Category: furniture.

Remember the fab little doll sized bow front cabinet that I purchased earlier this year at a garage sale?

Well, I decided to give it a paint job.  It was kind of sweet, but I knew it would be much more magical with a little paint.

I’d been admiring a milk paint color by someone other than Miss Mustard Seed … gasp … there, I said it out loud.  Not that I don’t love Miss Mustard Seed, but Sweetie Jane by Sweet Pickins Milk Paint just kept catching my eye.  It looked like that perfect vintage shade of blue green.  So I sent away for some.  Since the very first piece of furniture I painted with Miss Mustard Seed milk paint was this miniature hutch …

I decided to repeat the experience with Sweetie Jane and this miniature cabinet.

The product itself is very similar, a powder that comes in a little resealable package, mix it with water and so on.  And here is the finished product.

At this point, you might be thinking, ‘hey, aren’t those the same color?’ and it’s a fair question.  The color is pretty close to Miss Mustard Seed’s Eulalie’s Sky.  But the Sweetie Jane has just a touch more green in it.  At the end of the post I’ll show a picture of these together and you can see the subtle difference in color.

I filled this little cabinet with some of my vintage clocks to show that these can make great display pieces.  They don’t have to be used as toys, or filled only with miniatures.

You may remember that this cabinet was missing its shelves when I bought it.  Ken cut new ones out of cheap 1/8″ hardboard.  I painted them, and then added some vintage wallpaper to them.

You can’t see them in any of the pictures so far, but this little cupboard has lights inside.

There is one over each shelf.  However, the wiring to these lights is some sort of flat tape with a connector that I don’t recognize.  I have no idea if I could find the right kind of adapter to actually plug it in.

I haven’t decided the fate of this cabinet yet.  I may keep it, due to my fascination with all things miniature.  Or I may sell it.  Depends on my mood on any given day … well, and it also depends on whether or not I can find a spot for it.

Perhaps I should line up my miniature cupboards and keep them on the front porch.

What do you think?

P.S.  Jennifer has featured my home today on her blog, Town and Country Living!  Check it out!

My very slapdash on line research suggests this would be a Duncan Phyfe style sideboard.  Seems logical.  It has that neoclassical vibe that characterizes Duncan Phyfe.   I’ve seen a few sideboards like this on craigslist, but either they are priced far out of my reach, or someone else snatches them up ahead of me.  So when nnK sent me a link to this one, I acted on it promptly and arranged pick up for the same day.

Luckily Mr. Q took one of his strong manly heavy lifting type friends (OK, really he might be his only manly heavy lifting type friend) to pick it up because they had to carry it down a narrow staircase!  And since I have now had to move it a few times for very short distances,  I appreciate that I did not have to attempt to get it down some stairs.  It is very heavy and large.

It has that one flaw on the upper right drawer where a hunk of veneer is ripped off.  Otherwise, it was in quite good condition.  The major problem with this sideboard is that the original finish is hopelessly outdated.  Am I right?

So I gave it an Annie Sloan makeover.  A simple paint job in French Linen.

Such a gorgeous shade of grey.  Nice and warm, not too dark, not too light.

I even painted the insides of the two side cupboard areas.

I sanded the top a bit to make sure it was smooth, and it feels like silk now.

I staged this one quite simply with just an orchid in a white pot that I just purchased for 50 cents at a garage sale (the pot, not the orchid).  The orchid is actually from Home Depot and cost $12.99.  I added a stack of my Jeanne d’Arc magazines and the fabulous old binoculars that I purchased at a garage sale earlier this summer.

Sometimes I struggle between finishing something in a way that I know will appeal to a broader audience and will find a buyer more easily and finishing something in a way that is creative and unique.  I vacillated between those two choices with this one.  I thought about putting a stencil on either side door.  I thought about a two toned paint job, and I even considered stripes on the drawers.  In the end, I decided that a simple paint job would help keep this piece marketable.  I also felt like it had enough ornamentation on its own and didn’t need a fancy treatment.

Likewise, I simply cleaned up the drawer pulls and put them back on.  I always hesitate to spray paint hardware because I’m not convinced that it stands the test of time.  I think it scratches too easily and doesn’t necessarily wear all that well.  In a pinch, if the hardware is a horrible color, I’ll resort to oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  Also, I’ll paint hardware with chalk paint or milk paint if I intend for it to be chippy.  I think this hardware works well as is though, so I left it alone.

I’ll leave you with a final ‘after’ shot.

Anyone in the market for a Duncan Phyfe style sideboard in French Linen?

Mr. Q picked this table up in the middle of last winter.

Trust me when I say this picture makes it look nicer that it really was in person.  There are some big oily stains and paint splotches on the top.

I had visions of this table ending up all chippy and farm fabulous, like this one from pinterest, after a coat of milk paint.

So, I painted it with MMS milk paint in Luckett’s Green.  And all of those oil stains came right through, and half the paint chipped right off the top.  Not exactly what I was going for.

Then I did what all good ostriches do, I buried my head in the sand by throwing a sheet over it and using it as a workbench for the next six months.  But last weekend I decided to give it another go.  I added a couple of coats of MMSMP in Linen over the green.  I did not add bonding agent because I still wanted a chippy shabby result, but in a good way.  I really thought the Linen would chip as much as the Lucketts did.  I also thought the oily stains would continue to seep through, but I tried it anyway.  And for some reason, none of that happened!  Really.  I have no idea why.

So then I sanded the crap out of it and ended up with this.

Not quite the super shabby chippy look I wanted, but it will have to do.

And remember the oak chair I bought at the ‘breakfast meeting’?  I used the left over paint from the minty fresh vanity and painted the chair.

Now I have a pretty decent farm fresh table and minty chair.

I think the table is more versatile without its leaves because it can become a desk.  Plus, they were seriously lacking in structural stability, so I took them off.

This duo would be great tucked into the corner of a room.  Just enough space for your laptop.

It would also make a fun alternative bedside table, pair it up with something mismatched on the other side of the bed, all of the cool kids are doing that these days.

Or, go ahead and use it as a small table in the kitchen.

So many possibilities for a farm fresh table like this one.

Here is it July and I’m not sure if summer has actually arrived in Minnesota.  For those of you not local, the high temps this week were in the upper 60’s to low 70’s.  That is a little unusual, even for Minnesota.  I’m not complaining though, I kind of love it.  Perfect weather for getting stuff painted.

But, I thought I would add a little more summer sunshine into July with this gorgeous dresser.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

 This dresser had fabulous written all over it.  Lucky for me, nnK spotted it on craigslist.  Obviously it was gorgeous in its day, but it was rather the worse for the wear.  The trim detail on the bottom had bits broken off.  There were scratches and dings everywhere.  A couple of the knobs were missing.  Really, it just wasn’t meeting its potential.

My immediate thought was to paint it aqua.  Either Annie Sloan Duck Egg or MMSMP Eulalie’s Sky.  But something about that plan just didn’t sit right.  Then, lying in bed one morning, it came to me.  Mustard Seed Yellow with Linen accents.  I had done another dresser in this color scheme for Junk Bonanza, and it was the first piece of furniture that sold.  I just knew it would be perfect for this one too.

Let’s pop on in to the photo cottage and take a look!

The Mustard Seed Yellow is bright and cheery.  The Linen just makes the details pop.

Suddenly I am craving a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade, or maybe some lemon meringue pie.

How about you?

This beauty is for sale for $245.  I’ll be posting it on craigslist later today.  If anyone out there wants a delicious pop of yellow dresser, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you via email.

A while back my pal Cathy texted and said she picked up a FREE dresser for me!

Woo hoo!  Free!

Then she dropped it off.

Yikes.  No wonder it was free.  It came complete with a horrible paint job and some half removed stickers.

Then I got the brilliant idea that this would be a good candidate for attempting to strip paint.  You may remember that learning how to strip was my goal for this summer (not that kind of stripping, get your mind out of the gutter).  So far I have mainly just stripped varnish and stain, not paint.

After all, this dresser has decent bones, and those knobs are rather fab so why not give it a go?

All I can say is, wow, what a mess.  I didn’t take photos because it was so disgusting and messy, I didn’t want to go anywhere near it with a camera.  It took three passes with the stripper to get the paint off.  Everything was covered in paint/stripper goo.  My tools, my driveway, my apron, my shoes, my legs.  Egads!  And after all of that, the stain underneath that paint was one of those horrible red bleeding stains.  No amount of paint will cover that stuff.

Well, when you can’t beat ’em, you just paint ’em red.

This is Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Tricycle.  I waxed with a custom blend of clear wax and dark wax.

There are still shadowy areas in the finish that are a result of that stain bleeding through mostly on the top drawer front.

But that just adds to the character of this one.

Those knobs are pretty cute, and the base definitely has some charm.

This dresser would be great in a kids room, or maybe in a mudroom or laundry room for a pop of color.

I’m passing the savings on to the buyer with this one and pricing it at a mere $125.  If you need a cute red dresser, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you with an email.

P.S.  After a very productive weekend, the finished pieces are piled up like cord wood.  I’ll be posting something fab every day this week.  Stay tuned!

Mr. Q and I picked up this beautiful antique dresser on the other side of the city a couple of weeks ago.

The seller was a very nice gentleman, but as soon as we stepped inside his house I knew he wouldn’t be happy that I was going to paint it.  It was probably because the house was full of lovingly refinished antiques.  Lots of shiny wood.  Everywhere.

I wasn’t going to mention that I would be painting it, but he asked me outright what I was going to do to it, and since it was already loaded in the truck at that point, I figured it was safe to admit that it would be painted.  Sure enough, his response was “oh, I wish I hadn’t asked!”

I should have kept his contact information though because I like to think that he would be happy with the end result.  True, it’s painted, but I got the most lovely crackled finish on this one.  I feel like it almost looks more authentic painted than it did with its former semi-shiny poly finish.

What originally drew me to this piece was this trim on the sides.  I knew it would just pop with a little paint and distressing.

The top of this dresser was already stripped when I got it, and it looked so nice that I decided to just wax it.

The body of the dresser got a base coat of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Eulalie’s Sky, followed by two coats of MMSMP in Linen.  I was hoping for some chipping to reveal the base coat, but got very little.  You can see it peeking out just a little in some spots, but it is subtle.

I finished with MMS furniture wax.

I also painted the hardware.  That is milk paint, and I did not use the bonding agent.  So, as you can see, milk paint will stick to metal.  Not always!  But in this case it did.  All I did to prep the hardware was wash it with dish soap and a toothbrush.  Not only did this dresser have all of its drawer pulls, but it even had all of the keyhole escutcheons.  That is extremely rare with most of the stuff I work with (in other words, lower priced pieces, lol).

I staged this guy with some lovely hydrangea that I picked up at my local Bachmans.  I wish I could say these grew in my garden, but no.

I added some vintage wallpaper as a backdrop for my first photo shoot.

Then I thought perhaps I should try some shots with the window.

Now I have managed to provide myself with another conundrum.  With window, or without?

Both lovely.  At least I think so.  What do you think?

This lovely antique dresser is for sale for $245.  Ooops, this one is sold.

 

If you are a Miss Mustard Seed follower (as I am), you’ll have seen her recent post about inventing a new minty color for her friend Layla.

It was great timing because I had also recently pinned this fabulous minty chair.

And I was contemplating a fresh new color for the vanity table I was about to paint.  You’ll remember this vanity, I posted about it many moons ago and said I needed to get around to painting it.

Well, I finally got around to it.

I don’t know what I was waiting for.  I could say that I was waiting to find the time, but the really honest answer is that I knew I had to deal with some veneer issues and that was holding me back because repairs aren’t my favorite thing to do.  I like to just get on with the painting.  In the end, the repairs were really simple and didn’t take much time at all.  I simply removed all of the remaining veneer from the decorative scrolly bits at the bottom of the drawers on each side.  It came off very easily.  The scrolly bit on the left side of the mirror was a bit more work.  Ken had to rebuild a portion of it and then I had to do some gluing and patching.

But once all of those little tasks were completed, I was able to get to my favorite part.  Painting.

I used Miss Mustard’s recipe for Layla’s Mint, but then I added a little extra Eulalie’s Sky.  I wanted my mint to lean a bit more towards the aqua end of the spectrum.

For clarification, or if you are trying to match it, here is my exact recipe using Miss Mustard Seed milk paint:

This made more than enough paint for the vanity.  But when I am custom mixing like this, I always err on the side of extra paint.  I know it would be difficult to match it exactly with a second batch if I run out of paint, and this would be a serious bummer.  I plan to use the excess to paint an oak chair, and I can always add a touch of something more if I don’t have quite enough for the chair.

OK, so, enough of this babbling.  What do you think?

Once again I did not get any chipping, bit I did get some great crackling.

  I should back up and explain that I was painting this vanity in the Carriage House during a thunderstorm.  So we are talking some major moisture in the air.  The milk paint was not drying nearly as quickly as it did in the middle of winter inside my heated house.  So when I had painted the entire thing once, and realized the drawers I started on still weren’t dry, I got out the blow dryer.  I know that blow drying leads to crackling, but this piece was starting to crackle even before the dryer came out.

You may also have noticed that there is vintage wallpaper peeking out from underneath this piece.  I thought it would add a touch of fabulosity, but I was hoping it would be a little more noticeable.  My friend Sue says it’s sexy to have just a little bit showing like this, so I’m going with that!

I have some more of this wallpaper left and I think it’s gorgeous.  I’m sure it’s going to make its way onto another piece of furniture in the future.

Meanwhile, this minty fresh vanity is ready to go!

Wait!  One last thing.  Did you notice?  My first real photo shoot in the new studio.  I’m loving that floor!  And the faux wall is perfect behind the vanity (a window would have been very strange).  If you are wondering how I took this shot without appearing in the mirror, it was a combination of cirque du soleil style contortion-ism and being able to open the lower half of my door while leaving the top half closed.  Those Dutch doors are very handy!

I was overcome by mid-century madness this past week and the end result was not one, but two fabulous mid-century pieces!

I just can’t help myself, I always envision mid-century pieces in turquoise.  In this case, I used Annie Sloan’s Provence on both.

The first one finished was your typical mid-century blonde bureau.  We’ve all seen these before (sorry, no before pic), I even had one in my room growing up although my mom ‘antiqued’ mine in lime green.  I had toyed with the idea of painting the dresser white and orange, but in the end, the turquoise won out.

I loved the curve to the top drawers on right and left.  And can we just take a moment to admire the hardware?  Seriously.  I’m pretty sure the Jetson’s had furniture like this (am I dating myself here or what?)

I purposely did not add much distressing at all to this piece.  I thought it worked better with a clean solid finish.

This dresser is an absolute bombshell.  She is gorgeous in person.  Wouldn’t she work well with a wide screen TV on top?  And you could store a ton of stuff in all of these drawers, there are 8 of them.

My resident mid-century fan, nnK, loves this one!

The 2nd mid-century piece is this credenza.

I snapped this up on craigslist despite massive competition.  Luckily I was the first one to email the seller, and the seller was one of those people who believe in dibs to the first person.  It probably helped that I could send Mr. Q to pick it up right away.  I just knew this one would be gorgeous painted.

I used a combination of Provence and Old White, both Annie Sloan chalk paint.  I love the legs/base on this piece.

I kept the original hardware on this one too, I just painted the bamboo-ish portion of the pulls.

So there you have it, my fling with mid-century madness.

Both of these will be at my Carriage House Sale on Thursday evening.  I wish I could say that Don Draper will be there too, but sadly not.  We do have some hip mid-century cocktail shakers, and that fantastic turquoise chair you see in the pictures of the credenza though.

Is it possible to be in love with a dresser?  Because I think I am in love with this one.

I know, I’ve said it before.  And I’ll probably say it again, but this is one of my all time favs.

I’ve wanted to try using vintage wallpaper on a dresser for a while.  You’ll remember that I purchased some from my new friend Michelle at Junk Bonanza.  There it is, in the back on the right.  I also purchased the Annie Sloan Duck Egg paint at the same time.

All I needed was the perfect piece of furniture to use it on.

And I found it.  A lovely linen press dresser.

This was one of those pieces that was actually in decent shape to begin with, although it had some damage on one of the inside drawers.  I knew that the areas framed in with trim would be perfect for the wallpaper.

My process on this dresser in a nutshell was this.  I painted the entire thing with the Annie Sloan paint in Duck Egg.  Then, I used wallpaper paste to adhere the wallpaper.  It was slightly frail, and back in the day wallpaper was not pre-pasted.  I went back to my former wallpapering days and followed the same rules.  I ‘booked’ my wallpaper by spreading it with wallpaper paste and gently folding the piece in half, pasted sides together.  I waited a couple of minutes and then opened it back up and applied it to the dresser.  I smoothed out any bubbles and excess paste, trimmed around the edges with a razor blade, and cleaned off excess paste that had oozed out.  Once the wallpaper was dry, I waxed the painted portions of the dresser.  I did not wax the wallpaper.  I don’t think wax and vintage wallpaper would have mixed well.

What makes this dresser a linen press are the drawers inside that were intended for storing linens.

I added some label holders to the drawers.  They currently just have some of the vintage wallpaper in them, but one could change that to paper labels that show the contents of each drawer.

Imagine how pretty it would be to have all of your linens neatly stored inside this dresser.

I staged the drawer with some white quilted Euro pillow shams that will be available at my sale.

I have to tell you, it was ridiculously windy when I was trying to take these pictures.  The doors kept blowing closed.  The lilac on top was fluttering madly.  Seeds kept falling out of the trees onto the top of the dresser.  It was pure madness I tell you!  You can see the movement in the lilac in this next photo.

I once again painted the original knobs on this piece.  I had planned to change them out for glass knobs, but because of those interior drawers, I couldn’t have the screws on the glass knobs sticking out on the back side of the doors.  I could have cut the screws off, and counter-sunk the nuts, but that would have been quite a job.  I decided to just keep the originals instead.

Although you see casters on this dresser in the pictures, in the end I had to take them off.  They weren’t very sturdy, they kept falling out, and one broke off after the photo shoot!  Luckily I was able to repair the leg, but I wouldn’t recommend using casters on this piece.  In fact, I am learning to remove the casters from any older pieces that have slender legs like this one.  I love the look of the casters, but the reality is that they usually aren’t strong enough to handle rolling the dresser around on them.  And people are tempted to do just that if they are there.  I am warning all of you now, don’t roll your vintage dresser around on its antique casters.  You are inviting disaster.

So there it is, my vintage wallpapered linen press dresser.  This will be available at the Carriage House Sale!