q is for quandie

Recently I shared the pair of chairs with the stamped fabric seats that I purchased on the day of chairs …

I also bought two little kid sized chairs that day, see them there on the left?

Here they are again …

At the time I stashed many of these smaller projects away for the winter so I would have things that were easy to work on inside the house.

I painted the first little chair back in November in a pretty Homestead House milk paint color called Maritime.

I just finished up the second one, and this time I chose Sweet Pickins’ milk paint in a color called In A Pickle.

I’ve had such luck with green pieces lately so I figured I’d try it in milk paint.  I’ve painted a few pieces in this color in the past and the little bit of paint powder left in the bag was just enough for this chair.

Just look at the gorgeous chippy-ness …

I opted to just leave this chair unadorned, so no stencils or transfers.

It’s perfect for providing a pop of vibrant color.

The milk paint has been top coated with hemp oil, which really brings out that rich color.  Here is how it looked before the hemp oil was added.

The little bowl with the strawberries on it is something I picked up at a garage sale many years ago.  It’s just one of those sweet little things that I couldn’t resist.

I’m sure at one time it had a lid, but now it’s lidless.  I store paper clips in it.  It never fails to bring a smile to my face when I see it.  I love the little lines of green around the base and handles.

I’ve hung the chair on the wall for the photos, I think it would be fun to use a chair like this as an alternative to a traditional shelf, don’t you?

I’m slowly but surely making my way through all of the smaller projects that I had stashed away for the winter.  Luckily spring is just around the corner (shhh, don’t tell me differently, this is what I keep telling myself) and along with spring comes garage sale season!  It can’t get here soon enough.

 

 

I sent Mr. Q off to pick up this lovely dresser one afternoon last week.  It wasn’t far away so it was easy for him to pop over and buy it while I was still at work at the day job (well, technically I was getting my hair cut on my lunch hour at the time, hi Tamara!).

It has a rather classic traditional style, wouldn’t you say?

You can barely see them, but it has a pair of hankie drawers attached to the top.  I’m not a fan of the hankie drawer.  I’ve removed them from many dressers over the years.  Having those two boxes permanently adhered at either end of the top makes it difficult to put anything else on top of this piece, like a TV for instance.  And in the case of this dresser, I think it could easily be used as a buffet in the dining room, but not with hankie drawers. Usually there are a couple of screws holding the drawers in place, and that was the case with this dresser too.  So, I unscrewed the screws, removed the boxes, filled the holes with Dixie Belle’s brown mud and you’d never know they were once there.

Other than the finish being a bit worn, and the holes left by those hankie drawers, this piece was in perfect condition.  I paid a little bit more for it that I normally would, but not having to make repairs meant that I could restyle this one quickly.

To prep the dresser for painting I sanded it lightly and cleaned it with TSP substitute.  Then I pulled out my Fusion paint in a color called Little Lamb.  In the jar Little Lamb looks like a nice medium grey.  What I forgot about Little Lamb is that once painted and dry it has a purplish undertone.  In some lighting (such as mine) it almost looks lavender.  It’s a pretty color, but not what I wanted for this piece.  Here is how it looked on a bookcase I painted last year.

But no worries.  I just pulled out another jar of Fusion paint in Putty and was able to get away with just one coat of Putty over the Little Lamb, so I really didn’t waste any time or paint.  I would have needed two coats of the Putty had I not already had that coat of Little Lamb in place.  In fact, sometimes I even do this on purpose when transitioning a piece from a very dark original finish to a pale paint color.  Start with a first coat in a medium shade and then move to a paler color.

Once painted, I hand sanded with 220 grit sandpaper to distress and bring out some of the details on this piece.

Remember, Fusion paint can be more difficult to distress than milk or chalk paints because it has a built in top coat and once cured it is incredibly durable.  So if you’re going to distress Fusion I recommend either distressing right away as soon as the paint is dry to the touch (which is what I did here), or using some beeswax or hemp oil under your paint to create a resist in the areas you want to distress.

After I distressed this dresser I stood back and took a look. It was pretty, but it wasn’t very exciting.  The next decision was whether to add some more detail that would really make it pop, or leave it more neutral to appeal to a wider range of potential buyers.  I always struggle with this decision.

After all, we all need multiple pieces in our homes and they can’t all be showstoppers.  Sometimes we just need a piece that is pretty, but doesn’t steal all of the attention.  Sometimes buyers are looking for a piece that they can work into their existing decor, not a piece that will require redecorating the entire room.

But there was something about the top row of drawers on this dresser that was just bugging me.

See it now?  Why such a big gap in between the drawers, with the drawers flush up against the outside edges?  It just feels weirdly off balance to me.  Those two top drawers should be more centered.  I felt the need to correct that visually if not literally.

I thought one possible solution would be to add some sort of decorative detail to just that wide middle space.  Maybe a small IOD rub on transfer, a stencil, or even an IOD decor stamp.

But as I was digging through my IOD transfers I came across this one.

At 36.25″ x 25″ it was the perfect size to fill the entire front of this dresser.  And the detail of the rub-on would do a good job of drawing your attention away from the odd placement of those upper drawers.

Unfortunately I had a little trouble with the transfer.  When I tried to pull the backing paper off, parts of the transfer stuck to it.  No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get those bits of the transfer to detach from the backing.  And one of the bits in question was the face of one of the lions.  I really couldn’t apply the transfer with one faceless lion.

So I contemplated my options and decided to just remove the lions completely.  I cut away those sections of the transfer and kept going.

As it turned out, I think I might prefer this transfer without the lions.  Maybe lions just aren’t my thing.

I reached out to my contact at Prima Marketing and asked if there was a solution to this problem (aside from cutting away portions of the transfer) that I should try next time.  And yes, there is!  If this happens to you try popping the entire thing intact into the freezer for a little bit.  That should solve the problem.  But I also learned that there were some issues with this in previous shipments of the transfers, but they have made some changes to correct for it.  The transfers going out now shouldn’t do this (I purchased my transfer over six months ago).   So if you tried an IOD transfer a while back and ran into problems with the transfer sticking to the backing paper and decided they weren’t for you, give them another try.  I’ve done quite a few pieces with them (I counted, I’ve done 17 pieces with IOD transfers!) and normally I don’t have any issues.  Although, spoiler alert, I have learned not to wax before applying an IOD transfer (you can wax after).  But that’s a post for another day.  For now, just trust me on that one.

In addition, if you do have a transfer that fails, go back to your retailer and ask them to replace it.  Prima Marketing will send the retailer a replacement for you.

Did you notice my new lamp shade from Light Reading?  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was in the market for another of their gorgeous lampshades and I did find one at Piccadilly Prairie in Southdale Center.  It looks amazing on the very Grecian looking lamp that I purchased at a garage sale.

I’m so glad I switched to the Putty for this dresser.  I love it in this pale shade.  Wouldn’t this piece make a lovely sideboard in a dining room?

As usual, this piece is for sale locally.  Check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details on this piece or other pieces I currently have listed.

 

 

After painting the tall mid-century modern piece in a neutral dark grey last week, I promised myself that I would go for a more daring color on its companion piece.

I have to confess, I almost backed out of that promise when I saw how amazing the taller piece looked in the dark grey.

But I stuck to my guns and went for a brighter color on the low piece.

Can you guess what color I went with?  And no, it’s not mint!

But it is green.

Yep, I just had to choose Fusion’s Park Bench.  It worked so beautifully on the last mid-century piece I painted and that piece sold in just over 24 hours, so I decided to see if I could repeat that experience.

The prep work on this piece was exactly the same as for the taller one.  I had to re-position the drawers so that they were inset once again, but other than that it was ready to paint thanks to the sanding and repair work that the previous owner had already done.

I really love painting a large piece like this with the Fusion paint mainly because it cuts out one major step in the makeover process, having to add a top coat.  Fusion paint has a built in top coat.  After curing for about 3 weeks or so, this paint is fully washable and water resistant as is.  You’ll often see people adding a top coat, and you can add one if you want to, but you don’t need one for durability.

I love this gorgeous shade of green!

On the taller dark grey dresser I used Prima Marketing’s Metallique wax in Bronze Age on the knobs, but for this piece I wanted to go with a brighter gold so I went with their Vintage Gold Metallique wax.

 

Now it just remains to be seen if this green appeals to a buyer too.  Fingers crossed.

If you are local and would like more details, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page.

As I was working on two mid-century pieces recently, I was thinking about how many blonde dressers I’ve done in the past.

I took the time to look back and realized I’ve done more than I thought.

My very first mid-mod blonde was a dresser that my friend Cathy gave me.  This was waaaay back, before I had a blog and before I realized that these pieces from the 60’s were coming back in style.  At the time I was just trying to make this piece more palatable somehow.

It was also before I realized that bright reflecting sunlight maybe wasn’t the greatest lighting choice for furniture photos.  And back when I was painting with plain ol’ latex paint and doing things like spraying the hardware white.

The blonde bombshell came along a bit later.  It’s painted in Annie Sloan’s Provence.

It had the most awesome drawer pulls.  They look like something that came off an airplane.

I think the vintage moxie pieces were my favorite blonde pieces to work on.

I painted them in Sherwin Williams’ Aloe (6464), which was the 2013 color of the year from their Vintage Moxie collection.  Seriously!  Vintage Moxie!  I had to use that name.

Aren’t those circular drawer pulls to die for?

On many of these mid-century pieces, the hardware is what makes the piece.

This mid-century nightstand is the first one I used vintage wallpaper on.

This was a case where I didn’t have the original mid-century hardware, so I gave it more of a vintage makeover with the wallpaper drawer fronts and the old milk glass knobs.

In March of 2015 I worked on another cute little blonde nightstand, this one made by Dixie.

It’s painted in Fusion’s Champlain and Laurentien, and I used the same vintage wallpaper inside the cubby hole area.  The flecks of gold in the wallpaper tie perfectly with the gold knobs.

Fast forward to September 2016.  Another friend gave me a blonde mid-century piece and surprise, surprise, I decided to paint it mint green.

The mid mod mint is painted in Dixie Belle’s Mint Julep with Annie Sloan’s Old White in the center.

Once again the piece has some distinctive mid-century drawer pulls.

Boy, it wasn’t until I saw all of these pieces in one place that I noticed how much I love painting the blondes with aqua/mint and white.

I’m glad I stepped out of that comfort zone when I painted my latest mid-century blondes.

You’ve seen the one painted in Dixie Belle’s Gravel Road, but you’ll just have to come back on Wednesday to see what color I chose for the 2nd one.  Here’s a hint, it’s not mint.

Unlike some lucky furniture painters, I don’t have a pole barn full of furniture waiting to be painted.  Although on occasion I’ve been known to have as many as 10 or so pieces out in the carriage house waiting for their moment in the sun, for the most part I don’t have room to store a lot of inventory.

I try to stock up a bit in the fall because typically by now there are slim pickings on Craigslist.  In February people in Minnesota are hibernating, they aren’t cleaning out the attic or getting ready to move.  Plus in the winter I’m obviously not finding pieces at garage sales either.

But I’ve pretty much worked through most of what I had stocked up and now I’m scouring Craigslist on a regular basis looking for candidates for a makeover and not finding a whole lot.  The occasional piece that attracts my eye ends up either too far away, too expensive, or else it has already sold to someone else but the ad wasn’t deleted yet.

When I initially came across the ad for this pair of mid-century dressers I gave them a pass.  I didn’t hate them, but I didn’t love them either.  I do enjoy working on the occasional mid-century piece, but I usually prefer older stuff.

But week after week I kept seeing this ad.  I suspect they weren’t selling because the seller wasn’t ‘working his ad’ very aggressively.  By that I mean that he wasn’t renewing the ad periodically to keep it towards the top of the list.  Over a month had gone by since the ad was originally posted and he’d never renewed it once.

Or perhaps the problem was that no one could see the potential in these pieces.

The price was certainly right, and after seeing the ad pass by a couple of times I stopped to take a closer look.  You know what I saw?  I saw two pieces where someone else had already done half of the work for me.  They’d already been sanded and were pretty much ready to paint (and when Mr. Q and I picked them up the seller told me that he’d also already replaced all of the runners inside).  So I realized that these two pieces could be a pretty quick turnaround.

Unfortunately, in addition to the sanding and repairing, the seller had also replaced the original knobs with these awful cheap knobs from the hardware store that are all wrong and have zero mid-century style.

But imagine my glee when I opened one of the drawers and found a Ziploc baggie filled with the original knobs inside.  Jackpot!

If you are thinking they look a bit grungy in that photo, just sit tight.  You’ll see what I did to spruce them up in a few minutes.

As we got talking with him, the seller happened to mention that he’d also made a couple of … well … let’s call them adjustments to the style of the pieces.  He said that originally the drawers with the long handles has been inset.  He thought that looked weird, so he added stops inside the dresser to keep the drawers from pushing all the way back.  Plus he moved the shims on either side of those drawers forward to bring all of the drawers flush with the front.

Now that you are aware of this, go back and look at the ‘before’ picture again.  Yep, now your eye immediately goes to those shims and you realize they look kind of odd, right?

I realized that I had to un-do those changes before I could start painting.  So much for the quick turn around.  But that being said, thank goodness the seller mentioned this.  I’m honestly not sure that I would have figured this out on my own.  I know I would have been puzzled about those shims, but would I have realized that two of the four drawers were meant to be inset?  Probably not.

I tried to remove the shims intact so that I could just simply move them back to their original location, but I ended up breaking two of them.  That’s when I called my handyman Ken for a consultation.  He came over and helped me get the rest of the shims off without breaking them (they were glued and stapled with heavy duty staples), and he took the broken ones home and cut replacements for me.  What would I do without Ken?

While Ken was working on that I had to take care of one last problem before I could start painting.

It wasn’t until I was wiping the drawers down to paint them that I noticed there was a hole on either side of the long wooden drawer pulls.  I’m guessing that there used to be a metal cap of sorts on either end of that pull.  I wish I’d found those inside a drawer in a Ziploc baggie, but no such luck.  So I needed to fill those holes.  I used my usual trick of placing a piece of tape on the back side of the hole, but then this time I filled them using Dixie Belle’s brown Mud.  It cracks me up that the label says ‘straight from the swamps of Dixie’.

Fortunately it does not smell like it’s straight from the swamps of Dixie 😉

I used a putty knife to press the mud into the holes and then I let it dry.  Once the first pass was dry I went over the holes a second time with the mud to make sure they were level with the drawer front.  Once dry again, I sanded them smooth and cleaned the drawer fronts with a damp rag.

Now came the fun part, the paint!  I always struggle with deciding between choosing a more neutral color that I think will sell more easily and choosing a more vibrant color that will be fun to paint with but may not appeal to as many buyers.  So I made a deal with myself to paint one piece in a neutral and one in a brighter color.  Today I’m starting with the taller piece, and it’s going more neutral.

Dixie Belle’s Gravel Road, to be precise, which is a warm, dark grey.  Once again I used Dixie Belle’s recommended method of painting.  I dipped my brush in water periodically to thin down the paint.  The paint goes on so smoothly using this technique.  It does also thin it down a fair bit, so two coats were required.  Also, in case you are wondering I used about half of the 16 oz jar for this dresser, so less than $10 worth of paint.

I use Dixie Belle’s Best Dang Wax! in brown as a top coat.  I like how the brown wax warms up and deepens the color a bit.

Before putting those original brass knobs back on, I washed them with soap and warm water and then once dry I added some Prima Marketing Metallique wax.  I debated using the Old Silver and although I think that would have looked gorgeous, I went with the warmer tone of the Bronze Age instead.

I like to apply it with a q-tip (although some people just use a fingertip).  The trick is to apply even coverage and then leave the knobs alone to ‘dry’ for a couple of hours.  Once dry you can buff lightly to add some shine.

They look amazing on the dresser.  It was so lucky that I was able to put the original knobs back on this piece.

I have to admit that I did not have high expectations for this dresser.  I really expected to improve it somewhat with a paint job and call it good.

But in the end, after salvaging a bit of the original mid-century modern style, I am amazed by the transformation.

How about you?