Category: furniture.

My stay-cation week off from the day job went by really quickly, isn’t that always the case?  And I didn’t get nearly as many projects done as I’d hoped I would.  Of course.

But in addition to lots of little things, I did get a couple of bigger pieces of furniture finished including a lovely vintage dresser.  You may remember seeing the ‘before’ of this one a while back.

It had that orangey oak-y finish.  I have to say, this one had me a little stumped.  I kept looking at it out in my workshop and not feeling any inspiration.  Finally I decided I wanted to give it a farmhouse look, something old and chippy.  I mixed up some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Farmhouse White and I started painting.  The first coat didn’t cover well at all, but that’s to be expected with white milk paint.  The second coat wasn’t much better.  Not a good sign.  By the third coat, the coverage was still not up to my standards.  Plus, I wasn’t getting any chipping at all.  Argh!

I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to just cut my losses, so that’s what I did.  I got out the Fusion paint instead.  I had a little bit of Limestone (a warm creamy white) left in a jar, so I supplemented it with some Casement (a brighter crisp white) just to be sure I’d have enough.  And then one coat did the trick.  Now to be fair, I’m sure I would have needed two coats if I didn’t already have a base of white milk paint.

Still … once painted I didn’t have to wax or add a top coat (my favorite thing about the Fusion paint).

After the paint dried, I added this gorgeous French Laundry stencil using acrylic craft paint in a nice greige sort of color.  I wanted to keep it subtle.

I think this is one of the prettiest stencils I have, and it added just the little bit of extra something that this dresser needed.

Did you notice the screen hanging above the dresser?

I’ve always been fond of a pop of black in an otherwise mostly white space.  I even have a pinterest board devoted to the idea (here).  I didn’t intend for the screen to go with this dresser (otherwise I wouldn’t have used them same stencil on both), but I wanted to add that pop of black to my photos of this piece.

I think perhaps this is how this dresser was meant to end up all along, don’t you agree?

Remember my ‘find of the day’ from the MacGrove sales?

I love the delicate proportions of this pretty little desk.  Or at least I am calling it a desk.  It could be a console table, or a dressing table.

I had originally envisioned a refinished wood top with a chippy white base.  But after I’d stripped two layers of paint off the top, I realized that I didn’t like the ‘wood top look’ with the more French looking details on this piece.  So after all of that work, I sanded it down and painted the whole thing grey.  This is approximately a 50/50 mix of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Trophy and Schloss.

And I ended up with no chipping at all.  Once again the ability to predict chippy-ness eludes me.  I knew I wouldn’t get any chipping on the freshly stripped top, but I thought for sure that painting over existing paint would result in some chipping.  Nope.

You can see that I added a bit of Little Billy Goat Gold Leaf goat stick to the details

and also to the drawer pulls.  Aren’t these pretty?

I’ve played on the classic Grecian urn motif on the hardware, the drawer front and the cross piece at the bottom by hanging my favorite gold framed mirror above it for my photos.

These two pieces pair up so nicely that I’ve decided to offer the mirror along with the desk.

I never thought I would part with this mirror, but it seems like they belong together.

I almost hate to put a chair in front of this because I feel like it would cover up all of the pretty details.  Maybe it would be better as a console table in a foyer after all.

What do you think?

Remember way back to last year when my friend Terri gave me a bunch of stuff from her deceased uncle’s house?  They were cast off items that no one in the family wanted.

This small table was among the pile and it needed a little bit of repair.  A couple of the corner supports were missing and one of the supports at the bottom was broken where it attaches to the table leg.  Luckily I have my secret weapon, Ken.

He made short work of replacing those corners and repairing that cross piece.

Ken made these repairs in short order, but then I let the table sit for ages.

I finally pulled it out last spring and painted it with two coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue.  It started to chip like mad, and I felt like the red stain was bleeding through just a bit on the top.  So I shoved the table aside and worked on other projects because I didn’t feel like dealing with it.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this, right?

Flash forward another several months to a week or so ago.  I pulled this table out of the back of the workshop and realized maybe it wasn’t all that bad.  I sanded it vigorously to remove any chipping paint.

This photo shows a good example of what milk paint will look like on unfinished wood (the repaired corner piece) v. over previously finished wood.

Then I decided to add a stencil to the top.

I feel like the small amount of stain bleed-thru was totally negated by the heavy chipping and the addition of the stencil.

I finished the table with some Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax.

You may have caught a glimpse of the finished table last week when I posted the cane back chair.

It’s a sweet little side table that can be easily moved around to wherever it is needed.

It’s being added to the pile for my upcoming occasional sale!

For those of you who are local, the date has been officially chosen and is Saturday, October 8.  It’s only a month away, yikes!  Lucky I’m taking a stay-cation from the day job this week to get some stuff done.

My obsession with tiny furniture continues!

Who remembers this little number that I picked up at a garage sale in early summer?

It had an authentically aged original paint job, but I just couldn’t handle the red.  So I painted over the red with some Annie Sloan Duck Egg.  Then, the fresh coat of Duck Egg made the original cream exterior look seriously dingy and yellowed.  So I went over that with some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Linen.

I fully expected a bunch of chipping since I was painting over paint, but I didn’t get a single chip.  When I say that whether or not milk paint will chip can be unpredictable, I mean it.

Once it was painted, I also added a tiny little ’37’ rub-on to the top.

I know it can be hard to judge scale in these photos, but this little cupboard is just 18″ tall.  It’s the perfect size for placing on a dresser or table top and filling it up with some of your crafting supplies.

It’s kinda adorable, right?

I was contemplating keeping it and letting it join its brethren in the Q Branch (my study).

But I really don’t think I need another tiny piece of furniture!

So it will probably end up at my sale in October.  I think.  Maybe.  Yes. Probably.

Although technically my furniture moratorium continues to be in place, I still bring in the occasional piece(s).  Especially when it’s an amazing bargain that is far too good to pass up.  So recently when I saw an ad on craigslist for a tall dresser that was exactly my style and about half the price I usually pay, I had to send Mr. Q for it.

Yep, I had to.

But this post isn’t about that dresser, it’s about the second dresser that the seller had.  When Mr. Q got there the seller asked if we’d be interested in another piece she had for sale.  He texted me a photo, and I said “sure, why not?”  And thus, he came home with two pieces.

This low dresser was missing it’s hardware entirely.  I suspect the seller removed it at some point thinking she was going to refinish it, and then over time the hardware was misplaced.  It was priced accordingly though, so no complaints on that score.  I planned to just replace it.

Have I ever mentioned that my best ideas usually come to me in the shower?  Maybe because that’s the time when I’m really not concentrating on anything else.  My mind wanders while I’m shampooing.  So I was in the shower thinking about this cute little low dresser and I thought vintage wallpaper!  I haven’t done a wallpapered piece in a while, and looking back I’ve done quite a few of them over the years (here, here, here, here, here and here).

I happened to have a really pretty yard of wallpaper with daisies on hand (I usually order my vintage wallpaper by the yard via Etsy).  But before we get to the wallpaper, I first painted the shell of the dresser in Fusion’s Limestone.  I love the warmth of this white.  I sometimes forget how ridiculously easy it is to use Fusion paint.  I sanded the piece ever so quickly, wiped it down with TSP substitute and slapped on two coats of paint.  Then I distressed the edges a bit with fine sandpaper.  Done.

The wallpapering was a different story.  This was one of the more fragile pieces of wallpaper I’ve worked with.  I ripped it more than once.  Basically though, I measured a section of wallpaper to fit down the left half of both drawers, then a second piece to fit down the right half of both drawers.  I mixed up some wallpaper paste (I use the Zinsser Sure Grip powder so I can mix up just the small amount that I need) and smoothed it onto the back of each piece then gently folded them over to ‘book’ the paper.  I then drew a pencil line down the center of each drawer.  I lined up the wallpaper with the center line and worked my way out.  I kept the patterns lined up so that when the drawers are in place the pattern runs from one to the next, if that makes sense.

I made two mistakes with the wallpaper.  The first mistake was rubbing too hard while attempting to remove excess paste from the front with a damp rag.  Some of these vintage papers are not colorfast, and this is one of them.  I could see that I was starting to take the color off the paper.  Ooopsy daisy.

The second mistake was not allowing enough overlap in the middle of the drawers to cut off the edge of the paper.  The design did not go all the way to the edge on this paper.  There is about ¼” that was meant to be trimmed off.  Dang, oopsy daisy again!

I really felt like this piece needed to be up on casters.  It’s a low piece anyway, so the casters are like adding heels to just give it a little bit of a boost.  But boy, those things fought me every inch of the way.  The dresser obviously originally had casters.  Three out of the four original metal sockets were still in place and extremely rusted.  Although I had 4 vintage casters on hand, only one of them fit in the original sockets.  That meant I had to get those old rusted sockets out.  It took a bunch of elbow grease and there might have been a fair amount of cursing taking place, but I finally got them out and was able to fit the vintage casters with sockets in the existing holes.  Phew!

For such a simple piece, this one really gave me a run for my money.

I think this low dresser would be perfect for a TV stand.  It would place the TV at the perfect height for viewing.  Alternatively, it is also low enough to sit at the foot of a bed with some quilts stacked on top.

I’m still using the beautiful hand stitched baby dresses that I purchased from my friend Sue about two years ago for the occasional furniture photo shoot.

They are so lovely, but both Sue and I often ask ourselves what one would do with these other than hang them in a nursery?  Any ideas?

I always enjoy getting a glimpse of pieces inside the photo cottage after they are done.  They never stay in there for long though!

 

Bigger is better?

Before we get into today’s post, did you notice I made some tweaks to the blog?  Wordpress announced a new and improved version of my blog ‘theme’ way back in January, but I never took the time to look at it until now.  With this new theme, my page is wider, my photos can be larger, my fonts are larger … everything is just BIGGER!  I think that’s a good thing, but what do you think?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion.

I’m still exploring some other possibilities with this new theme, so don’t be surprised if you see a few more changes here over the coming weeks.

On with today’s post!

I’m a fan of color blocking, how about you?

I like it in clothes, and I also like it in decor.  In fashion, color blocking is described as pairing blocks of different colors together.  It usually refers to pairing bright colors, so maybe I should call this ‘toned down color blocking’ because rather than using bright colors I used the muted tones of Fusion’s Algonquin and Limestone on this bed frame.

This bed came to me as part of a set.  I split it up since I’m not much of a fan of ‘suites’ of furniture.  The dresser and vanity have already been painted and all that was left was this bed.  It was in great shape and has the side rails and the slats meant for holding the box spring and mattress, but it wasn’t particularly pretty or interesting.  It was just rather dull.

So I decided to give it a slightly more modern vibe with some toned down color blocking.

First I painted the entire bed in Algonquin, which is a lovely sort of greige color.  The I simply measured and taped off a wide stripe down the center of the headboard and foot board and painted that in the Limestone.

I distressed the edges a little with sandpaper.

Both my sister and my neighbor, nnK, asked me if I was going to put a stencil on the headboard, but I thought that would be too much.  I like that this bed has a subtle sense of style.  It could be dressed up or down with different bedding.

It is for sale.  It is a full/double size bed, so a great candidate for a kids room or a guest room.  Unfortunately vintage beds in anything larger than a full are pretty much unheard of since queen and king sized beds weren’t really around until the 50’s and 60’s.

By the way, have I mentioned that my Limelight hydrangea is absolutely GIGANTIC this year?  Bigger may not be better in this case.  I plan to prune it down a bit this winter to keep it in check!

When I was a kid my mom sewed most of my clothes and she whipped up some really cute things.  I can remember going through a pinafore stage in grade school.  I loved those pinafores and my mom made several for me.  They had made a come-back in the 60’s people, so don’t judge.  My mom also made matching halter-tops for me and my bff.  My bff’s mom made some for us too.  We loved matching!

My mom tried to turn me into a seamstress.  When I was in my early 20’s and broke, she helped me sew some wool suits for my office wardrobe.  I still get a little itchy remembering those wool pieces that weren’t lined.  I probably should have tried some less ambitious projects because in the end I just got frustrated with how much work was involved and the ‘sewing thing’ just didn’t take.

Although I have absolutely no interest in sewing clothing, every once in a while I do wish I had the sewing skills and equipment necessary for upholstery work or even just for sewing simple pillow covers or curtains.  Obviously I don’t wish it badly enough to do something about it though.

Instead, I find ways to cheat!

I suspect that the cane chair that I brought home from a garage sale a few weeks ago originally had a loose cushion for the bottom.

It would be preferable to replace it with another cushion because that would give it a softer, more comfortable seat with some give.  But since I can’t sew, I decided to add an upholstered seat similar to those on your typical dining room chair.  I started by having Ken cut a base out of plywood.  He cut a cardboard template to get the size and shape right, and then just used that to cut the plywood.  Then I added a bunch of layers of thick batting and covered it with a feed sack that I picked up at a garage sale (out of the free pile, believe it or not!).  I stapled the feed sack on and voila.

It’s perhaps not the perfect solution, but it works for me.  I only spent about $6 for this chair.  The chair frame was $3 at a garage sale, the grain sack was $0, the plywood seat base was a little less than $3, the batting and the paint were items I had on hand but of course they would add to the cost if you had to buy those supplies.

By the way, I painted the rest of the chair using Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Linen.

I got a little chipping, but I’m hoping that over time the chair will wear and get even chippier.

What do you think of my cheater chair?  Not bad for $6, right?

Normally I don’t do custom work, but if you’ve read my blog for long then you know that I like to break my own rules all the time.  And I’ve broken this one a few times.

A very nice woman named Andrea purchased the spoon carved dresser from me a while back.

Remember that one?

It was so pretty.  And when Andrea bought it she asked me if I would be willing to paint another one to match.  Ironically, if you read back to the post about that first one I mentioned that I’d custom mixed the color because I ran out of MMS Marzipan and I had to stretch my paint out by adding some other whites.  So I explained to Andrea that I didn’t think I could match the color exactly, and that I don’t often do custom work.  But … all of that being said, I do love painting these spoon carved pieces and I was willing to give it a shot if she was OK with not getting an exact match.

So Andrea kept her eye out for another spoon carved dresser that she liked and when she found one she sent it over to be painted.  Here is how it turned out.

Although I used what I thought was close to the same mix of Marzipan, Linen and Ironstone, the color on this one is a bit lighter than the other.  Andrea had mentioned that if I couldn’t get the color quite the same, she’d prefer I went lighter rather than darker.

I used the same straight up Ironstone to highlight the spoon carving.  It doesn’t stand out quite as much on this piece, I think partially because there isn’t quite as much contrast between the colors but also because the spoon carving details are smaller on this one.

I really struggled with staging this dresser for photos.  I didn’t necessarily want to cover up the spoon carving that is at the middle back, but I tried putting various objects on the hankie drawers and leaving the middle empty and that just always looked odd.  I tried using a really pretty transferware pitcher and some vintage books.  Nope.  I tried adding a suitcase into the mix.  Nope.  I tried using several ironstone casseroles.  Still, no dice.

So finally I just filled my large ironstone bowl with a floral arrangement and called it good.

I just used flowers that were available in my yard; some Vanilla Strawberry hydrangea (they are just barely starting to show a hint of pink), some hosta flower stalks, some sedum flower clusters that haven’t opened yet and a sprig or two of variegated ivy.

Andrea picked up her dresser earlier this week and she loved how it turned out.  Phew!  I’m always a little bit relieved when custom jobs go well.

Ahoy matey’s, today I have a pirate desk to share with you.

You are probably wondering what makes it a pirate desk, right?  Well, it had a peg leg when I bought it.  You can’t see it in the ‘before’ photo unfortunately, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.  See those curvy feet (well, as much as isn’t covered by grass)?  Well, the back right one was missing and the previous owner of the desk just nailed on a chunk of 2 x 4 instead.  That explains why the price on this desk was ridiculously low.  Well, that and the numerous spots where veneer was chipping off, and maybe all of the dings too and that one mismatched drawer pull.  Yep, this baby had a few flaws.

But it was especially unfortunate about the foot because otherwise the back of this desk is finished, meaning it could be floated in a room with the back facing out.  But certainly not with a 2 x 4 foot.

So after I brought this one home I called Ken to come over for consultation (which involves him going out his back door and crossing over though my backyard to my workshop).  He looked seriously skeptical as I stood there saying I was quite confident that he could come up with a fix.  Ken may not have faith in his abilities, but I do!

I told him it didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to blend a little bit.  He hemmed and he hawed, and then he studied the other feet, and then he went home and thought about it for a while.  Then when I came home from work a few days later he had done this.

Ken, being a bit of a perfectionist, was not entirely happy with it but I thought it was amazing!  I knew once I got it painted you wouldn’t even notice that it was different from the other feet.  It certainly beats a 2 x 4!

I decided to go with Little Billy Goat’s Prizewinner on this desk.  I really love this blue!

To deepen the blue a bit, I used Little Billy Goat’s new black wax as a finish.  I had only used the black wax on top of black before, so I wasn’t sure how it would work over a color, but it worked perfectly over the Prizewinner.

Did you notice in the ‘before’ photo that there was one mismatched drawer pull on the lower left hand drawer?  I find it odd that the previous owner chose to put the mismatch on that drawer rather than the upper middle.  Duh.  That fix is a no brainer.  I was able to use all of the original pulls on the side drawers and I just added a coordinating knob from my stash to the middle drawer.

I also added a little Paris, France stencil just to give the desk a little extra personality.

Remember I posted a week or two ago about finding some chairs to use with desks?  Then my sister-in-law brought over this chair.

Seemed like kismet, so I painted it up to match the desk and I added a pretty faux grain sack seat.

But guess what?  It doesn’t quite fit under the desk.  Argh.  However, not all desk chairs have to be tucked in, right?  For example, my own desk chair does not fit under my desk because it has arms.

By the way, in case you’re wondering how that replacement foot ended up blending in once painted, check it out.

Be honest, if I hadn’t told you about it would you have even noticed?  Can you even tell which one it is?

I did go ahead and paint the back because with Ken’s faux foot, I think this desk would be perfectly fine facing out.  This way whomever purchases the desk will have options.

I actually did two different photo shoots.  I started out in the photo cottage, but I wasn’t super happy with any of those photos.

So then I pulled it out into the driveway where I staged it simply with a cream colored vintage typewriter and some Reader’s Digest books.

I picked up the books at a garage sale because the colors were so pretty.  I knew they would come in handy for furniture photos.

I almost forgot.  I have one more thing to take care of before this desk is available.  I need to line that middle drawer.  I have to admit though, I’m a little drawn to the graffiti art that I’ll be covering up.

How about you?

 

I was planning to wait until tomorrow to post this one, but an expected turn of events has my mom coming to town, and then she, my sister, and I will hop in the car and drive to South Dakota for the weekend.  I’ve been told I have to show up at my sister’s place at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning.  Gack!  We’ll be on the road for about 4 hours and quite honestly to a city girl like me it feels like we are out in the middle of nowhere on that drive.  Farm fields as far as the eye can see.  Spotty cell service at best.  So I decided to share this one today instead!

This sweet little vanity was part of a bedroom set that I picked up a while back.

I thought it had some great potential, but it badly needed an update.

Since a dressing table is definitely a feminine piece of furniture, I decided to go all out girly on this one and paint it pink.  So I pulled out Fusion’s Little Piggy.  In case you are keeping track, so far I have painted a small chair, a dresser and now this vanity and bench all from the one 16.9 oz jar of paint and I still have a little bit left.

The Little Piggy is a classy pink, not an obnoxious bubble gum pink.  I popped out some details by highlighting them with Fusion’s Limestone.  I also added a stencil to the front in Limestone as well.  This was the first time I stenciled using Fusion paint and it worked out quite well.  I just made sure that my stencil brush was ‘dry’ by blotting it on a paper towel after dipping it in the paint.

I swapped out the knobs that came with the vanity because they were just sort of blah.  These cream colored knobs from Hobby Lobby work much better with my color scheme.

I recovered the bench in some fabric from a beautiful bark cloth curtain panel that I purchased at a garage sale earlier this summer.

I dug out one of my hatboxes for staging …

Wouldn’t this piece be perfect in a young girl’s room?  Or maybe an older girl’s room too!

If you have the perfect spot for this sweet vanity, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab to find out if it’s still available.

Due to my unexpected weekend in South Dakota, I’m not at all sure if I’ll find stuff to post about next week but hopefully I can come up with something.  I hope you’ll stay tuned!