Category: furniture.

Last summer,  Jeanne and I hit the mother lode at a neighborhood garage sale in Minneapolis.  We came home with full truck.

It was one of those sales where the furniture was cheap and plentiful.  You gotta love those neighborhood sales!

I ended up with a dresser and two 1920’s built in bookcases (the tall dresser in the center was Jeanne’s find).

Yes, we fit all of this, plus more, into a Ford Ranger pickup.  We are masters at fitting everything in and avoiding a second trip back to the city to pick up our finds.

I originally thought I would paint the dresser on the far left with a Union Jack design, but as it turned out, I had purchased some of Miss Mustard Seed’s “Boxwood” milk paint, and I decided this dresser was perfect for it.

This dresser had such a shiny finish, I added a bonding agent to the paint.  After painting, I finished it off with a coat of SC Johnson’s paste wax.

Isn’t it gorgeous?!  The details just pop on this guy now.

Remember my faux European grain sack?  Well, I had a purpose in mind for it when I made it.

I saw something similar on pinterest and thought it was fantastic.  So when I found this hutch on craigslist, I knew I had to try this myself.  I’ll admit this piece was in much better shape than the pieces I usually work with.  I might have even felt a tiny little twinge of guilt over painting it.  However, I wanted to take it from ‘grandma’s hutch filled with her tea cup collection’ to amazing.  And I hope that is what I did.

I painted him with Miss Mustard Seed’s ‘grain sack’ overall.  The trim at the top, and the oval on the drawer are painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s ‘typewriter’.  I have noticed that many furniture refinishers swap out the hardware on their pieces for something new, but I prefer to keep the antique hardware whenever possible.  These drawer pulls were gorgeous and full of character, so I kept them.

With the grain sack ‘curtain’ this hutch becomes a fantastic storage piece that could be used for just about anything.

  Personally, I would keep it this way.  But, one could also remove the sack and use this as a display cabinet.

I think this hutch is a stunner.  I am SO tempted to keep him, except I have a very similar piece on my front porch already.  So, I will be delivering him to the Round Barn in Andover soon for some lucky buyer to discover.

I only recently started using Miss Mustard Seed paint.  I held out for a long time simply because it is kind of expensive.  Then last summer I bought a sample of it at the Oronoco Gold Rush.  As I feared would happen, I loved it.  Damn!  Now I drive all the way across the river to Hudson to buy it.

Oh … who am I kidding … I send my husband all the way across the river to buy it.  Thanks hon!

Working with this stuff has a bit of a steep learning curve though.  One problem has been especially prevalent with the green shades.  The thing is, you don’t get the same color every time.

It started with a dresser I painted in MMS’ Boxwood.  After painting it, I realized that one of the drawers needed to be completely sanded down and re-done (long story for another time).  I was pretty new to MMS paint then, and I just decided to use the leftover paint from the first go around.  I gave it a good stir and repainted the drawer … and ended up with a totally different shade of green.  Argh.  In the end, I had to repaint all of the drawers with a new mix of paint.

So really, I should have known better with the Luckett’s Green dresser.  But yet, I did it again.  One drawer needed repairs and was sent over to Ken for work.  I mixed up the paint and painted everything else.  This time I figured I could just mix up a new batch of paint for the last drawer.  If it didn’t sit around with the pigments separating, I figured it would be fine.  Surely it would be the same color, right?

Wrong.

Yep, there it is.  The bottom drawer.  Not the same at all.  I don’t know why this happens.  I use the same ratio of paint to water.  I am painting the same type of wood, with the same light sanding to start.

The lesson learned here.  Be patient.  Wait until you have all the pieces ready to go, and then paint them all at once.  In the end, it is worth it because you end up with this:

Live and learn baby, live and learn.

The other day someone asked me “is your house full of your own painted furniture?”  My initial reply was no.  Painting stuff for myself always takes a back seat to painting stuff to sell.  I always have that one item (or ten) that I need to finish before the sale, or before the next trip to the Round Barn.

But then I looked around my house when I got home and realized the answer is closer to yes.  Most of the stuff in my house is furniture that I have painted over the years.  And occasionally I paint something intending to sell it and end up falling in love with it and keeping it for myself instead.

Such was the case with the ‘owl pull dresser’.  I bought this from a young guy in NE Mpls via craigslist.  I was drawn to the owls on the drawer pulls.

Who could resist these?

I was drawn to the price too.  It was cheap.  I called the guy and he said he was moving that night!  If no one bought the dresser, he was just going to leave it in the apartment.  Holy mackerel.  I was on it.  I couldn’t get there before his going away party though, so he agreed to leave the dresser on the porch, if I would leave an envelope of money in the mailbox.  I know, crazy, right?

Once I got it home, I decided to paint it black.  I don’t do a lot of black anymore, but this dresser was so strong and masculine looking.  It was calling out for black.

Then, I did something really crazy.  This is the point where I have to swear you to secrecy.  Do not reveal my method!  I painted the whole thing with satin black spray paint.  After allowing it to dry for about 30 minutes, I then used a rag to apply paste wax.  The wax takes off some (or maybe a lot) of the paint.  This method is not for the faint of heart.  It’s messy, and you never know what kind of result you might get.  For this dresser, the result was fantastic!

I loved it so much, I knew I had to keep it.  And I had the perfect spot for it just inside my back door.  This thing holds a ton of stuff too.  Bottom two drawers are all shoes.  Top two are scarves, gloves and hats.  And those two little jewelry drawers at the top are perfect ‘his and hers’ spots for the little stuff … keys, sunglasses, spare change.

So, for now, I’m keeping this one.