q is for quandie

I don’t know about you guys, but I try to use good judgement when making purchases via Craigslist.  However, I definitely don’t always manage to do so.  It feels so awkward to say ‘no’ to someone, so sometimes I end up buying a piece that I really shouldn’t.  I’m working on that skill though.  It can be really frustrating to take the time to go look at a piece, then get there and find that it’s not at all as advertised.  So if the piece is going to need tons of work and it isn’t priced accordingly (ie. dirt cheap), I’m learning to just walk away.

This happened to me a couple of months ago with a dresser.  It was priced right at the top of my price range.  That would have been OK if the dresser had truly been in ‘excellent’ condition as stated in the ad.  I was in the market for a piece that just needed painting.

However, in reality the piece was what I like to call a humpty dumpty (check out this post about the original humpty dumpty and you’ll see what I mean).  It would have required lots gluing and clamping to put it right.  So I didn’t buy it.  After looking the piece over and pointing out that it was not structurally sound, I simply said “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to pass on this dresser.  Thanks for your time.”

  That being said, nearly a year ago Mr. Q and I drove all the way out to Minnetonka to pick up two pieces from separate sellers.  I don’t normally drive that far to buy pieces anymore, but in this case I was able to arrange to pick up two things in one trip.  Plus the prices were really low on both pieces.

One of the pieces was this desk.

Obviously I was mainly drawn in by those cup pulls!

This was an interesting situation because the seller wasn’t actually going to be home.  They left the desk on a covered porch and asked me to put the money under a flower pot.  I know, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  This was not the first time I’ve made arrangements like this though.  There are still a few trusting people left in the world.

You’d think with that being the case it would have been super easy for me to just walk away after getting there and finding that the desk was quite a bit smaller than I pictured and the veneer was in really poor condition.  I could have just left the desk there on the porch and moved on.  But somehow I felt obligated to buy it since the seller had hauled it out there for me, and trusted me to show up and leave the money behind.  Plus after driving so far I didn’t want to go home empty handed.

So my next logical step was to shove the desk in the corner of my carriage house and try to ignore it for nearly a year (imagine that said with the proper amount of sarcasm) .

But I was finally tired of seeing it out there, so when it warmed up last week I pulled it outside and attacked the chipping veneer with my putty knife.  I basically just chipped off all of the loose veneer and then sanded heavily.  It would have taken ages to remove ALL of the veneer and this desk was just not worth that amount of labor.

While I was chipping veneer, I also stripped the top of the piece (with Citristrip) which is basically constructed of 3 solid wood boards (no veneer, thank goodness).

As I was working on the piece I noticed something kind of fab on the inside.  The desk must have been partially constructed out of old wooden storage crates.

Isn’t that kind of cool?  My favorite is the backside of this drawer front.

I’m guessing that this piece was homemade and it was cobbled together with spare bits of wood that the builder had on hand.  As I was working on this piece I began to realize that it really did have a lot of charm.

Originally I had envisioned this desk in chippy white milk paint.  After my semi-disastrous outcome the last time I used milk paint, you might think I would shy away from using it again.  But no.  I know that situations like that are the exception and not the rule.  I still love the results I get from milk paint 99.9% of the time.  However based on the size of the desk I decided it should have a more kid friendly color rather than white.  So I pulled out some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue and mixed it up.  I probably could have gotten away with one coat, but I had plenty of paint mixed up so I added a second for good measure.

Once I had the paint on I was so happy I’d changed my mind about that white.

I also realized that I loved the contrast between the rich deep color of the Flow Blue and the pale wood top.  So rather than add stain or a dark wax to the top I simply waxed it with Miss Mustard Seed’s clear furniture wax.  In fact, the entire desk has a finish coat of the clear wax.

Then I cleaned the cup pulls with soap and water and put them back on.

If you’re wondering whether or not the chipped veneer is noticeable, it definitely is.

But I think that just adds to the rustic charm of this piece.

This desk is definitely too small to be used as a desk by an adult.  But it’s perfect for a kiddo.  Wouldn’t it be fun in a boy’s room?

But it also could be used as an alternative to a traditional bedside table.  It’s just the right height for that.

I have to admit, this desk turned out way better than I expected.  When I started work on it my goal was to just get it done and then move on to another piece.  I totally was not expecting to completely fall in love with the result.

Hopefully someone who needs an indigo blue kid-sized desk will fall in love with it too.

Be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page if interested!

It finally feels like spring is here, and you know what that means?  Garage sale season is coming!

Since I have a 9 to 5 day job, I have to do all of my garage saling on Saturday mornings.  So I only have a few more Saturdays that I can spend lounging about with a cup of coffee and my favorite books and magazines.  Starting the first weekend in May I’ll be getting up early and heading out to hit the sales.

So this past Saturday morning I took some time to chill out, enjoy the sunshine streaming in through the windows and get some photos of the coffee table I just finished up before my sister and I headed out to Junk Bonanza in the afternoon.

I purchased this table way back in January, brrrrrr ….

and I’ve basically been working on it in bits and pieces since then.

I’ve refurbished a few of these tables in the past.  Usually I remove the drop leaves and turn them into signs and then use the table without the leaves as a desk.  I have one in my Q Branch and Mr. Q has one in his study as well.  I also have one on my front porch with casters on it that I use for staging close up photos of random small stuff.

Although I still removed the leaves and turned them into signs, this time I decided to try something different with the rest of the table.  With the help of my handyman Ken, I converted it to coffee table height.

Since I wanted to keep the detail on the lower part of each leg, I removed all of the legs and then Ken cut them down from the top and re-attached them to the table.  I neglected to get a photo of that before I added a coat of paint, so you’ll see that in a minute.  But before I painted, I stripped the top of the table.

Since it was winter in Minnesota, I had to do this inside my house.  I like to use Citristrip for that simply because it’s safe for indoor use.  I like to avoid using any toxic chemicals inside the house, and I try to keep sanding to a minimum inside as well.

Here’s the top after cleaning off the stripper.

Once that was done, I flipped the table over onto some horses and started painting the base.  I began with a coat of Fusion acrylic paint in Inglenook or maybe that’s Little Tea Pot.  To tell the truth I did this part so long ago I don’t remember!

The existing finish on the table was pretty shiny, so most likely milk paint would not have adhered well without a lot of sanding prep work.  Since I wasn’t in the mood to sand those legs (ie. was feeling lazy), I used Fusion for the first coat of paint instead.

Next I applied some of the Homestead House Salad Bowl Wax to various spots as a resist, and then added a coat of Sweet Pickins’ In a Pickle.  You can see the spots where the wax resisted the milk paint.

Next I added more Salad Bowl Wax to other spots to resist my final paint color which was Miss Mustard Seed’s Shutter Gray.

After that dried, I sanded lightly to distress and then added clear wax.  Here is the result.

After that it was time to flip the table back over and work on the top some more.  I started by sanding the stripped wood with 220 grit sandpaper.   Then, looking at the wood closely, I realized that I didn’t like the color of it.  It still had a bit of a yellow/orange cast to it.  What I wanted was more of a washed out, driftwood sort of look.

So I decided to white wash it using watered down Dixie Belle paint in Drop Cloth (see this post for more detail on white washing).  I just used one coat of watered down paint.  One that was dry, I sanded lightly, wiped away any dust and then added a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.

I felt like the piece looked a little too fresh and new at that point so I pulled out Dixie Belle’s new Grunge Gray wax.  Dixie Belle sent a can of this wax my way to give it a try.  I used to make my own grey wax by mixing black and white wax, but this is so much easier.

As with all colored waxes, if you want a heavier application of the color you can apply the wax directly to your bare wood (or over a painted surface).  If you want more subtle results wax your surface with clear wax first.

When using a new product for the very first time, I always recommend testing it on an old board like I did with the Grunge Gray wax.  That way you can get a feel for how it looks and the best way to apply it before you get it on your piece of furniture. 

I already had that coat of Dixie Belle clear wax over my white washed table top so I got a more subtle result from the Grunge Gray wax.

I really worked the Grunge wax into the creases on the edges of the table.

I ended up with a table top that has that sort weathered gray appearance of a piece that has been left out in the elements for a while.

 It makes a great spot for a little Saturday morning coffee, don’t you think?

If any of you local readers need a spot to enjoy your coffee (sunshine not included), be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

We’re still recovering from the ridiculous amount of snow we got last weekend, but things are looking up weather-wise here in the Twin Cities, we might even hit 60 by Sunday.  I am suffering from a very serious case of garage sale withdrawal, so I’m chomping at the bit for some spring!

I thought I would nudge it along a little bit with a spring fling in the form of a garden themed dresser.

I shared the beginning of the journey of today’s dresser with you guys on Wednesday.  This dresser just insisted on being something other than what I first imagined.  After several failed attempts to salvage a milk paint finish, I threw in the towel and decided to start over again.

As a reminder, when we last left the dresser it looked like this.

The first thing that you have to understand is that any remaining chippy paint is going to leave a texture on the surface of the dresser if you just paint over it.  In addition, whatever you put over that remaining paint may ultimately chip off as well.  The adherence of your final paint layer is only as good as the adherence of what is under it.   So the first thing I had to do was make a choice between just sanding off the loose chips, or doing a heavier sanding and removing all of the milk paint entirely.

I went with with the former.  I used my orbital sander and a 120 grit paper to remove as much of the chipping paint as I could knowing that the remaining bits of paint would add some texture to my piece.

There were several ways I could have proceeded from there that most likely would have worked well.  I could have stuck with my original milk paint plan and simply added bonding agent to my paint to make it adhere to the surface of this piece better.  Unfortunately, I had already used up almost an entire bag of both the Homestead House Texas Rose and the Miss Mustard Seed Linen.  I did not have enough of either color left to start over with them (and I also don’t happen to have any more bonding agent on hand either).

Another option would have been to paint a base coat of acrylic or chalk paint over the entire piece and then add a layer of milk paint without bonding agent.  The chalk or acrylic paint would have adhered to the dresser, and the milk paint would have adhered to the chalk/acrylic paint.  Again though, I didn’t have enough of the Miss Mustard Seed Linen paint to go that route.

So I decided to just move on to chalk paint, and to switch up my color scheme a bit as well.  I started with an undercoat of two green shades of Dixie Belle paint, Kudzu and Mint Julep.

I wanted the Kudzu (the darker green) to show through some distressing on the edges, but I didn’t have enough Kudzu to paint the entire piece.  Since I hadn’t gotten all of the milk paint off the piece, I knew I would have some texture from what was left and an undercoat would show when I sanded those areas too, so I wanted to have a shade of green there as well.  Luckily I also had a bit of Mint Julep on hand.

In the end, I decided to paint the inside drawers in the Mint Julep as well.

And I’m so glad I did because it adds the prettiest pop of color when you open the doors.

But before I got to that, I painted two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth (paint compliments of Dixie Belle) over the exterior.  Drop Cloth is a warm off-white.  Then I added one of my absolute favorite Iron Orchid Designs transfers (transfer compliments of Prima Marketing) to the front of the piece.

You can sort of see what I mean about the undercoat of green coming through in that photo above, right?  By the way, you can order this transfer online at Scrapbook.com here.  When I looked last night it was on sale for $17.99, which is a great price.

The thing that I really love about these furniture transfers is that they are sized for furniture.  I love the way this one fills up the entire front of the dresser (this is the large version of this transfer, there is also a smaller version available and you can see it on this piece).

And in fact, the large transfer was actually a tad too long so I cut off the “1871.” and put it on the trim at the back of the dresser top.

This is the 4th time I’ve used the larger version of the transfer and each time I have absolutely loved the results.  You can see the other three pieces here, here and here.

Once I had applied the transfer, I waxed this piece with Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Wax over both the Drop Cloth and the Mint Julep Dixie Belle paint, as well as over the transfer.  Yes, you can definitely was over a rub-on transfer.

By the way, I almost forgot to mention.  This dresser came with a key!

It’s really quite rare to have the key, and locks that still function.

Do you ever wonder about these old pieces with locking drawers?  It seems like all of the pieces from this era had them.  What did people lock up in them?  Money?  Their last will and testament?  Their secret diary?  Their hidden stash of chocolate?  Today it seems laughable that you would lock something up in a drawer and feel like it was secure, doesn’t it?

I swapped out the original wooden knobs for some pretty glass knobs.  I buy these knobs in bulk from D Lawless Hardware.  I am exaggerating only slightly when I say ‘in bulk’, but I do order them by the dozen so that I always have them on hand.  I also buy three different sizes.  This is the middle size, or 1 1/4″.

I love using the glass knobs on pieces with the transfers because they disappear a bit and don’t interfere with the detail of the transfer itself.

Here’s one more look at that pretty pop of mint green on the inner drawers.

And there you have it.  It may not be milk paint, but I still think it turned out beautiful in the end.

 If you need a garden themed linen press dresser and you live near the Twin Cities, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

Remember the pretty sea glass dressing table that I shared a couple of weeks ago?  I mentioned at the time that there were three pieces that I picked up together that night.  Today I’m sharing a story about the 2nd piece, a linen press dresser.

There are four more drawers behind those doors.  Whenever a dresser has drawers behind doors I call it a linen press.  I’m not sure if that is technically accurate, but it works for me.

Since I had so much fun layering milk paint on the desk I painted during milk paint madness week, I decided to try that again on this piece.

So I began with removing the knobs, sanding the piece, cleaning it well and then painting a base coat of Homestead House milk paint in Texas Rose.  I painted the entire outside of the piece, as well as the four inner drawers, both inside and out.  My plan was to use the Texas Rose as a base coat under some Miss Mustard Seed Linen on the outside, but leave the inner drawers in this pretty rosy color.

I’d never used this color before, so before I started I painted a test board in it and tried out a couple of different top coat options.  As you can see, the topcoat can really make a difference in the look of this color.  I wanted to see what my options looked like before I made a decision.

Before moving on to my final color, the Linen, I decided to layer another color under it.  I went through my mostly used bags of milk paint to see what I had and pulled out Homestead House’s Upper Canada Green.  I only had a couple of tablespoons of this paint left, so I mixed it up.  I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to show you what I mean when I tell you to let your milk paint sit for 5 – 10 minutes to be sure all of the pigments are dissolved.

Here is how the paint looked before any mixing at all, just the water and the powder in a cup.

See all of those flecks of blue pigment floating around?  They still need to dissolve.

Here’s is the paint after an initial stir …

You can still see a few darker flecks of color and the overall color is pretty yellowish.

But after waiting five minutes and giving it another stir, you start to see true color of the Upper Canada Green as those blue pigments are finally dissolving.

You can see why you don’t want to start painting before those pigments are all fully dissolved.  You can end up with an entirely different color.

OK.  So you might be wondering at this point why I have mixed up a couple of tablespoons of my next color since this is clearly not going to be enough paint for the entire thing.

This is another little trick I want to show you.  I had someone comment that they hated wasting milk paint for a layer of color that was barely going to show on the finished piece.  I totally get that.  So here’s what you do.  Instead of painting the entire piece in your second color, just paint it over the areas where you want to see it peeking through your distressing/chipping.

So far, so good, or so I thought.

The paint looks pretty well adhered in that photo, doesn’t it?  There were a couple of chippy spots on the legs, but that was about it.

However, fast forward about 18 hours.  The next morning the dresser was chipping pretty much everywhere.  Ugh.  I decided all was not lost, I would just sand it well to get all of the chipping paint off and create a better base for the final color.  So I sanded, vacuumed and then painted on a coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen.

As the Linen started to dry I could see that it was continuing to chip.  In fact, it was chipping even more than before.  And it was chipping all the way down to the wood.  My work applying the layered colors was all just flaking right off.

Ugh.  This was the moment when I felt like a complete and total fraud.  I’d just spent a full week here on my blog proclaiming to be an expert on milk paint and now my own milk paint project was turning into a complete disaster.  Was this the universe’s way of keeping me humble?  Reminding me that I don’t know everything and no matter how much experience I have with milk paint it can still totally backfire on me.

I was mentally beating myself up and wanting to just kick the dresser to the curb.  Suddenly a bonfire seemed like a great idea.

Or maybe I could just hide the dresser under a sheet and never mention it to anyone.  I told Mr. Q I was going to sand it down, paint it with chalk paint and never, ever tell anyone that I’d initially tried to paint it with milk paint and it was a complete failure.

  Instead I did what I usually do in these situations.  I walked away.  I pushed the dresser into a corner and decided to give it a couple of days to think about its behavior.

In the meantime Mr. Q reminded me that I’ve painted well over 100 pieces of furniture with milk paint and this chipping situation has only happened to me a few times (see them here, here and here).  He also suggested that sharing this experience with you guys was the right thing to do.  If it happens to me, it probably happens to other people too.

I really don’t know what was on this piece that caused it to chip like this.  I did prep it properly.  If anything, I sanded and cleaned it more thoroughly than I usually do.  I guess 4 times out of over one hundred or so pieces aren’t terribly bad odds.

A few days later I pulled the dresser out of its corner and I thought to myself ‘you know, that chipping is a little extreme, but some people love a really chippy finish.’  I thought that perhaps if I just added one more coat of the Linen milk paint I could make it work.

Can you guess what happened?  Sigh.  Yep, it chipped even more, if that’s even possible.  Literally to the point that there was very little paint left.  I have run into this phenomenon before, each added layer of paint activating even more chipping.

After knocking off all of the loose paint, this is what was left.

Milk paint just wasn’t meant to be with this piece.

I decided not to throw it on the bonfire, but instead to start over from square one.  After all, under all of that chipping paint is still an adorable linen press dresser that is in great shape.  You’ll have to wait until Friday to see the end result though.  I hope you’ll check back then.  But in the meantime, how about you?  Have you had any colossal paint disasters?  Please tell me I’m not the only one.