Category: furniture.

My friend Sue snagged this rusty old Cosco stool for me last summer.  I posted it on my Facebook page at the time with this caption.

I struggle with this question.  More so when I’m going to sell something rather than keep it.  Personally I like distressed, beat up items that show their age (no wise cracks about Mr. Q here please).  I sometimes cringe when people cover up a beautiful distressed patina with fresh new paint.  If I had been keeping this for myself, and if I liked the yellow and white, I would have cleaned it up and kept it as is.

But alas, I don’t need another stool, and I really feel like this item will sell better with a paint job.  This led to the next question, how should I prep it?  I have found that if you don’t seal a rusty metal piece, the rust will seep through your new paint.  Again, I don’t necessarily mind that.  It’s a fun way to change up the color of a metal item, but to instantly re-gain some of that rusty patina.

But again, how rusty is too rusty?  This stool had a lot of rust.  So I decided to go ahead and seal it.  I started by vigorously sanding the seat and back fairly smooth and lightly sanding the rest.  Then I painted on a coat of the Rachel Ashwell Clear Primer.  Once dry, I painted a coat of Fusion’s Laurentien on the base and Fusion’s Raw Silk on the seat back.

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  I absolutely love Laurentien.  It’s a gorgeous pop of turquoise!

When the paint was dry, I felt like the stool looked far too crisp and freshly painted though.  So I sanded down the edges of the seat back.  And the tops of the steps.

But when I started sanding the edges of the seat itself I quickly realized that I didn’t like seeing the yellow peek through, so I decided against any further sanding.

As I studied the ‘finished’ stool, I really felt like it needed just a little something more.  So I pulled out my Iron Orchid Designs transfers.  The bottom section of the small “Richardson Seeds” transfer was a perfect fit for the seat back (I used the full transfer on the green window recently).  This is another of the cool things about these transfers, you can use just a portion of one and save the other part for another project.

To give the transfer a little extra protection, I waxed over it with clear furniture wax.  But I assume the future owner of this stool won’t actually be sitting in it leaning against the back too terribly often.  If I was expecting that kind of use I would add a matte finish poly over the transfer.

Although this would be adorable in a potting shed, I think the comments on my post for the Blue Alligator dresser on Monday pretty much established the fact that most of us aren’t lucky enough to have one.

 So, how about just using it in your kitchen as intended?

After all, when a step stool is handy, everything else is too!

I had been keeping an eye on the Craigslist ad for this dresser for at least a month.  I thought it had potential, but at $100, it was overpriced (which is why it sat on Craigslist for so long).  I finally decided to send the seller a lower offer and they agreed to my price.

When Mr. Q and I arrived to pick it up, the seller told me that she’d had it posted for $200 originally and it never sold.  She’d ultimately realized that she really just wanted it out of her garage, so that’s why she lowered the price to $100 and then further agreed to my even lower offer.  The implication being that it was worth way more and I was getting a heck of deal.

Some people seem to think that anything that is more than 80 years old is a valuable antique.  Not true.  Condition is everything in the world of antiques, and this dresser was in pretty poor condition.  Starting with the fact that at some time in its life someone cut the sides off the top.  I assume they needed to fit it into some narrow space and the only way to accomplish that was to trim it down a little.  In addition, just check out this alligator-ed finish …

On top of that, the knobs on the top drawers were completely bent and misshapen, the drawers were hard to open, and there were paint drips all over the top.  And did I mention that it was positively filthy and obviously had been in that garage for quite some time?

But I bought it anyway.  I could see it still had potential, just not $100 worth of potential and certainly not $200 worth!

To get started, I sanded it down just slightly and then cleaned it with vinegar water.  Next I sanded down the sides of the drawers (where they sit on the glides) and then rubbed a block of canning wax over them so they would glide more easily.  Then I once again used my ‘perfect chipping method‘ and added some Homestead House Salad Bowl Finish (you can also use Miss Mustard 100% beeswax) in spots that I wanted to chip.

Choosing to go with milk paint on this dresser was a no-brainer.  Milk paint and alligator are the perfect pair.  The tricky part was deciding on a color.  Since I’d gotten several comments recently from readers who love seeing more color and are bored with white, I thought it would be fun to go more colorful with this one.  I wasn’t in the mood for any of the straight up milk paint colors I had on hand though, so I decided to create my own.

Now I’ll just go ahead and apologize right now to those of you who might want to try and recreate this color.  Not that you can’t do it, but it will require three different colors and two different brands of milk paint because this color is a mix of equals parts Homestead House Loyalist, Homestead House Upper Canada Green and Miss Mustard Seed Kitchen Scale.

I think I’ll call this color Blue Alligator.

And see what I mean about milk paint and alligator?  Such an awesome effect.

I’m not sure any of my photos do justice to Blue Alligator, and I don’t think I can adequately describe how it differs from straight up Kitchen Scale.  It has a little more green than Kitchen Scale (thanks to the Upper Canada Green), and it’s a little more muted (thanks to the Loyalist), and it’s a little bit lighter.

And I have to tell you, I loved this color so much I painted two more things with it.  A chalkboard and another piece that you’ll be seeing in the next week or two.

Painting this piece ended up being the easy part.  Two quick coats and it was done.

Next came the exciting part.  I pulled out another of my Iron Orchid Designs transfers.  This is the larger version of the same design I used on my green window last week.  In fact, this transfer was actually too large to use on this dresser ‘as is’, so I cut it apart and just used the sections that worked.  If you look closely you’ll see that my dresser is a mishmash of various pieces of it. I did each layer (top, middle, bottom) of drawers separately.

According to the Iron Orchid Designs YouTube videos, you can put any typical top coat over their transfers.  So I went ahead and waxed the dresser with Homestead House furniture wax next.

Finally, I found some knobs in my stash for the top two drawers.  They looked a bit too new next to the original drawer pulls though, so I decided to try a new technique on them and added a copper patina.  I’m going to post about that process in more detail later this week, so be sure to check back for that.

So now, what do you think?  Is this thing just gorgeous or what?

OMG!  Right?

Wouldn’t this dresser be amazing in a potting shed?

I could also see it working perfectly as a small buffet in a dining room.

It actually looks pretty much perfect right in that spot on my front three season porch.

But I’m not planning to keep it.

Of course, if it doesn’t sell … well, let’s just say I won’t be crying in my coffee.

For now though, this dresser is for sale, so if you are local and need a gorgeous dresser be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab.

For a little while there I was having a serious furniture dry spell.  I had one piece in the Carriage House that was waiting for warmer weather and for Ken to perform some handy-man miracles (Ken is very susceptible to the cold).  Other than that, the Carriage House was empty.  Yep, you heard that right.  I am not one of those furniture re-vampers who has a storage facility full of pieces waiting for their moment in the sun.  I actually get a little twitchy when I have too much stuff being stored.  I prefer to turn pieces over quickly.

But the downside is that sometimes I run out of furniture to work on and there is nothing available on Craigslist.  And when I say nothing, what I mean is nothing that meets my criteria of not too far away, not too expensive, and with lots of potential.

As usual though, when it rains, it pours.  I went from finding nothing to spending three evenings in a row picking up pieces.  I came home with a three dressers, a bed, a desk and this washstand.

I paid a little more than I normally would for this piece.  Why?  Because it was crying out for a rescue from its 80’s style makeover.  Just check out those grape cluster decals.  Gack!  And those horrible knobs.  Ugh!  I have to tell you guys, one of my pet peeves is when people put two knobs in the holes that were originally meant for a drawer pull with two screws.  I get why they do it, but every time I see it I cringe a little inside.  It’s just not right.

But if you look past the bad knobs, those awful grapes, and that really splotchy orange-y stain, this is a gorgeous little washstand.  Such pretty details, right?

The prep on this piece started with stripping the top.  The wood was so lovely that I wanted to show off some of it.  While the stripper was doing its job, I scraped off those decals.  They came right off with a sharp razor blade.

Next I dealt with those pesky knobs.  I was really hoping that I had 4 matching vintage pulls that I could use, but no such luck.  I did have a pair of absolutely gorgeous pulls that I have been saving for special piece though.  And it just so happened the holes on the upper drawer were spaced exactly right for them.

So I decided to use those on the upper drawer and just simple single knobs on the two lower drawers and the door.  To accomplish that on the drawers, I had to fill in the existing holes and later drill a new single hole in the middle.  Filling holes like this is really very easy.  Put some tape across the hole inside the drawer so that as you add wood filler from the front it doesn’t just escape out the back.  Then, fill the hole with wood filler.  I used Elmer’s Pro Bond Wood Filler in Walnut on these drawers, mainly because that’s all I had on hand.  The walnut was a bit dark, but I was painting over it anyway.  All of the wood fillers claim to ‘resist shrinking’, but I find that they all shrink.  In other words, when your fill dries it will recede back a little.  So go back with another application of fill.  Sometimes you’ll even have to do this a third time (I did with this piece).  But you want that filler to be nice and flush with the surface of the drawer, not sunken in at all, or they will show later.

I let my stripper and my drying wood filler sit overnight.  The next day I scraped the stripper off the top and gave it a good cleaning.  Then I sanded the body of the whole piece lightly and gave it a good cleaning too.  I decided to use my method for perfect chipping again on this piece (more details on that method here), so I added a little beeswax to all of the edges.

Then I painted three coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Marzipan.

Once again, perfect chipping, just where I wanted it!

See my little photo bomber?  My cat Lucy is hiding underneath the washstand.  I couldn’t get her to stay out of my photos.

I was initially considering staining the top of this piece, but the wood was so pretty in its bare and natural state so I waxed it with Homestead House furniture wax.  But that brought out a little too much of the golden hue of the wood, so I toned it down by adding some Homestead House white wax over that.

Not so golden, and definitely no longer orange!

What do you think?  Did I successfully rescue this washstand from the 80’s?

This little charmer is for sale while it lasts.  Pieces this size make a perfect bedside nightstand!  Check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.

I have a decorating split personality.  I really struggle with it.  You see, the problem is, I like more than one style.  As a result I often find myself going sort of half-way there and ending up missing the mark entirely because I can’t commit fully one way or the other.

For example, I love the French Nordic look with mostly white painted pieces, lots of age showing and maybe a hit of black or grey.  Love, love, love this look.

That’s the direction I headed in with my new Specimens cupboard.

But I also love color.  Especially pale aqua, but also blue and greens, and I don’t mind mixing in some pinks or yellows as evidenced by the collection of stuff in my pantry.

You can’t really mix these two styles without diluting them somewhat.  Certainly not in the same room, or rooms that are visible from one another.

So my problem is, I really want to gravitate towards the French Nordic look, but I can’t bare to part with some of my favorite more colorful pieces.  I’ve been making a concentrated effort to head in that direction over the past year or so though.  That is partly behind my switch from the Kitchen Scale buffet (even though I still love that color!) to the Specimens cupboard, although function also played a part in that decision.

As part of that switch, I also recently repainted my grandmother’s chair.  If you’ve been following me since the beginning you may vaguely remember when I painted this chair in Miss Mustard Seed’s Flow Blue.  That was three years ago!  My how time flies.

I wasn’t too sure about the Flow Blue on this chair.  It was the first time I’d used that color and I was a little startled by how bold it was.  But it grew on me over time and it worked well with my blue walls.

But in keeping with my switch to a more neutral palette, I decided a muted grey would work well on this chair.  Since I have a ton of milk paint on hand already, and I’m pretty frugal, I also wanted to use a color I already had.  I went to my milk paint supply cupboard and looked for some Miss Mustard Seed Trophy.  Nope, didn’t have it.  How about some MMS Schloss, that’s what I really wanted.  Nope, didn’t have it.  Then I saw my bag of Homestead House milk paint in Bedford.  I love this color, but it is definitely a very warm greige rather than a typical grey.  But I thought it might work.  So I mixed some up and painted the chair.

Hmmm.  A swing and a miss?  When I put the chair back in place, I really didn’t love it.  I don’t think it works that well with the blue walls.

But then I moved it over next to the Specimens cupboard …

And it seems to be much more at home.   So for now I think I’ll leave it in this spot, and I’ll keep on working towards that French Nordic style.  The next thing to go might be those horizontal stripes on my walls in this room.  Be sure to stay tuned!

I’m not terribly savvy when it comes to Facebook.  I don’t seem to notice when people leave me messages there, so if you have ever left me one and it took me forever to get back to you, please don’t take it personally.  Somehow I just don’t see them.  I also rarely post stuff on Facebook.  I do have my blog linked to my Facebook page so my blog posts appear there automatically, but if you really want to interact with me the best way is to leave a comment here on the blog.

That being said, I recently joined a new Facebook group, How to Paint like a Pro, that was started by the Fusion people.  It has reminded me to never underestimate what you might learn from a group of like-minded individuals on Facebook.

I was randomly perusing the posts and I stumbled across one about some new furniture rub-on’s that are available from Sweet Pickins.

Seriously, are you freakin’ kidding me?  How long have I been wishing I could find large furniture sized rub-ons??  And how did I not know these were available?

I immediately dropped everything I was doing and went online and ordered two.  Each one was $23, plus I paid a flat $6 for shipping.  I think that is a bargain when you consider that one is 24″ x 36″ and the other is 18″ x 36″.  These are large rub-ons (or transfers, if you prefer).

They also arrived lickety split.  I ordered them on Wednesday and they arrived on Friday.

And I simply could not wait to give one a try and luckily I had the perfect ‘canvas’.

A couple of summers ago I purchased a pair of primitive cupboards.  I sold one, but kept the second one.  It was a bit dingy and had some water stains.

I was planning to use it in my bedroom, and I even went so far as to paint it with one coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s Eulalie’s Sky, but that was as far as I got.  It had been sitting out in my carriage house ever since.  I even removed the door and used it to display merchandise at my last Carriage House Sale.

I wanted to go back to white, so I started by painting the cupboard with a couple of coats of Rachel Ashwell’s Clear Primer.  Those water stains that I mentioned earlier had bled through the Eulalie’s Sky, and I didn’t want to see them coming through the white.  Next I added three coats of Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen milk paint.  The primer did its job perfectly, no stains.

I intentionally left the area around the door’s hardware unpainted and blended my paint around the edges of that area, I love the worn look it gives the cupboard.  I also sanded the edges a bit to distress.  You can’t see that very well in the photos but it did make a difference.

Next I separated the transfer from its backing paper and taped it in place on the door.

I adjusted it a couple of times to get it centered and straight.  Once I was satisfied with the placement, I used the little wooden tool that came with the transfer to carefully rub the entire design onto the door.  This was a little putzy and a bit of an arm workout to be honest.  It took close to 30 minutes to do the entire thing.  But it was so worth it!

Once I was satisfied that I had the design rubbed on sufficiently I very slowly and carefully pulled away the plastic sheet it came on making sure as I went that the entire design was adhered to the cupboard door.

It worked beautifully.

By the way, these transfers are charcoal grey rather than black.  I like that about them too.

In fact, I could not be any more in love with this product, or this cupboard.  So much so that I am going to keep it right here in this spot.

You may have realized at this point that this is where my Kitchen Scale buffet used to reside.

Yep, it’s being replaced.  I’ve actually been thinking about making this switch for a while.  You see, the thing is, this is the room that I paint in during the winter.  Instead of housing china and silver, my buffet was storing paint supplies.  This cupboard is going to work so much better for that.

Somehow it now seems entirely appropriate that the door to this cupboard says “specimens de la decoration et de l’ornementation” right?

By the way, I didn’t alter the inside of the cupboard at all.  It came with these painted boards as shelves and I just love their chippy patina.

After all, I’m just storing painting supplies in this cupboard.  If I was going to use it for clothes or linens I would add a coat of two of some kind of sealer to the boards.

What do you think?  Would you have kept the buffet, or made the switch like I have done?  And what do you think of the cupboard’s new look?

If you’re thinking of ordering a couple of transfers yourself, I should warn you that I went back and ordered six more yesterday so you better get on it before they are all sold out.

And P.S. the Kitchen Scale buffet is for sale.  Check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

Sharing at Silver Pennies Sunday.

I shared the ‘before’ picture of this buffet with you last week.

My friend Sue purchased this piece via Craigslist for herself.  She got as far as removing the hardware to get it ready for painting, but then she decided she didn’t really want to tackle it after all and she offered to sell it to me.

Since Sue lives only a couple of blocks away, this was one of my easiest ‘Craigslist’ pickups ever!

I waffled between using Fusion’s Midnight Blue or the General Finishes Queenstown Gray on this buffet and I think either one would have been a great choice, but in the end I went with the gray.  Had I realized I would end up posting this on St. Patrick’s Day I would have chosen green!  No, not really.  Green might be a bit much on this one.

Plus, there was a pretty good chance that the red stain on this piece was going to bleed thru my paint, so going with a dark color helps disguise that.

I’ve generally had really good luck with this strategy, but be forewarned that a dark color does not always solve bleed thru problems.  Sometimes you will have to seal a piece to prevent bleed thru from showing and you can use shellac or a clear primer for that.  I like using the Rachel Ashwell clear primer when I need to seal something.

But I did not seal this piece.  I sanded it very lightly, wiped it clean with a damp rag and started painting.  After giving the first coat of paint about 24 hours to dry (because some times bleed thru can take a while to show up), I gave it a close inspection to see if there were any spots of bleeding.  If there had been, I would have then added some clear primer to those spots before adding a second coat of paint.  However, there weren’t, so I added a very light second coat of paint and voila …

I staged it with a lamp wearing my Florence map lamp shade.

I purchased my lamp shade at Junk Bonanza from a vendor called Light Reading (check them out here).  They make gorgeous stuff, and it looks like they will be at the Minnesota Junk Bonanza again this spring.  So if you are in the Twin Cities and could use a cool lamp shade, check them out.

The 2nd drawer down on this buffet is very shallow and has dividers for silverware storage.  It came with some pretty grungy felt lining.  I replaced the felt with some toile patterned fabric instead.

When my sister popped by to pick me for another afternoon of house hunting last weekend, she really loved this buffet.  But she has to wait until she has a house before she’ll know whether or not she needs any new furniture.  And actually that may be soon, but I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t say more.

 In the meantime, this buffet is for sale!  Check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.  You’ve heard that expression, right?  In this case it’s more like the shoemaker herself who is barefoot.  I am always painting things to sell and often don’t get around to projects for myself.

But it has been a slow couple of months in the world of furniture sales, or at least for me it has been.  So this past weekend I decided to tackle something of my own that I’ve been meaning to paint for quite some time.

It’s another small chair that I use while painting furniture.

This chair is nice and low and allows me to paint the bottom half of furniture in comfort.  Normally it’s out in my carriage house workshop and it really doesn’t matter what it looks like, but in the winter I bring it in the house.  When I’m not using it, it sits in the corner somewhere, so it would be nice if it weren’t quite so ugly.

Initially I was going to paint it in Fusion’s Laurentien, which is a pretty turquoise, but after finishing the cutting board makeover I did last week I decided to go with those colors instead.

So I started by painting the entire chair in Fusion’s Putty.

Hmmmm, pretty blah, right?  I almost switched gears again at this point and just painted it turquoise.  But then I reminded myself that I still had to add a few details.

So I added some grain sack stripes in a creamy white, and then a fun stencil.

I ordered this stencil from Etsy a while back, but hadn’t had a chance to use it yet.  It fit perfectly on my chair seat.

Now I have a charming little chair to sit on while I paint furniture smack in the middle of my piano room (which is where I paint in the winter).

And I won’t have to hide it in a closet when people drop by for a visit.

What do you think?

Black and white has always been one of my favorite combos.  Back in June 2015 I painted this fun mid-century piece …

And then about a year ago I painted some black & white suitcases …

I was really itching to do another black & white piece when I saw this dresser on craigslist and decided it would be perfect for it.

From the outside it looks like it’s in great shape, but in reality it was pretty wonky.  One drawer was completely missing a bottom, and most of the bottom sides of the drawers (where they rest along the glides) were pretty worn down.  So I sent it over to Ken’s workshop and he fixed it right up by replacing the missing bottom and adding new wood to the bottom sides of several drawers.  He also removed the top and re-glued the corner joints and added some wedges of wood for more stability.   All I had to do was add the paint!

The black is Fusion’s Coal Black and the white is Fusion’s Casement, two coats of each color.  Every time I paint with Fusion I am reminded of how ridiculously easy it is to use.  A quick sanding to rough up the surface (especially on this piece because the existing finish was very shiny), a wipe down with some vinegar water, two coats of paint, and a little sanding to distress the edges and you are done.  No need for a top coat.  Fusion has pretty much replaced chalk paint for me for that last reason.  Originally when I first started using Fusion I felt like it was hard to distress compared to chalk paint.  However, when I distress a piece of furniture I mainly just wear down the edges and that is pretty easy to do with Fusion as long as you do it shortly after the piece dries.  Don’t wait until the paint has cured because this paint is very durable at that point.

I really debated doing this look again because that earlier black and white piece took a while to sell.  But in the end, I’m so glad I went for it.  I think this dresser went from boring to interesting with just some paint and some new glass knobs.

The white is wrapped all the way around both sides.

This is one instance where I didn’t discard the mirror that came with the dresser.  I painted it white and the future owner can choose to keep it in place, or not.

By the way, have you noticed anything about my photos today?

Yes!  I’m out in the photo cottage.  Are you having this amazing warm spell where you are too?  Sunny and 60 is practically unheard of for February in Minnesota.  I have taken full advantage by putting the top down on my convertible, grilling steaks for dinner, watching Mr. Q trim trees, hanging laundry out on the line and staging furniture in my photo cottage.  Woo hoo, it feels like spring!

This dresser is for sale.  If you are local and interested, please check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

But first, tell me, what do you think of the black and white?

Sharing at Finding Silver Pennies Sunday!

I am just starting to recover from the head cold from hell.  Yep, it was so bad it made me swear.  It also made me miss 3 days from the day job, and quite honestly I shouldn’t have even gone back in on day 4, but it was Friday and I had some things I really needed to take care of before the weekend.  I warned all of my co-workers to keep their distance and wash their hands frequently.  I hope they listened because I wouldn’t wish this particular virus on anyone.

Fortunately, I had this next dresser already finished before illness struck.  I just hadn’t been able to get any photos of it yet.  I finally felt well enough yesterday to pull together a photo session, and the weather cooperated by providing some sunshine.  Bonus!

But let’s go back and start at the beginning.  I found this dresser on Craigslist a while ago.  Before I continue on with the rest of this post, I have to share a little story with you.  I have a friend who tried online dating after her divorce (this was quite a few years ago).  She had an interesting strategy.  She decided that taking several weeks or more to get to know someone via email was a waste of time, why not just meet them right away because you’ll know instantly whether or not they are worth spending more time on.  And let me tell you, she ended up with some very entertaining stories about the men she met and instantly knew were very wrong for her.  I kept telling her that she should write a book, it would have been hysterical.  And by the way, her strategy worked.  She is now engaged to a very nice man and living happily ever after.

Well, the tables have turned and now she keeps telling me that I should write a book about Craigslist transactions.  I definitely meet some characters.  The seller of this dresser falls into the category that I like to call the ‘reluctant seller’.  There are two kinds of reluctant sellers.  First there are the people who are selling a ‘family heirloom.’  They don’t want to keep it themselves, but they want to sell it to someone who will cherish it properly.  You can usually spot them right away because they say something like “this belonged to my great grandmother Ruth, it has been in our family for three generations, but I just don’t have room for it …”  They definitely do not want to hear that you are going to paint it, or really alter it in any way whatsoever.  When dealing with those sellers I usually just play along.  What they don’t know won’t hurt them.  They can rest easy in the knowledge that their family heirloom has gone to a good home.

But there is a second type of reluctant seller that is sometimes even trickier to deal with.  This is the seller who can’t be bothered with the actual transaction.  They post their item on Craigslist, but then when it comes to setting up a time to meet with you and exchange the goods for the cash, they can’t be pinned down to a date and time.  You contact them and they say “I’m going to be out of town for the next week, I’ll get back to you.”  Then you finally hear back and set up a time, say Sunday at 3 pm, and they agree but they don’t actually give you their address.  Then you don’t hear from them again until Sunday at 7 pm when they text and say “sorry, I got tied up.”  And then that happens again the next time too.  I can be a little more flexible than most buyers since I don’t need something ‘right away’, but it’s still frustrating.  However, after about 3 weeks of this, I did finally pin this seller down and Mr. Q and I went and picked up this dresser.

It probably didn’t take you long to see why I wanted this one.  Yep, the mirror frame.  I’m going to make another chalkboard shelf out of it.

But in the meantime while that project was over at Ken’s workshop, I decided to do a quick Fusion paint job on the dresser.  The dresser without its mirror was pretty much a ‘plain Jane’ except for the vintage drawer pulls and key hole escutcheons, which are gorgeous, so I decided to add some interest with a two-toned paint job in neutral colors.  I pulled out my Fusion paints in Algonquin, Putty, Limestone and Casement.  I felt like the Algonquin was just a bit darker than I wanted and the Putty was a bit lighter, so I started mixing.  When mixing colors I’ll often paint them on a craft stick (a larger version of a popsicle stick) to see how they look when they dry.  I picked up a package of 100 of these sticks at Hobby Lobby and they really come in handy for this.

I write the color mix on each stick.  You can see the Algonquin at the bottom is fairly dark while the Putty at the top is quite light.  Even the Algonquin mixed with the Putty was darker than I wanted.  But the Algonquin mixed with Casement was just right.  Likewise, the Casement itself was too bright of a white on its own, so I ended up going with a combo of Limestone and Casement for the white (that’s the stick that is under the Casement stick).

And ta da, here is the finished dresser.

Adding the wide stripe down the middle helps draw more focus to the hardware, don’t you agree?  For reference, scroll back up to the ‘before’ photo, you barely even notice the hardware right?

Now it steals the show.

I would have loved to strip the top of the dresser and go with a waxed wood top, but there was some unattractive damage that would have been hard to camouflage.  It looks as though someone set a container of some sort of bad chemical down on the dresser in a couple of spots.

Whatever it was ate right through the finish and even into the wood a bit.  So I felt like paint would be the best choice for me here.  I could also have gotten out a heavy duty belt sander and taken the wood down until the marks were gone, but that’s just not my style.  The truth is, I’m afraid of belt sanders.  Before painting though, I sanded the spots down by hand and covered them with a couple of coats of Tough Coat Sealer just in case something might want to try and bleed through my paint.

This next photo is a bit misleading as it seems like you can’t see this damage any more at all, but in reality if you catch the light just right you can still see the indentations in the wood.  It is fairly well disguised though.

I’m always drawn to the sides of dresser when they are paneled in some fashion (rather than just being a solid flat piece).

I struggled with finding a spot for this photo shoot.  I knew the horizontal stripes on my walls would compete with the vertical stripe on the dresser.  Unfortunately, I have very few options for winter photos.  The photo cottage is snowed in.  So I tried to distract the eye with lots of layers.

Player piano music, an old cupboard door, a gold frame, my grandpa’s water color, a lamp and a stack of books are all lending more vertical and horizontal lines.

Did they do the trick?

One last thing, you may be wondering if I’ve picked some winners for my wax giveaway, but I haven’t yet.  I’ll be working on that this evening and will try to notify the winners within a day or two.  Did you notice that I didn’t limit the winners to being in the US or Canada?  I just hate doing that because I want everyone to feel welcome and included on my blog.  So far I haven’t ever actually picked a winner who lived outside the United States.  In fact, the winner of my last giveaway lived less than five miles away!  And I swear to you it was totally random.  I had no idea where she lived until after I contacted her.  I’ve done a little research into international shipping costs, and yes, they are kinda high.  A bit higher than the costs quoted on my vintage postal scale …

But the shipping costs I pay to send out giveaway prizes are one small way that I can ‘pay it forward’ and say thank you for following along on my blog.  So I’m putting in every person who took the time to leave a comment (except Mr. Q because he doesn’t need any wax!) and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.

Furniture is another matter.  I only sell furniture to local buyers who can pick it up.  If you are interested in the dresser from the reluctant seller, check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more details.