Category: furniture.

Happy New Year!

Will you be heading out to a festive party for New Year’s?  Sipping champagne and toasting the start of 2016?  Sharing a moment with someone special at midnight?

I love the fresh start that comes with a new year.  This year I am determined to live healthier.  Eat more fruits and veggies and skip fewer workouts.  I also like to set a ‘skill improvement goal’ of sorts for myself every year.  In 2014 my goal was to improve my stripping and staining abilities.

Check!

My goal for 2015 was to improve my reupholstering skills.  Hmmm.  Not so much of a ‘check’.  I managed a few chairs that were fairly basic.

My friend Sue actually did the sewing of the seat cushion slip covers, I simply reupholstered the arms.

Hardly much at all, yet it took me forever to accomplish.

And I never did get around to upholstering that settee that I picked up.  It’s still on my to-do list.

And that brings us to 2016.  My goal this year is to improve my photography skills.  Currently my ability to take a good photo hinges upon perfect lighting conditions.  I need to learn how to get good photos even when conditions aren’t perfect.  To assist me in this endeavor, Mr. Q has gifted me with a new tripod and a remote shutter release for my camera.  I also plan to take some online classes.

I also plan to bring back more “quandie quickies” for 2016.  In other words, quick makeovers that can be accomplished in less than an hour.  I’ve been piling up some goodies that are scheduled for a quick makeover, like these wooden divided bowls (trays?) …

and this green metal box.

How about you, do you have goals for the New Year?

But wait!  Before we officially move forward into 2016, let’s take a moment to reflect back on 2015.  I’ve picked out my fave five pieces from last year.

I painted this vanity back in January.  It was inspired by a piece of furniture I saw in Nina Hartmann’s book, among vintage & friends.  I loved the touches of black and how perfectly chippy this piece was.

I used Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Grain Sack (the greyish white) and Typewriter (the black) on this piece.  I recovered the bench with linen that I stenciled.

I also painted this next piece way back in January.  It’s my Rooster Cupboard!  This is the only one of my favorites that I kept for myself.  It works perfectly in my Q Branch as storage for crafting supplies.

I still smile a little inside every time I catch a glimpse of that rooster on the grain sack lining the glass doors and I love the pop of the Miss Mustard Seed Flow Blue milk paint.

I must have been having a great run of pieces last winter because my next fave is from February.  It’s the Paris bed.  I painted this gorgeous bed for a customer.  She wanted a creamy white, which ended up being the perfect choice for this piece.

To me this piece was the perfect example of a chalk paint project.  I painted the bed in Cece Caldwell’s Vintage White and used her Aging Cream dark wax to highlight the details.

My next favorite sort of flew under the radar I think.  It’s the union jack school desk that I painted back in April.  I used Fusion paint on this one which worked beautifully on the shiny surface of the desk top, as well as inside the metal cubby hole.

I really loved the way this turned out.  I thought it would be perfect as a small bedside table.  I considered keeping it for my guest room, but in the end I brought it to Eye Candy ReFind.  Then it didn’t sell.  And didn’t sell.  And didn’t sell.  I started to think that I really would be keeping it, but it finally sold at the end of November.  It was just waiting for the right person to come along!

My final fave is the green French farmhouse dresser that I painted in July.  I absolutely love this In a Pickle green milk paint from Sweet Pickins.  I think the brightness of the color provides a fresh, modern take on the chippy vintage farmhouse style.

This is another piece that just hasn’t managed to sell.  I suspect that I need to find a courageous buyer who isn’t afraid of adding a pop of brilliant color to a space.  I can totally see this piece in a mostly white room, or how about in a room paired with some Rachel Ashwell shabby chic florals?

Check out my fab furniture tab and pick out your favorite for 2015!  I’d love to know what it was.

In the meantime, I will raise my glass and toast to a happy and healthy New Year!  I know 2016 is going to be amazing.

Recently my friend Terri was helping family clean out her aunt and uncle’s house.  They have both passed away, and no one in the family wanted some of the items in the house.  Luckily Terri thought of me!  She sent over a dresser, a mid-century bureau and a small table plus a few other odds and ends.

This dresser was first up for a makeover.

Once again, I took the ‘before’ photo after Mr. Q did some prep work for me.  He removed the drawer pulls and gave everything a light sanding.  You can see pretty clearly in the photo just how light of a sanding it got.  Since I was planning to paint this piece in milk paint, I decided to sand a little more before painting.  But really, it just involved another pass by hand with a fine grit paper.  I just didn’t want to get too much chipping.

I’ll be honest with you guys, this dresser really didn’t have any damage or anything.  I just thought it was kind of ugly.  I wasn’t a fan of that ‘flame’ going up the center of the drawers and I felt like the side detail was just a bit too gaudy with that shiny finish.

I debated between Miss Mustard’s Marzipan (an almond white) and Kitchen Scale for this one.  I had both packages in my hand.  Then I stood there looking at the dresser.  Marzipan?  Kitchen Scale?  Marzipan would have been lovely.  But in the end, Kitchen Scale won.

I think the paint really toned down the look of those carved side pieces.

I used my trick with the tape to get some more chips out of this one.  It didn’t chip much at all on its own (probably thanks to that extra sanding I did).

But with a little encouragement from some tape, it turned out perfect!

I had grandiose plans for posting lots of furniture makeovers staged with Christmas decorations during the month of December, yet somehow I’ve only managed two.  And here we are with Christmas a mere 48 hours away.  Hmmmm.  So much for that plan.  Where did the month of December go?

Well, here’s one last hurrah!  I’ve staged this one with some aqua light bulbs …

and some of my most precious vintage aqua ornaments.

I have to tell you though, some vintage ornaments were harmed during the filming of this dresser makeover!  After taking this next photo, I turned my back for just a minute and I heard ‘tink, tink, tink, tink, crash!’

Sure enough, that round ornament next to the bell shaped one rolled right off the dresser and crashed to the floor.  Tragically, this was one of my favorites!  Doesn’t that just figure?  I shared it on the blog last year, I just loved its space theme.

Drat!  I’m going to miss that one!  That will teach me to just play around with these all willy nilly.  I tend to break a handful of my ornaments every year, and so another one bites the dust.

This dresser is a big one by the way.  It’s 37″ wide and 45″ tall.  It could hold a lot of big warm sweaters for winter!

What do you think?

If you need a place to store your sweaters (and are local in the Twin Cities) drop me a comment for more details because this dresser is available!

Last summer my number one craigslist spotter (a.k.a. nnK) forwarded me a craigslist ad for a garage sale that was in our neck of the woods.  It was accompanied by just one photo.  This one.

Do you see what I see?

Yep, a tiny dresser!  You know I simply can’t resist miniature furniture of any kind.  Ironically, nnK hadn’t even noticed the small dresser, just that there seemed to be a lot of furniture and it was close by.

Unfortunately, the sale started on a Thursday at 9 a.m.  I have to be at work at the day job on Thursdays at 9 a.m.  Argh.  We ‘day job’ people miss a lot of the bargains this way.

So I said to myself “you know what?  it never hurts to ask!  maybe they would be willing to hold it for me, or better yet, let me come over Wednesday evening and pick it up.” and I sent them an email.  I even offered them a little extra cash.

And guess what?!  They were happy to let me come over early for it.  They were the sweetest older couple.  Their children and grandchildren had played with this little dresser, but now they were all grown up and none of them wanted it.  The sellers really wanted it to go to a good home.  I assured them that I would take good care of it.  I’ll admit, I didn’t exactly mention that I would be painting it.  You know how that is, right?  Some people are just simply anti-paint.  I always listen for clues, you can usually tell if you’re dealing with anti-painters.  But this little dresser really wasn’t made out of a beautiful grained wood (I believe it’s probably maple).  It didn’t have a beautiful time-worn patina or anything like that.

Sadly, I could have sworn that I took some ‘before’ photos of this one (other than the craigslist ad photo above), but dang if I can find them now.  Argh.  So that brings us right to the ‘after’.

I did my usual prep, light sanding and a wipe down with TSP substitue.  I wanted two layers of color on this one, so I began with two coats of Miss Mustard Seed’s Layla’s Mint.  Next I added two more coats of MMS Linen.  In hindsight, the Mint was a waste of time.  It barely shows on some of the edges.  Also, the contrast between the Mint and the Linen isn’t strong enough for the little Mint that does show to even be noticed.

But I can hardly be upset about that because I totally love how it turned out!  I got some fabulous chipping.

I replaced some ugly yellow floral 70’s porcelain knobs with vintage glass knobs.  In fact, these are the knobs that came off farmhouse dresser no. 5.  I’m happy to have put them to good use!

I thought that it would be fun to stage all of my furniture pieces for Christmas during the month of December.  For this one I used a boxwood wreath that I just purchased at Target.  It’s the 11″ wreath from the Smith & Hawkin line.  It was on sale for $17.99.  It was Rhonda’s comment on my mirror post that inspired me to use the small wreath on this piece, wasn’t it a great idea?!  Thanks for that Rhonda!

I added a little box of vintage mini-ornaments.

And my favorite tiny Christmas elf.

Here’s a photo without the wreath just to give you a better look at the mirror.

This little dresser is a bit bigger than my usual mini dressers at 35″ tall.  For the moment I’ve put it in my living room, but I don’t plan to keep this one.  It’s just a tad too big for me.

So it is for sale.  Although I won’t be too sad if no one buys it and I just have to keep it after all.

Sometimes it’s a bit wild how things just come together.  I believe some might call it serendipity.  In this case, I painted a dresser last Friday in one of my new Little Billy Goat colors called Prize Winner.

 It wasn’t until I started writing the blog post about it that I realized I would also be announcing the prize winner from my Thanksgiving giveaway in the same post!  Now, I’d like to be able to say that I very cleverly planned this little play on words with my paint color choice, but no.  It didn’t even occur to me until I started writing.

Well, with no further delay, the winner of the giveaway is Sarah M.  I’ve already contacted Sarah and she’s super excited about winning!

And now for the prize winner dresser!

It started out looking like this when Mr. Q purchased it via craigslist.

I was particularly drawn to the little finials on the harp that holds the mirror in place, and also to the fact that the seller included a photo of the label in his ad.

That little detail in his ad really caught my eye.  I love a good vintage label.

To me this dresser has a little yin and yang going on.  A feminine mirror with a slightly curved top on a masculine tall dresser with straight lines and no fuss.  I decided it would be lovely painted in a rich, dark blue.  I debated using Miss Mustard Seed’s Artissimo or Annie Sloan’s Aubusson, but then I remembered my new Little Billy Goat paint in Prize Winner.

After doing as much furniture painting as I’ve done, I’ve learned to not fight against the existing color on a piece of furniture.  The finish on this dresser was quite dark, so trying to paint it in a pale shade would have likely required several coats of paint.  I got away with just one coat of Prize Winner, with just a quick 2nd coat on only the top to touch up a couple of spots.  Yep, that is just one coat of paint on the fronts of those drawers.  I finished with Miss Mustard Seed clear wax.

Mr. Q did all of the prep work on this one and he really struggled with the knobs.  They all had some sort of glue holding them on in addition to the screw.  I suspect people do this sort of thing because they want those knobs to be FIRMLY attached.  They aren’t thinking ahead to some far flung future date when someone wants to take them off again.  In the end we had to get Ken’s help drilling out one of the screws altogether because it just wouldn’t budge.

Once the knobs were all off, I really wasn’t planning to put them back on again.  I was going to use some pretty clear glass knobs.  But the holes for these knobs were really large.  The glass knobs had too much wiggle room.  I consulted with Ken on this and he suggested we glue dowel sticks in all the holes, and re-drill.  A great idea, and it would have been the proper fix, but it would have been seriously putzy.  I vetoed that idea and put the original wood knobs back on!

I have to say, this color is really gorgeous.  I tend to have a hard time capturing these dark blues in photos, but these photos come fairly close.  The color might be just a tad darker in person.

Isn’t this little cup I used to stage this dresser lovely?

I’m pretty sure I paid about a quarter or so for it at a garage sale.  I just thought the design was so pretty.  For a long time I used this little cup to measure out plaster of paris when making my own chalk paint.  Now it’s filled with moss and I just keep it in a window sill.

Since so many of you mentioned how much you enjoy the ‘before and after’ pics, I’m going to try to be sure and include them from now on (promises, promises, but I’ll do my best).

This dresser is available.  If you are local (Twin Cities) feel free to leave me a comment if you are interested.

First, this is just a quick post to say thank you so much for all of your kind comments yesterday!  What an awesome day.  I really enjoyed hearing from each one of you.  Remember, you have until Sunday to get your comment in if you want to participate in the drawing.  So if you didn’t get one in yet, you still have time.

Second, I just wanted to share the fix for farmhouse dresser no. 5.

You remember, from the other day …

I had issues with the non-hardening filler that I used to fill some old drawer pull holes.  It resisted the milk paint and ended up looking like this …

Although I badly wanted to go along with some of you who said it was fine as is, in the end the spots really bugged me, which is what the majority of you said as well.

And some of you had some really great ideas for fixes.  I loved the idea of adding vintage wallpaper or floral napkins to the drawer fronts.  I thought the idea of re-filling the holes and adding some vertical stripes of paint to camouflage them was awesome too.

But in the end, I decided different hardware was the easiest fix for me.  Also, the spacing of the holes was just right for some glass drawer pulls from D Lawless Hardware.

Unfortunately, this fix was expensive at $38.90 for 10 glass drawer pulls.  It was a costly lesson about non-hardening filler and milk paint not mixing.  At least the rest of you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.

And although I think I preferred the look of the single knob over the look of a pull, I do think these pulls fit this dresser.  I feel better about not leaving the poorly filled holes as they were too.  So thanks to everyone who left a comment on that post with either an opinion or an idea for a fix.  All were much appreciated!

If anyone needs a fabulous chippy farmhouse style dresser with glass drawer pulls, leave a comment.  This one is available!

 

Last week my no. 1 craigslist spotter (that would be nnK) spotted this dresser.

Pardon the bad ‘before’ shot.  I forgot to take one until just moments before I started painting.  As you can see, my operations have moved indoors for winter!

The drawer pulls have been removed for sanding, so you can’t see how fab they are.  But the drawers pulls were what pulled me in (get it? pull? ha!).  This isn’t my usual style, but the price was also a no-brainer at $25.  Add to it the fact that this dresser had never been used!  Instead it had been stored somewhere with stuff on top of it, so the top was in very bad shape.  Lots of deep scratches.  But the rest of the dresser was in very good condition.

nnK sent me the ad for this piece within about an hour of it being posted, and Mr. Q went and picked it up about an hour later.  Items that are a bargain like this go fast on craigslist, at least here in the Twin Cities.  So, if you are wondering how I find these things, the answer is 1) with help and 2) by moving quickly.

Those drawer pulls gave me an immediate ‘pottery barn’ vibe, so the obvious color choice was black.

Here’s an example of a similar pottery barn dresser.  This one is part of a set that includes a bed.  If you get the queen size bed, the set is $3,569 … and that is a sale price!

Wowza!  Who are these people that are spending thousands of dollars on furniture?  All I know for sure is that I am not one of them!

Here is my pottery barn wanna be …

I asked Mr. Q to help with the prep on this one.  The top needed quite a bit of sanding due to the scratches, and it was getting pretty cold out in the carriage house.  So, Mr. Q sucked it up and sanded it for me.

Then we brought it inside and I quickly painted it with just one coat of Cece Caldwell’s Beckley Coal.  I chose chalk paint over milk paint for this one because I didn’t want a chippy look.  I probably wouldn’t have gotten much chipping since the previous finish was pretty dull and also because Mr. Q had sanded quite thoroughly, but I had some Beckley Coal on hand so I went with it.

After sanding to distress the edges, I add a coat of MMS hemp oil.

This dresser was fun to stage for photos!

I used a fab old birdcage that I purchased recently.  I plan to use it for a Christmas decoration, but for now I added some sheet music wrapped plants and used it in today’s photo shoot.

I used some of my painted books …

 and I used my vintage postal scale …

If have to say, if you’ve been thinking about trying your own hand at furniture painting, this is one of the easiest looks to copy.

But if you don’t want to do the painting yourself, this dresser is available!

Ladies and Gentlemen this is farmhouse dresser no. 5!

Any Lou Bega fans out there?  Am I the only one?

A little bit of Quandie in my life …

OK, moving on.  Mr. Q and I picked this dresser up one dark night a few weeks ago.  It was conveniently located just a couple of miles away.

The gentleman that I purchased it from said they had used it “up at the cabin” (a true Minnesotan thing).  I suspect there are many fabulous pieces of vintage furniture tucked away in cabins all over Northern Minnesota.  In fact, a small sidebar, after I posted my recent possum belly table makeover, my friend Meggan texted me and said “look what was shoved in the corner by the fridge” in the cabin her family had just purchased.

Isn’t that crazy?  Another possum belly table.  Meggan’s table is in much better shape than mine was and even has the original metal possum belly drawers!

By the way, I shared Meggan’s house on the blog a while back, if you missed it you can find it here.  I bet her new cabin (which, by the way, is on its own private island!) is going to be fabulous as well!

Anyway, back to this dresser.  It definitely has a certain rustic charm.  Initially I was planning to strip the top and paint the body white.  Every once in a while I like to go back to basics.  I actually mixed up the MMS Ironstone milk paint and painted one coat.  Then, I stepped back and looked at the dresser and decided white just wasn’t going to cut it.  So I added some French Enamel (blue), nope, too blue.  Then I added some Luckett’s Green.  Hmmm … too dark still, so I added some Eulalie’s Sky.  Well, you get the idea.  I mixed a bunch of different colors and ended up here …

This dresser had all but one of its original brass key hole escutcheons.  I had a couple of spare escutcheons lying around and I was just going to replace the missing one, but then I came across these little metal numbers that I forgot I had.  The color was perfect.

And thus, farmhouse dresser no. 5 was born!

When I pulled open one of the drawers, I thought for a moment that I might try to salvage the lining paper …

Unfortunately it was in pretty rough shape, and for this dresser to truly be functional I knew its new owner would prefer a fresh and clean surface inside the drawers.  After ripping out the contact paper liner, I found that the insides of the drawers had been painted already.  Some were pink and some were a very dingy white.  I gave them all a fresh coat of Fusion in Lily Pond.

You know I like to use Fusion on interiors because I don’t have to top coat it with anything.  Once cured, it is fully washable.  Also, this is just one coat and it covered beautifully.

The dresser came with glass knobs, but originally it probably had brass drawer pulls.  There were still two holes in each drawer.  Once again, I am having issues with my choice of fill material.  Remember I switched to a different brand and it resulted in purple paint?  Well, of course I knew not to use that again, so this time I tried a Minwax wood putty.  Here is the description of this product:

Minwax Wood Putty® is designed to fill minor surface imperfections in wood that has already been stained and finished. Unlike Minwax Stainable Wood Filler, it never hardens. It requires no sanding and no finishing, and comes in a variety of pre-mixed colors to perfectly match Minwax Wood Finish stains. Ideal for bare, stained or finished woodwork, paneling, molding, trim and doors.

Easy to use – no sanding or finishing required!

Yeah, well, I missed one small detail.  See it there at the end of the second sentence?  Yeah, it never hardens.  But you know me, I like to learn things the hard (pardon the pun) way.  Naturally the milk paint did not adhere to the wood putty.  That last sentence should have read no sanding or finishing “possible!” instead of “required!”

Dang.  And of course it’s the two holes on the top drawers that are the worst.  It couldn’t have just been the bottom drawers.

To add insult to injury, I didn’t notice this problem until after I sanded the dresser, which was several days after I painted it.  And remember that custom color that I mixed?  Yeah, I had used up every drop on the dresser.  I had no more paint.

My choices at this point are 1)  dig out the wood putty, refill with wood filler, and repaint the entire dresser (or at least all of the drawer fronts).  Or 2) leave it alone and assume there are people out there who don’t mind these sorts of imperfections.  I know that I don’t.  It’s not like I was aiming for a flawless finish.  I was aiming for a chippy, vintage, “I have some history” sort of look.  I am OK with this dresser looking like it spent the last 85 years up north in someone’s cabin.

Would I have preferred that this didn’t happen?  Yes.  Do I want to do all that work to fix it?  No.

But seriously, what do you think?  Would you be OK with the dresser as is?

 Seriously, I want to know.  Would this bug you, or would you just ignore a minor imperfection such as this and embrace the shabby charm?

I’m not sure if I should have called this “mid mod week” or “free is good” week!  Either way, I have another free mid century modern piece to share with you today.  Plus if you read to the end, I’m sharing a link where you can get a coupon for some free paint too!

My neighbor Karen (or as I like to call her, nnK) brought this table to me a while ago.  I think she said her dad, Big Larry, dragged it out of someone’s trash pile.  She likes to bring me trash.

Fortunately, she has pretty decent taste in junk (and apparently so does Big Larry).  She does lean towards the mid-century modern.

Shortly after she gave this piece to me I happened to be browsing through the latest Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co catalog and this page caught my eye …

photo via Schoolhouse Electric

See the bedside table?  Very similar to my freebie, no?  Certainly similar enough to provide inspiration for a makeover.  By the way, the table pictured above is available for $350 from Schoolhouse Electric … bwa ha ha ha.

This table was really dirty when I got it.  I scrubbed it thoroughly with a Scotch pad and Dawn dish washing soap and the brown gunk that came off this thing was disgusting.  Also, unexpectedly, as I was scrubbing with the Scotch pad the black paint started to come off too!  Underneath the black was the original green.  Once I dried it off, I realized I had to sand it to get more lose paint off.  Gack!

Once I had that done, I gave the legs and the bottom shelf a fresh coat of spray paint in Rustoleum’s Canyon Black in a satin finish.

Then I painted just the top level in Fusion’s Limestone.

And voila!

It only seemed fair that I stage the photos for this table over at nnK’s house.  She had the perfect mid mod props for me.  The atomic clock and the turquoise leather chair.  That chair, by the way, is another freebie.  She snagged it when the people next door to her were cleaning out the house after our former neighbor passed away.  They just thought it was an old ugly chair and were going to trash it.  It’s in fantastic condition, and that shade of turquoise makes me drool.

In hindsight, I wish I had worked harder to stage the table itself.  I just plopped a magazine on top and called it good.

But really, I felt like I couldn’t compete with that chair and clock.

I suppose I could have chosen chalk paint for the top of the table, but I chose Fusion because I wanted a little more shine than you get with chalk paint and wax.  Plus, it was a one step paint job.  Paint and let dry.  I did use two coats, but it really couldn’t have been easier.

Not bad for a free table, right?

If you have been thinking about trying Fusion paint yourself, now is your chance to get something for free too!  Clicking on the image below will take you to the Fusion website where you can request a coupon for a free tester pot of paint to be redeemed at participation locations (offer good through November 30, 2015).

For those of you who are local (Twin Cities), I checked with Jody at Farmhouse Inspired and she is participating in this giveaway.  Just bring your coupon to her and exchange it for a tester sized pot of Fusion in the color of your choice.

Hey, free is good, right?

This is not a sponsored post.  All opinions are my own.  I was not compensated in any way.

A couple of weeks ago my BFF’s sister texted me to say that she pulled a piece of furniture off the curb in her neighborhood for me (thanks again for thinking of me Laura!).  I’m always a little nervous about ‘free’ stuff, because it usually tends to need a lot of work.  There is often a very good reason why the current owner has kicked it to the curb.

But she then sent me a blurry phone photo and I was intrigued.  I do love a good MCM piece, and this one looked interesting.

Once I got a closer look at it, I could see that originally there would have been sliding doors on that bottom section, as well as a shelf in the top section.  I’m not really sure what the original function of this piece would have been, other than just a book shelf with storage on the bottom.  It does not have a pull out desk top, so you have to rule out desk.  The top part is not deep enough for a phonograph, so you have to rule out record player stand.  Although the bottom section is sized right for album storage.  Any other guesses?

Well, whatever it was, it now is a bookshelf.  I asked Ken to cut a new shelf for it, which was child’s play for him!  He also had to re-attach one of the legs.  No problemo!

This piece is painted in a color called Greyson from Little Billy Goat.

Unfortunately, this piece had some pretty significant water stains on the inside.  You can see them in the ‘before’ photo.  I painted over them with two coats of Greyson, but those stains were going to just keep bleeding through.  I could have sealed them with some shellac or Tough Coat Sealer, but in the middle of the night a brilliant idea came to me.  Paint the back in Fusion’s new metallic, Brushed Steel.  Eureka!

It’s a little hard to capture in photos, but I think the Brushed Steel looks amazing at the back of the cupboard.  It works beautifully with the Greyson.  And by the way, I finished the Greyson with my custom mixed dark wax which darkened up the color considerably.

Since I was loving the Brushed Steel so much,  I decided to ‘dip’ the feet in it too!

Oh boy, now you can see just how dirty the floor in the photo cottage is!  Please ignore that!

At first I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to stage this one, but then I pulled out some of my vintage cameras …

and some vintage suitcases …

and they added the perfect touch!

I have to admit, I’m kind of wishing I had a spot for this bookcase myself.  I need a bigger house.

But, I’m not getting a bigger house, so I have to let this one go.  If you are interested, leave me a comment!

 

The gals at Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater (one of the shops that carry my pieces) have started to sell a new paint line called Little Billy Goat.  When I popped in the other day I picked up a few colors to try it out, Greyson, Prize Winner and Momma’s Fridge.

I gotta say, the packaging on this stuff is fabulous.  It comes in a canning jar!  And each jar has a cloth over the top, how cool is that?  From a practical point of view, I have to say that I really love the canning jars!  It’s very easy to wipe the rim and put the lid back on.  Somehow much easier than a traditional can like Annie Sloan uses, and definitely better than the plastic lidded can that Cece Caldwell uses.

Mr. Q and I picked up this sweet little dresser a couple of weeks ago and I knew it would be the perfect guinea pig for testing this paint.

See that funky octagon on the top drawer?  There was an odd little piece of trim glued on there.  I took it off before I remembered to take the ‘before’ photo.  I gotta tell you, it looked like a nipple.  There.  I had to say it.  A big ol’ nipple in the middle of the drawer.  Yeah, it had to go.

Aside from the nipple, this sweet little dresser basically had no flaws.  I love finding pieces like this!  No repairs necessary, it just needed a new paint job.

So I opened up a can of Momma’s Fridge and happily painted away.

Wait, let’s back up a step.  First I visited the website for Little Billy Goat.  They claim their paint “rarely requires any preparation, such as sanding or priming” so guess what?  I didn’t do any prep.  Well, I did wipe it down ever so quickly with a damp cloth.  That was it.  In addition, the website says “adding water makes for a smoother surface.”  OK.  I’m down with that, so I added some water to my paint to thin it out a bit.  I like a smoother surface.  You can use it ‘as is’ if you like a more textured surface.

I painted two coats of paint on the dresser.

I then used white acrylic craft paint on the little details at either side of the top drawer to give them a little more pop.  I also added a small stencil to the middle of the top drawer.  I did that because I could still see a little ghost of that darn octagon nipple and the stencil helped to camouflage that.

Once everything was dry, I sanded lightly to distress and then finished with Miss Mustard Seed clear wax.  Little Billy Goat sells a clear matte sealer with their paint, but I have not tried that product.  I think I’d like to though.  I have to admit, waxing is hard work.  There has to be a better way.  I’ve always loved the end look of wax though, plus I definitely can use the arm workout.

The hardware on this dresser is very pretty.  I love the pulls on the lower three drawers.

I staged this piece with some vintage toys, a tiny chair and a gorgeous handmade baby dress.  Just look at that stitching.  This dress must have taken quite some time to finish.

Whereas this dresser did not!  The Little Billy Goat paint went on easily, covered well in two coats and distressed quickly.  I didn’t seem to have any problems due to not sanding my piece before painting.  So if you’re looking for an easy product to use to revamp your own furniture, this one fills the bill.

But if you’d rather purchase a dresser already painted for you, this one is available!

Please note, this is NOT a sponsored post.  I purchased this paint myself, all opinions are my own.