Category: furniture.

For those of you not in the know, ‘waterfall’ is a style of furniture that was mass produced in the 1920’s – 1940’s.  The waterfall name comes from the curved front edge that the pieces all have.  In it’s day, it was inexpensive and was marketed to newlyweds.  In 1930, a couple setting up housekeeping could buy an entire matching bedroom suite of furniture including a bed, chest of drawers, dressing table and nightstands for less than $50.  Bedrooms suites were most popular, but you can also find dining room sets and other pieces.  As I was researching the history of waterfall furniture, I came across a new word, coiffeuse.   Apparently this is the French word for dressing table or vanity, and literally means a place with a large mirror where a lady could dress her hair.  In which case, today’s piece is definitely a coiffuese.

I seem to have a soft spot for waterfall pieces.  Something about their art deco style really appeals to me.  I used to have a waterfall buffet in my dining room, although I sold it last winter to make way for my dining room makeover (still in progress!)  A little while ago one of my readers, Victoria, mentioned that she isn’t terribly fond of waterfall style vanities, especially the ones with big round mirrors.  Ahem.  Well, I thought this piece would be a good chance for me to try and change her mind.

Once again, I went with stripping and staining the top in dark walnut.  The finish was in terrible condition!  But once I got it stripped, I could see that the veneer was quite pretty and in good shape.

There was also an interesting sort of dentil molding on the mirror and on the center drawer, and I decided to strip and stain that as well.

There is that distinctive curved edge I was talking about.

I painted everything else in Annie Sloan’s Coco.  This color is the perfect warm, greyish, brownish, neutralish, darkish, sort of rich color.  I would never have thought I’d like it until I saw it on another waterfall piece a couple of years ago.  Since then I’ve painted several pieces in this color.  I think I’m on my third can of it.

Another thing that waterfall furniture is known for is unusual hardware.  Oftentimes these pieces have drawer pulls made of bakelite.  My buffet had metal handles with bakelite inserts.  The pulls on this piece aren’t bakelite, but they are pretty fab.  I had to keep them as they add so much personality to the piece.

Remember the vintage radio I scored at a garage sale earlier this summer?  It was perfect for staging this piece!

As was my bakelite alarm clock …

I’ve used this old photo before for staging pieces.  This came from a big tub of family photos that my relatives in South Dakota have.  No one knows who this couple is, but they are standing in front of my grandparent’s home in So. Minneapolis.

I wish I knew who they were.  Don’t they look like a really fun couple?  I’m sure that she sat at a similar dressing table and made sure the wave in her hair was just right before this festive gentleman came calling.  She might have been listening to Bing Crosby or Glenn Miller on the radio.  She probably pulled on those fabulous cat eye glasses to read the love letter he sent.

They were likely heading out to catch a street car to Lake Harriet for the afternoon.

Her waterfall style dressing table probably wasn’t painted.  But I bet if she’d seen this one, she would have loved it!

Well Victoria?  Still not a fan of the waterfall vanities with big round mirrors?

Sharing at Finding Silver Pennies Sunday.

I hope today’s post is better late than never!  Usually I have my posts scheduled in advance for 7 a.m., but the rainy weather we’ve had of late here in Minnesota has not been conducive to photo taking.  Plus I’m working on a huge piece that is taking forever to finish, so I don’t have a lot to share.

Today I am playing hooky from work (it’s OK, an authorized vacation day).  So far it has been quite blissful.  Coffee in bed with a good book at 7 a.m., sold the marble topped dresser at 9:30 a.m., staged today’s photos at 10 a.m. and now I’m enjoying the Diana Krall station (any other fans?) on Pandora and pulling together this post while eating a fluffer nutter.  Anyone know what that is?  A peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.  I hope you aren’t reading my blog looking for healthy eating tips because you clearly won’t find them here!

Alright, on with today’s feature item.  Way back in June my friend Cathy nabbed this 50’s metal cart for me (thanks again Cathy!)  When I got it, it was plain white, and rather beat up.  The wheels didn’t say on and one of the drop leaf sides wasn’t working.

I started by painting it with Fusion’s Laurentien.  I just adore this color (have I said that too many times?) and it helped play up the mid-century vibe.

I painted the drawer front in Fusion’s Picket Fence, a nice crisp white.  I also changed out the original hardware, which was a tacky black plastic drawer pull.  This chrome cup pull is a much better choice for this piece.

Once the paint job was finished I decided to have a little fun!  I cut “eat, drink and be merry” out of white vinyl on my Cricut and ran it across the top.

Thus officially turning this into a bar cart!  The fact that the Fusion paint is fully washable after 30 days of curing time makes it perfect for this piece, because we all know that there will be spilled drinks!

I stocked it with some bar essentials; glassware, straws, ice bucket, etc.

I also painted inside the drawer just to clean it up a bit.

The leaves can be folded down …

or left up.

This cart would be so much fun for holiday entertaining, easily rolled out to where you need it.

Well, I’m off now to enjoy the rest of my vacation day.  I believe I shall eat, drink and be merry!  In fact, I’ve got the entire weekend in front of me for that.  How about you?

And P.S. the bar cart is for sale.  If you are an interested local (Twin Cities), leave me a comment and I’ll email you with details. SOLD.

Sharing at Finding Silver Pennies Sundays!

Today’s piece began life as a vanity/dressing table.  I wasn’t terribly fond of the mirror that was attached to it though, so I took it off and decided to reinvent it as a more serious piece of furniture.  A desk.  I don’t have a ‘before’ picture of it, but it was part of the matching set that included the dresser I painted last week.

This gives you some idea of the color of the finish; kind of a yucky orange.  Looking at the top though, I could see that the grain was quite pretty and I thought that maybe I could salvage it.  So I stripped it, sanded lightly, and then used a Dark Walnut gel stain on it, followed by a coat of Cece Caldwell Aging Cream.

So pretty, and such a nice rich shade of brown now.  Here is a tip for those of you who don’t already know this.  Always do the stripping and staining of the top first.  It will likely be at least a little messy, and that way you don’t have to worry about messing up a freshly completed paint job.

After seeing the end result on the top, I knew I wanted to paint this with MMS’ Marzipan milk paint.  The same lovely almond color that I used on the Ironstone and Almond dresser.

However, I did suffer a little hiccup in the process.  First, let me explain that the veneer at the bottom of the sides on this piece had gotten a bit of water damage.  As a result, it was quite warped.  I have a little cheater method of dealing with that problem.  I run a blade horizontally just above where the veneer is loose, then I remove the veneer up to that line.  Then I use some wood filler to smooth over the transition from veneer to no veneer.  It’s not a perfect method, but it’s fairly well disguised once it’s painted and it gives new life to the piece without completely removing or  replacing veneer.  I use this method when the veneer is too warped to re-glue.

So, that’s what I did on this piece and I used a different brand of wood filler than normal.  I decided to try this brand when my last bit of wood filler ran out.  It is Elmer’s Carpenter’s Color Change Wood Filler.  The packaging says it is paintable and stainable.  It goes on purple and when it turns white you know it’s dry.  Sounded like lots of fun at the time.  So, I applied it and waited until it turned white, sanded it smooth and then started painting with the MMS milk paint.  And yikes!

You guessed it!  The watery milk paint reactivated the purple!  Good gracious.  I probably should have seen that coming, but I didn’t.  I then got out the MMS Tough Coat Sealer and put not just one, but two coats of sealer over the purple.  Unfortunately, that did not do the trick either.  After it was dry, I painted over it and again, the purple bled through.  At that point I wasn’t going to mess around anymore.  I got out the spray paint primer.  Yep, you read that right.  Spray paint.  This is one of my oldest tricks for dealing with bleeding of any kind.  Spray paint will seal it up in no time.  And in this case, I really just needed to spray a quick coat over the areas with filler.  It did the trick perfectly, and once that was dry, my milk paint covered it up just fine.  It would be super clever if I had remembered to take a photo of the finished repair for you, but nope, I forgot.  But, you now don’t have to learn this the hard way.  Don’t use the filler that starts out purple if you’re going to use milk paint over it!

I again kept the original hardware with its fab patina, and I highlighted that raised trim detail with white paint.

Although the rest of the piece is all painted with the same paint color, I feel like the drawers are just a hair lighter than the body of the desk.  Sometimes that happens with milk paint.  Even though I mixed the paint all in one batch, I painted the drawers entirely first (while waiting for those veneer repairs to dry on the body), then painted the body last.  Some darker pigments must have settled to the bottom.  But, I do think that it works on this piece.  It’s just a slight difference and it gives a very subtle two-toned look to the desk.

So there you have it.  A seriously studious desk.  What do you think?

You all were very kind in leaving positive comments about my first Nieman Marcus knock off nightstand.  Thank you for those!

But I knew I could do better!  So last weekend while garage saling in Lake of the Isles, I picked up another candidate for the Nieman Marcus look!

This one has more delicate features and it has some great details that I knew would be lovely highlighted in gold.  Someone had done a rather awful ‘make-over’ on it in the past.  It had a coat of drippy, shiny, poorly applied poly on it.  In fact, it looked as though they hadn’t even bothered to remove the drawer pulls, but just poly’ed right over them!

This time I did use MMS milk paint in Trophy!

And this time I added gold to all of the details, the braided trim around the top edge, the carved bits on the sides and bottom of the front and even the drawer pulls.

I staged it simply with an alarm clock and some lovely vintage jewelry in a gold rimmed bowl.

I am much happier with this version of my Neiman Marcus knock off nightstand!

Which is your favorite?

Linking up with the Making Broken Beautiful party at The Curator’s Collection.

If someone had predicted that I was going to be stenciling purple flowers on a green dresser I would have said they were absolutely cray-cray.

But never say never is a good motto!

In this case it was sort of a custom job.  When my niece, Kristine, mentioned that she wanted a dresser for her new apartment and that she wanted one with doors at the top rather than all drawers, I began the hunt on craigslist.  I found one relatively quickly, and it was just over in Stillwater so not far away.

Fits the bill perfectly, right?

It had a little flaw.  Some of the trim above the left front leg was missing.

Ken took care of that in short order.

Kris wanted green, so I lobbied heavily for In a Pickle milk paint from Sweet Pickins.  I just love that shade of fresh green, and I thought it would add a modern twist to a vintage dresser.  But no.  She wanted MMS Luckett’s Green.  I’ll admit I cringed a little.  I’ve had trouble with Luckett’s before so I was reluctant.

But this dresser was for Kris, so I decided to suck it up and get out the Luckett’s.  I mixed up my paint and started prepping.  Then I got sidetracked.  I can’t even remember what now, but something came up and it was another two days before I started painting.  I’ve certainly used two day old MMS milk paint before, so I didn’t think anything of it.  However, shortly after I began painting I noticed something strange.  The blue pigment in the paint kept rising to the top in my cup of mixed paint.  I kept stirring, and it would blend back in for a few moments, but then rise again.  To make matters worse, I noticed it was also rising to the top on the surfaces I’d already painted.  I kept painting and hoped for the best.  Unfortunately, that was a bad plan.  When the paint dried it looked like this.

Can you sort of see how the blue pigments were floating to the top?

I was puzzled, so I emailed Jennylyn Pringle, the President of Homestead House Paint Co, the manufacturers of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint.  She very kindly got back to me right away and explained that the blue pigments are lighter (in weight, not color) than other pigments, go figure, and the best way to solve the problem was just to mix a new batch.  So, I did.  Here is a comparison of how the paints looked in my cups.

See that blue film in the “bad” cup, sort of like an oil slick?  That was my problem and it just wouldn’t go away.

So, another lesson learned.  Some of the milk paints can’t be kept hanging around for two days once they are mixed!  I know there are a lot of you out there that believe that milk paint just isn’t worth the effort because of issues like this.  I will totally agree with you that it can be finicky sometimes.  I certainly have run into my fair share of problems with this paint.  However, I still go back to it over and over as my favorite.  There is just something about the end result that makes it all worth it for me.  And on the bright side, I am learning these things the hard way and sharing them with you so that you don’t have to!

Anyway, I mixed up a new batch and painted one last coat and it looked fab!

Back to the custom paint job.  My niece wanted Luckett’s Green, but she also wanted a creamy white on the doors with a flower stencil in purple.  Well, it’s her dresser!  If she wants purple flowers, that’s what I’ll give her.  I painted the insets with Fusion’s Casement and the purple was an acrylic craft paint that Kris picked out.

Kris also purchased the stencil herself.  I’m not sure where she got it, but I can tell you that it definitely was not of the same quality as the stencils from Maison de Stencils that I am used too.  It was rather warped, which made it difficult to get nice crisp lines.  But Kris is very happy with the end result, and that is all that matters!

You may have noticed that I changed out the hardware on this one.  That came right after Kris made ‘that face’ when I asked if she wanted to keep them.  You know ‘that face’, the one that says “gag me with a spoon”.  OK, maybe people don’t use that expression anymore, but you know what I mean.  When I asked her “what don’t you like about them?” in an attempt to figure out what direction to go in, she said “they look old.”  Oh boy.  That’s usually precisely what I do like about things.  Hmmm.  I wonder what she thinks about me!  I’m pretty sure I look old.

Fortunately I had these ivory ceramic knobs on hand though, and once I held them in place we both realized they were perfect.  They even mirror the shape of the stenciled flowers.

They definitely gave it a newer, more updated look.

I thought I would have trouble finding the right props to stage this one for photos, but as it turned out I had some great vintage purple and green books.  And at the last minute I threw in my potted lavender.  The purple was a perfect match.

I certainly never pictured using a green and purple color scheme anywhere else but in the garden when I potted it up last spring, but hey, you just never know.

Kris seems very happy with her new dresser, and I’m certainly happy I was able to pull it together for her.  We brought it over last night and she’ll have just enough time to get it in place before their house/apartment warming party this weekend!

Sometimes buying and selling on craigslist can be a real pain in the you know what.  For example, last week I sent inquiries on three different pieces and never heard back on any of them.  The ads are still posted.  What’s up with that?  I’d like to point out that if you don’t contact your potential buyers, it’s hard to sell your item.  Just in case that isn’t obvious for anyone else.

OK.  I got that out of my system.  And what I actually wanted to say was that this time it was the total opposite.  It couldn’t have been easier.  I contacted the seller, she got back to me right away, and as it turned out she was located less than a mile from my Wednesday night Zumba class.  Not only that, but it actually was Wednesday.  Plus the seller was fine with an 8:45 pm pick up time.  So after Zumba, my sister and I popped over there to pick it up.  The cherry on the sundae?  The seller had it all ready to go in the garage.  We basically had to carry it about 10′ from the garage to the back of the truck.  Easy peasy.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any ‘before’ shots this time.  Oh well.  I got plenty of ‘after’ shots!

This is a marble topped dresser.

Since the marble is white with grey veining, I decided I should keep the dresser in the same colors.  I painted the body in MMS Trophy and the handles and trim in MMS Grain Sack.

I got lots of great chipping on this piece.  It’s been a while since I’ve gotten some genuine chipping, so that was pretty exciting (what can I say, I live a pretty thrilling life).

I staged this with a gorgeous monogrammed linen tablecloth that I picked up at a garage sale last week.  I just love a good monogram, even though I usually have no idea what letters they are supposed to be.  I’m going with SWS on this one.  Maybe?

The hydrangeas are starting to turn for fall, so I had to throw some of them in the photo as well.  These are Limelight hydrangeas.

Before I let you go, a public service announcement for my local readers:  if you didn’t happen to notice it in the comments last week, Jody at Farmhouse Inspired in Hudson is offering a 10% discount on the Junk Gypsy paint that I used on my painted pots last week.  Check out the Junk Gypsy colors here.  I think that I am “Modern Farmhouse” …

With a little “Coastal” thrown in.

Check out the different styles and let me know which one fits you!

I saw this beautiful nightstand on pinterest a while back …

Lovely, right?

I tracked it down to its source.  Turns out it is for sale at Neiman Marcus and it can be yours for a mere $799 plus $175 shipping.  Hmmmm.  Add in the tax, and you are looking at over $1,000.  For a nightstand.  Wowza!

I guess if you have that kind of money to blow on a nightstand, more power to you!  But if you don’t, you can create a knock off.

Start with a basic French provincial nightstand.

Paint it with Annie Soan’s French Linen (that’s what I did), or you could use Miss Mustard Seed’s Trophy.  I think that would come closer to the shade of grey on the inspiration piece.  I didn’t use milk paint on mine because I didn’t want to see much of the original white and green paint coming through any chipping.

Sand, wax and add a little gold rub ‘n buff to the details, and voila!  A Nieman Marcus knock off nightstand.

In hindsight, I should have added a lot more gold to mine.  Unfortunately, it’s too late, I’ve already taken it to Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater to sell.  Do you think they would mind if I popped by with my rub ‘n buff and added some more gold?

I know mine isn’t quite as gorgeous as the original.  The lines on my nightstand aren’t as delicate and fine as the $1,000 version.  And I definitely don’t have as much gold.

But seriously, at $125 for mine and over $1,000 for theirs … well, at least if you bought mine you could still afford your mortgage this month too.

A while back I sent Mr. Q to a garage sale to see if there were any pieces of furniture to be had. Sure enough, there were several pieces that he thought I would like.  At the time, a storm was brewing and the rain was just starting to come down as he negotiated the deal.  As a result, he didn’t spend as much time scrutinizing these pieces as he should have.  He paid for them, threw them in the truck and hightailed it home.

By the time he pulled in our driveway it was coming down pretty good.  We unloaded things and dried them off, and then left them in the carriage house.  Later in the week when I pulled this dresser out for a closer look, I discovered that all of the drawers were firmly stuck closed!  Ugh!  It was a case of the dresser looking pretty good on the outside, but really in very bad shape on the inside.

Handyman Ken and I literally had to remove the back of the dresser and pound each drawer out from behind with a hammer.  Then Ken went to work sanding all the drawers down and making a couple of other fixes that were needed inside to make the drawers open and close smoothly.  Once again, thank goodness for Ken.

After all of that hard work, I decided this piece should be painted in a dark and stormy grey to match both the weather when we bought it and my mood when I discovered the drawers were all stuck!

I used a mix of Urban Rooster’s Smokey Ash and Dixie Belle’s Hurricane Grey.  Honestly, there was very little (if any) difference between these two colors.  I didn’t think I had enough of either one to do the whole dresser though, so I simply mixed them together.

I gave the rich grey color even a little more depth by finishing with Miss Mustard Seed’s antiquing wax.  This dresser has some very charming trim on the front.

I wasn’t sure about the hardware, but my friend Meggan convinced me to keep it.  She loved the verdigris patina, and she was certain the color would work well with the grey.

I think she was right, what do you think?

I love the combo of grey and mustard yellow, so I used one of my fall painted pots for staging (you’ll read more about those in an upcoming post).

I think this one turned out quite nice in the end, but there was a lot of extra effort involved.  In the future I think I’ll try and stick with dressers that don’t have sticky drawers!

Linking up with:  Making Broken Beautiful Furniture Party at The Curator’s Collection.

I’m pretty sure that since the very first day my mom and dad brought me home from the hospital, my big sister Debbie has been trying to boss me around.  As the typical ‘oldest child’, she likes to be in charge.  As a result, she seems a bit annoyed every time I suggest that she is my ‘apprentice’ in the furniture workshop!  Nonetheless, I am proud of her work on the hutch that she completed under my tutelage (LOL, she’s not going to like that!  It’s true though.)

Debbie needed a small china cupboard for her new apartment.  She left her old one behind in New Jersey because it had seen better days and it didn’t fit in the truck.  I assured her that we could find something cheap on craigslist and make it fabulous.  So one Saturday morning about a month ago, we sat down at the computer and found a sweet little Duncan Phyfe style piece for a mere $80!

It wasn’t in bad shape, just a little dated in appearance.  The curved glass on the middle section is quite lovely.  Debbie likes the simple lines of this piece.  I tried to sell her on something with a little more detail on the top, but she liked this better.

So we unloaded it into my workshop and she got started.  She removed all of the hardware and sanded lightly.  I cautioned her against over-sanding because this looked like it could be a bleeder.  And sure enough it was.  When you have a piece that has orange or red stain that bleeds, you want to maintain the original varnish as much as possible to keep the stain sealed in.  Your next option is to re-seal it with shellac or the Tough Coat Sealer.  In the end, Debbie was able to get by with just a couple spots of sealer needed on the outside, which she painted in Annie Sloan’s French Linen.  The inside was a different story.  That required two coats of sealer to keep the stain from bleeding through the Fusion Lamp White that she used there.  We also ended up removing the back to make it easier to paint the inside.  It also made it easier for Ken to repair one of the glass stops that wasn’t holding the glass in place properly.

So much better, right?  By the way, Debbie calls it a ‘china closet’.  I suspect this might be an east coast thing.  I’ve always called these china cupboards, or hutches.  What do you call them?

And FYI, I thought I’d leave all of the reflections in the glass rather than erasing them with some editing software.  It makes for a fun detective project to figure out what you can see reflected there.  The turquoise t-shirt and white shorts?  That’s me.  You can also see Debbie texting, my old car (I just got a new one this week!), the carriage house … and more!

I hoped that Debbie would take my suggestion and add a stencil to her cabinet, and she did.  The “Family and Friends gather here” stencil seemed particularly perfect for a china cupboard.

Debbie finished the piece using my custom blended dark wax.

She spent nearly as much on paint products as she did on the cupboard itself.  The Annie Sloan paint was $40, the Fusion paint was $20 and the Tough Coat Sealer was around $15.  But she has more than enough of each of them left to paint some chairs for her dining table … her next project.  And even at $155 this was a bargain.

Didn’t she do a great job?  She should let me boss her around more often, don’t you agree?!