Category: furniture.

Hop into my time machine.  We are setting the dial way back to the 70’s.  That was when my family moved from Minnesota to Florida (yes, I came back to Minnesota, 11 years later).  I was about to go into 9^th grade, and was totally traumatized because I had to leave my BFF behind and start all over.  To cushion the blow, my mom let each of us kids decorate our new rooms.  We could choose wallpaper for one feature wall and a carpet color.  Naturally, I chose bright lime green and yellow for my color scheme.  Who wouldn’t?  It was the 70’s.

My wallpaper was very glossy and had yellow tulips with lime green leaves on a white background.  The carpet?  Lime green plush, of course.  Those of you who knew me back in the day are now smirking because you are remembering my citrus hued paradise, right?

I had one of those blonde bedroom sets with the bookcase headboard and a long low dresser.  This was when ‘antiquing’ furniture was in.  Does anyone else remember this technique?  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how it worked, but I think you painted a basecoat color (in my case, more lime green) and then added a very streaky antiquing glaze on top.  It was all the rage, and I’m sure I was thrilled that my mom was willing to do this to my furniture.

I thought I was going to have to describe the room and hope that you could picture it because I couldn’t find any photos, but then I mentioned it to my friend Annie who was sure she had some somewhere.  She dug around and found this!

This, my friends, is Annie herself!  Back when we endlessly took ‘super model’ pictures of each other.  And yes, if you’re wondering, this is the same Annie that is in the kitchen photo.  There is my wallpaper in all its glory, and my ‘antiqued’ headboard.  Pay no attention to the Shawn Cassidy poster on the wall.  I did not kiss him goodnight every night before bed, I swear.  Isn’t my yellow swag light ‘da bomb?

Well, enough nostalgia, flash forward to a week or so ago when I picked up a dresser that is very similar to the one I had back then.  A mid-century blonde (dear lord, I could be talking about myself).

I definitely won’t be antiquing it in lime green.  But … I am thinking of COLOR.  I love what people are doing with tangerine, but am not sure how well it sells.

I also love the retro shades of green.  Not quite the 70’s lime green, leaning more towards avocado.  One point in favor of this color is the fact that I already have the paint.  I used it on ‘the Hannigan’.

Or I could return to my old standby, turquoise.  People seem to love it.  Heck, I adore most any shade of aqua.  But raise your hand if you are sick of seeing me paint stuff turquoise!

I won’t hold it against you if you raised your hand.

No matter what color I pick, I plan to crank the 70’s tunes (maybe even a little Shawn Cassidy) and sing along while I paint it and remember fun times circa 1978, compliments of Annie’s foray into her scrapbooks and several lost hours spent scanning and forwarding pics like this one of me and my dad.

Good times.  Thanks for digging these up Annie!

My idea of a perfect Friday date night involves driving around the Twin Cities with my hubby picking up furniture from Craigslist sellers.  This may not be everyone’s idea of romance, but I love it.  And he says he enjoys it too, and I’m pretty sure he’s not faking it.  We have quality one on one time in the truck while driving halfway across town.

Last weekend was no exception as we picked up three new items to work on.   However, with my sister’s visit and potentially some Miss Mustard Seed retailer training coming up, I may not have time to paint furniture for a week or two.  So, I thought I’d show you what I found and you can have fun imagining what I might do with them.

First up is the dresser that we picked up in Linden Hills.

I’d only been to Linden Hills during garage sale season, never in the winter.  I wish I had taken my camera!  There were twinkle lights in all the trees and with our recent snowfall it was the most charming winter wonderland.   Sometimes I get the history of items when I buy them.  In this case, the dresser was a family piece.  It originally belonged to the seller’s grandparents.  It was one of those pieces that everyone wants kept in the family, but no one actually wants to be the one to keep it.  He said his siblings wanted him to just store it in the basement rather than sell it, but if you had seen the staircase to the basement, you’d understand why he refused to do this.

This dresser is a beast, 26″ deep and 54″ wide.  Yet it is oddly low at 32″ which is just a tad higher than a desk would be.  It has a mirror that is 36″ tall though, so adding it would make the entire thing nearly 6′ tall.   The mirror is extremely heavy, and doesn’t seem to mount very securely.  I won’t be putting it back on.

It has this very slender drawer in the middle, only 3″ deep.  I picture it being used for linens.  I suppose you could fill it with lingerie, but it just doesn’t seem like a drawer meant for clothing.  Whatever this dresser was originally meant for, I think it would make the perfect perch for a widescreen TV.  It’s low enough to be at a comfortable height for viewing, and wide enough that a giant TV won’t look out of place on top of it.  I just need to decide what color to paint it.  I confess that once again I really want to paint it in Kitchen Scale.  What is wrong with me?  I also think it would be lovely in Artissimo.  Or maybe the new MMS color, Trophy, which is a lovely grey.

Next, we have this little French cane back chair.

I don’t do many chairs.  I find that they take twice as long to paint, and sell for half as much as a dresser.  But this one was just too fantastic to pass up, and for a while now I’ve been wanting to try some simple upholstery work to see if it’s as easy as it looks (don’t burst my bubble and tell me it isn’t).  Plus, my friend Sue agreed to help me with any sewing that might be necessary.  In addition, my reader Victoria is working on some chairs and she got me thinking about chairs again (how are your chairs coming along Victoria?).  Last, but not least, Miss Mustard Seed has several chairs in this style and I think they are seeing a resurgence in popularity as a result.  So I decided to go for it.

Finally there is this unique little hutch.  I’ll admit, I paid too much for it and we drove all the way to Buffalo to pick it up (about an hour away).  I negotiated as much as possible for a better price and the price was fair, if not a bargain.  As I explained to Mr. Q on the way home, I have a purchasing philosophy that goes like this.  About 75% of what I buy to resell needs to be bargain basement cheap, something that I can repair/repaint/repurpose and make a good profit.  However, about 25% of what I buy is just something that I think is fantastic and even if I won’t make much profit on it, I must have it!

Thing is, I have been drooling over this pale grey hutch (below) on pinterest for months now, and never thought I would find anything even remotely like it.  The one I found isn’t quite the same, but I think it can be nearly as fab.  At least I hope so.

So, that’s the line up.  My goal will be to get all of these items painted by the end of February.  Wish me luck!

I haven’t been painting with the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint for all that long.  I was determined to live without it because, let’s face it, it is pricey.  Then last summer at the Oronoco Gold Rush, I purchased a sample of Eulalie’s Sky.  Just a tiny sample, mind you.  I thought I would try it out on a picture frame, or some similar small item.  Just to see what all the fuss was about.

Then I came across the most darling little toy cupboard at a garage sale.  I so wish that I had taken a before picture of this for you, because it was in terrible shape.  The door was falling off, it had been painted black which was crackled to show white underneath.  It had giant fluorescent yellow knobs on the drawers.  Worst of all, it was $20.  In garage sale money, this is a lot.  You know about garage sale money, right?  OK, it’s just regular money, but it’s the concept that prices that would seem a total bargain at a shop are outrageous at a garage sale.  I’m pretty sure that Jeanne thought I was nuts when I picked it up to purchase.

I decided this was the perfect candidate for a test of the milk paint.  I sanded the black paint off, mixed up the milk paint and gave it a go.  If I remember correctly, I ended up doing about 4 coats of paint.  I may have definitely added a little too much water.

Isn’t it sweet?  Inside you will find my grandmother’s tiny toy tea set, and some vintage toy kitchen utensils.

I was really impressed by how easy it was to distress this paint.  No more heavy duty sanding, this just needed a light touch of hand sanding and gave these results.

P.S.  I seem to have a penchant for tiny furniture.  I also found this cute little pink cupboard at a garage sale and it works perfectly for housing my collection of washi tape in my craft room.  So, if you see any fab vintage toy furniture at a garage sale … just back off.  It’s mine.

I know it sounds cliche, but furniture speaks to me.  No, I’m not crazy, I don’t really hear voices in my head.  But I like to get a feel for a piece of furniture before I decide how to paint it.  This one wanted to be indigo.  Like the Pottery Barn catalog I showed you earlier.  This was the intended recipient of my mixology experiment.

It didn’t quite get there.  It’s a bit darker than I imagined, which is totally my fault because I finished with hemp oil and I should have waxed.  I’d even purchased the Miss Mustard Seed wax just for this piece, so why did I reach for the hemp oil?  Was I tired?  Was it that glass of wine I had with dinner?  I don’t know … but it is what it is.

You can see that I got plenty of chipping on this piece.  I also sanded off a lot more paint than I intended.  Blame that on the wine too, although the reality is you can blame it on working at night with inadequate lighting and the impaired vision of someone in my age bracket.  I have found that even with ‘cheaters’ sometimes my vision just doesn’t cut it at night anymore.

This chippy distressed look is exactly what I like, but I know it’s not for everyone.  Hopefully I will find a buyer who loves it too.

I think in the right room it would be a masterpiece.  Add some more touches of indigo in some throw pillows or bed linens.  Lovely.

On the agenda for this weekend, here is the dresser that I want to paint indigo blue.

Before anyone blows a gasket about painting wood, or antiques, let me explain the most glaring problem with this piece.  It’s missing one drawer pull.  Just one.  Sigh.  I want to post a public notice that explains to people that missing ‘just one’ handle is a problem.  I’ve purchased countless pieces that are missing just one handle, and the seller always thinks this is minor, it’s ‘just one’.  At first I was optimistic about this guy.  I took a handle off and carried it around in my purse for weeks.  I checked eBay, Etsy, Rochler, etc.  I naively thought I could find a match.  Ha!  Then, I thought that if I could find something very similar, I could buy two and put them on the top drawer and leave the rest.  Ha!  For about 5 minutes I entertained the notion of putting entirely different knobs on just the top drawer … but, I’m pretty sure that would look stupid.  Any way you cut it, the integrity of this piece as an antique is pretty much lost along with ‘just one’ drawer pull.

Another issue with this guy are the little knobs that were added to the top jewelry drawers.  Follow the arrow on my photo:

Yep, I’m pretty sure those are not original.  They kind of overlap the key hole, and they aren’t screwed into the wood very far because the metal lock mechanism is behind them.  I’m definitely not an expert and I don’t even play one on TV, but I think these small drawers were intended to be opened with the key, not a knob.  Are there any experts reading this?  If so, please enlighten me if I’m wrong.  Either way, I’m taking them off.  Luckily, I have a key!  It didn’t come with the dresser, but I have a stash of old furniture keys and found one that will open all of the locks except ‘just one’ (naturally)!

One last furniture lesson for today.  This piece also has ‘pin and cove’ joinery.  From what I have read online, where all serious scholars do their research, this type of joinery was only done in the U.S., and only for a relatively short period of time around the 1890’s.

So, yes, this dresser is old, but is it an antique?  Here is how Wikipedia defines an antique:

An antique (Latin: antiquus; “old”, “ancient”) is an old collectable item. It is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human society.

It is common practice to define “antique” as applying to objects at least 100 years old.

So, maybe it is, but I think ‘antique’ is in the eye of the beholder.  To me, the missing drawer pull and weird added knobs make this an ideal candidate for paint.  Especially if I can manage to make the paint job look properly aged.  That is what I am hoping to achieve.  Stay tuned.

I told you that I had a plan in mind for this guy, and that it was inspired by my painted books.  As a reminder, here is the before.

I went through a ‘black period’ a few years ago.  I painted a lot of black pieces then, including the desk that I am posting from right now.  And then, I was over it.  I did one black desk early last summer only because it was already black and I just touched it up.  Then I did the owl pull dresser using my bizarre spray paint method, and that was it for black last year.

However, while working on the painted books, I decided it was time for another black piece, and here it is.

I painted this with the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Typewriter.

That is my own vintage typewriter by the way, but I am guessing that Miss Mustard Seed has something similar that inspired the name for this paint color.

Here is how the paint looks once it’s dry, before sanding and adding the hemp oil finish.

Not great, right?  But after sanding and adding a coat of hemp oil, the black is gorgeous.

This french beauty is posted on craigslist SOLD.

I mentioned I was thinking of painting a dresser with MMS Flow Blue.  But, turns out the color wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

First, let me show you my inspiration.  The cover of the latest Pottery Barn catalog.

Nice, right?  Love those indigo blues.  Obviously there are many different hues of indigo on this cover, but are you like me?  You imagine a particular color in your head, and that’s the one you want.  The dresser I’m painting next is calling out for a rich indigo.  Not too dark, not too light.

I thought Flow Blue was what I wanted, but it’s not.  I have also worked with MMS’s Artissimo.  It might work for this piece, but it’s just a little darker than I want.  So, I thought perhaps a mix of the two might be just right.  I decided an experiment was in order, so I pulled out the paints and did some mixing.

In this picture you are seeing Flow Blue on the left, Artissimo at the bottom, and a mix of the two at the top.  I find that you don’t really get a good feel for the colors by just adding the water and mixing.  So I pulled out an old piece of wood and painted each color on.  I ended up doing about 5 coats because the wood was very porous and just drank up the paint.

Here is the board with the wet paint.

Since adding the hemp oil tends to really deepen the color, once the board was dry I sanded it lightly and added the oil.  Here are my final results.

After all of this, now I think perhaps Artissimo was what I wanted all along.  Or perhaps something like a 75/25 mix.  It was fun to play with the colors, and I think I have a better feel for them now.  I’ll probably look at my board in a couple of different lighting situations before I make up my mind what color to chose.  Stay tuned to see how the dresser turns out.

You may have noticed this chair in the pics of my front hallway.  It currently resides at the foot of the stairs.

It belonged to my grandparents, and in fact there is a seat cover under that Bemis grain sack that my grandmother needle-pointed by hand.

Originally there were six of these chairs.  They were split up when my grandparents moved out of their house in Minneapolis.  My mother took 2 and my aunt took 4.  When I moved away from home nearly 30 years ago, I ended up with one from my mom.  My brother had the other, but that’s a long story, let’s just say it fell off the back of a truck when he was moving … I think that was what he claimed.

Anyway … problem is, this chair has never really been my style, even though I love the fact that it came from grandma’s house.  In fact, I have photographic evidence.

This photo was actually taken before I was born.  That is my mom on the far right.  The blonde girl is my cousin Nancy who is somewhere around 8 years older than me.  And in the foreground, the chair in question.  So you see, it is older than I am!

I had been living with this chair in its original state for about 25 years when I finally decided to paint it.  I’m fairly certain that my family still thinks that it was sacrilegious, but I did it anyway.  However, this was before I discovered MMS milk paint, and since I find it rather putzy to paint chairs with a brush, I spray painted it.  Then I covered the seat in the Bemis sack, but I did retain the needle point cover underneath.

I thought I would like it in the grey, but I have to say, the spray paint grey was never quite right.

Recently, I purchased some MMS milk paint in Flow Blue.  I wasn’t at all sure what the color would look like in person, having never used it before.  I find that looking at the Miss Mustard Seed paint online doesn’t always give you an accurate picture of her colors.  I’m considering Flow Blue for a dresser I want to paint, but first I wanted to paint something smaller to see what it really looked like up close and personal.

First things first, I mixed the paint.  I think this is one of the reasons why I like MMS paint, I like mixing it.  It sort of reminds me of making mud pies as a kid.

I purchased these measuring cups at a garage sale for a dollar.  Why not use something pretty to measure my paint?  So, I used about 1/4 cup of the powder and about 3/4 cup of warm water.  This made plenty for the chair.  As you can see, the color of the powder is no indication of the color of the paint.  I mix my paint in canning jars.  I prefer my paint shaken, not stirred.

I admit, I was a little scared when I saw the paint.  Quite a bit brighter than what I had pictured.

Here it is going on, and then as it dried.

Oh my gosh!  I just realized, reading this post may be no more interesting than watching paint dry for some people.  If you are one of them, I apologize, please feel free to skip to the end of the post if you haven’t already.

But for those of you interested in milk paint, I’ll tell you that as this dried, I could see I would get a lot of chipping.  I’m sure this is because I painted over a spray painted finish.  I did sand the surface, and the well sanded areas didn’t chip, but the rest did.  Also, I can tell you that yes, it was still a sort of bright, scary blue as shown above.  However, after I sanded it down and added a topcoat of hemp oil, the color toned down a bit.

And here it is.

I have to say, it is not quite the color I expected.  I was thinking it would be a bit more of an indigo blue.  Not quite so teal.  You can see that the grey shows through where the new paint flaked off.  It is pretty, but I am not sure now if I will use it on the dresser I intended it for.

For now, grandma’s chair has returned to the bottom of the stairs.

Those of you with a keen eye for detail will notice that the carpet has been removed from the stairs.  Shhhh … don’t tell the others, they may not notice.  I’ll post more on project domino effect soon.

One more little note to this story.  I mentioned above that my aunt ended up with 4 of the chairs.  A couple of years ago, she was downsizing to a much smaller home and she mentioned that she didn’t have room for the chairs.  She had offered them to her daughter (cousin Nancy in the picture above) and all of her grandchildren, and sadly no one wanted grandma’s chairs.  At that point, she said to me “I would give them to you, but I know you would paint them.”  Ouch!  I guess she knew me well.  Ultimately though, Nancy took them.  She removed and saved the needlepoint seats and tried to sell the chairs on craigslist with no luck.  Finally, she gave up and offered the chairs to me.  And yes,  I painted them and covered the seats in grain sack.  Then I sold them at my occasional sale to a lovely woman who is using them in her dining room.  Isn’t it better for them to be refurbished and go to someone who will use them?

I’m sorry Aunt Marilyn, but I still think I did the right thing.

Here it is!  My recent craigslist find.  OK, so I couldn’t help myself.  I had to do just one more Kitchen Scale buffet.  I chose to use this color again for several reasons.  First, I had many inquiries on my craigslist ad for the last one and it sold really quickly, so clearly it’s a popular color.  Second, it’s just so darn easy to work with.  And third, I just knew this buffet would also be stunning in this color.

So, here it is.  Vintage buffet no. 3

So very lovely.

Once again, this one had just the right amount of chippyness.  You can see the detail in this picture of the leg.  Also, I think this picture is a better representation of the actual color.

I chose to not paint the inside (as usual) because it’s just so putzy.  I know there are furniture restorers out there that do gorgeous things with the insides of their pieces, like adding a fabric lining and so on, but that isn’t me.  Plus, this isn’t an item that will sit around with its doors open for all the world to see.

This one is for sale on craigslist, you can see the ad here.  Update:  this one did not sell on craigslist, so I brought it up to the Round Barn.  I think it will do better there!  It’s so pretty in person, surely someone will fall in love with it.

Don’t worry, I promise not to use Kitchen Scale on the next one.  Even I am growing a little bored with it.

This guy is up next.  I have an idea percolating in the back of my mind, inspired by my painted books.  Check back to see what I do with him!

I love craigslist.  It boggles my mind that someone came up with this fantastic idea, and that it is FREE!  Really, let’s take a moment to stop and reflect upon that.  Thanks Craig, or whoever you are.  I really appreciate it.

The other day I was surfing the ‘list’, and I came across an ad for a buffet and this was their picture.

Yep … that’s the picture that they thought would encourage someone to want to buy it.

My first thought was “yikes! trash house!”, but my second thought was “gosh, that might be really pretty!”  So, I contacted the seller.  The first good sign was that her name was Linda … anyone named Linda can’t be bad.  The second good sign was that the buffet was still available.  After speaking with Linda, I got the full story.  Her brother was hired to clean out a friend’s abandoned house, and this buffet was buried amongst the rubble.  She posted the ad, but I would be dealing with her brother.

Off we went to the big city (that’s Minneapolis, for future reference) to take a look.  I confess, I was a little nervous.  I had visions of trying to clear a path through piles of trash to get to the buffet, maybe a couple of rats running to and fro.  Horrible smells permeating the air.  That kind of thing.   But in the end, Linda’s brother was a super nice guy.  Very friendly, and obviously not afraid of a little hard work, since he had already removed two dumpsters of trash from the house, and really had it looking pretty cleaned up.  He apologized for the musty smell of the house before we even went in, but I have to say, it wasn’t that bad.  I’ve definitely smelled worse!  Turned out, his niece was one of my husband’s former yoga instructors.  Small world, huh?

Anyway, we descended into the basement and there she was.  It was love at first sight.  I didn’t even try to bargain for a reduced price, or hide my delight.  I handed over the cash and said “I’ll take it!”

She isn’t super ornate or elaborate, not a lot of frilly details, but filled with sinewy curves that are just elegant.  And look at those legs!  Naturally I will be painting this … in fact, I am going to start as soon as I stop typing.  Check back soon for the after pics!