?

I promised ‘dibs’ on this dresser to the original owner.  But if she doesn’t want it back, it will be for sale.  Be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.

Way back in April, I purchased this dresser via craigslist.

As you can see, it was in pretty rough shape with splotches of white paint here and there.  There was also a broken leg that you can’t quite see in the photo.  Depending on the brightness of your computer screen, it may almost look black in this photo, but it’s just a really dark stain.

I call pieces with doors that open to reveal inner drawers a ‘linen press’.  I can’t find an authoritative source online that confirms that, but if you google ‘linen press’ you’ll get lots of images of pieces like this.  So let’s go with it, OK?

I’m a big fan of the linen press.  This is the 4th one I’ve done (you can see the others here, here and here).  However, they do tend to be a bit more work because you have to paint the inside too.

In this case, I painted the inside in a custom mixed Navy Blue Fusion paint (equal parts Liberty Blue and Coal Black).  I love using Fusion paint on the interiors of pieces for a couple of reasons.  First, it doesn’t have to be top-coated (adding wax or another topcoat inside a cupboard can be a real pain) .  Second, it’s fully washable which can be handy with both drawers and shelves.

You’ll notice that I didn’t paint the outside sides of the inner drawers …

I purposely chose not to do so because these drawers fit pretty tightly.  Adding paint to them would have likely caused them to stick.  In addition, the paint would have gotten pretty scratched up over time.  I don’t care how durable your paint is, having it rub against another surface like this will scratch it.

I love these drawers for storing pretty vintage linens.

But I bet you are wondering what I did with the outside.  You’ve gotten a little glimpse of it so far just to tease you.

OK, OK.  I painted the outside with Homestead House milk paint in Bedford (paint provided compliments of Homestead House).  This color is a lovely pale greige; not quite grey, not quite beige, but a perfect blend of the two.

Then I added another gorgeous Iron Orchid Designs rub-on furniture transfer (you can find these from various sources online).

This is a good time to caution you about mixing chippy milk paint and a rub-on.  If your milk paint is fairly chippy, or in other words it’s not well-adhered to your surface, it may come off with the transfer backing sheet.  Basically, instead of the rub-on sticking to your dresser, the paint will stick to the rub-on … does my explanation of that make sense?

You can see where I had a little trouble with that on the bottom of the door on the left (in the above photo).  The key to using a rub-on with milk paint is to make sure you prep your piece really well (scuff sand and clean with TSP substitute) to limit how much the surface resists the paint.  Especially in the area where the rub-on will go.

Oh, by the way, I switched out the original pulls on the bottom two drawers because I was missing one of them.  I chose glass knobs because I wanted them to fade away and let the transfer be the star of the show.

One more comment about applying the rub-on.  For the bottom two drawers, I cut the transfer apart and did each drawer separately.  I did that because I needed to adjust the spacing vertically just a tad to fit the drawers.  For the top half of the dresser, I placed the full transfer over the shut doors and applied it that way.  I debated cutting the transfer in half down the middle, but I think that would have messed with the design.  I didn’t want a weird space down the middle.  It was a little putzy to do it this way, but I’m glad I did.

My advice to you if you are going to try this is to be patient, go slowly, and don’t remove your taped on transfer sheet until you are sure you have the entire design transferred.  I usually leave mine taped to the surface at the top of the sheet so that I can pull it up slowly, and potentially let it fall back in place if I find I missed something.

By the way, I used Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax as my top coat on this dresser.  I waxed right over the transfer using a light touch and it worked beautifully.

So there you have it, the Bedford Linen Press.

Massive improvement, right?

And of course, this piece is for sale locally (while it lasts).  Be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

Sharing at Silver Pennies Sundays!