q is for quandie

I’ve mentioned once or twice before that Mr. Q and I like to go on Friday date nights.  Only our Friday date nights involve driving across town to pick up a piece of furniture.  We both really enjoy spending that time together.  But one evening last June I decided to invite my sister along for the ride.

We were driving all the way up to Cambridge, Minnesota to pick up a hutch that I had found on Craigslist.  Cambridge is about an hour north of me.  Normally I wouldn’t go that far for something, but it was a great deal on a lovely china cupboard.  Plus, it was a beautiful summer Saturday evening that was perfect for a drive.  The sellers told me they lived on Spectacle Lake and it was a beautiful area, so I immediately knew that my sister would enjoy coming along to see the scenery.

When we arrived at the appointed address we discovered that it was an old 40’s lakeside resort that is no longer functioning as a resort.  The sellers told us that they’ve been living in one of the old cabins as caretakers of the property, but now the property is being sold, the old cabins will be torn down and replaced with McMansion lake homes.  I’m always a bit bummed out by stories like these.  Those old cabins with their knotty pine walls and screen doors that make a slapping sound when they close have so much charm.

 I really wish I’d brought my camera so I could share some photos!  But I didn’t, so I’ll just borrow one from pinterest to set the atmosphere.

After taking a little tour of the vintage cabin, we loaded up the hutch and before we drove away we asked for a dinner recommendation.  The sellers recommended a local place that had fresh fish and a decent patio, so we stopped off and had a delicious dinner before heading home with this in the back of our truck.

That was way back in July.  So what happened between July and November?

Well, I started out planning to paint this piece grey.  I have a customer who had mentioned that she wishes she’d bought the French hutch that I had at my sale last year, and said if I ever found another like it she’d love to have it.  So my plan was to do a similar treatment on this one.

But that plan required being able to remove the fretwork behind the glass.  And well … you know what they say about the best laid plans.

First of all, I didn’t notice until I took a closer look at this piece that the two narrow sides don’t open.  Not the top glass ‘doors’, nor the bottom ‘doors’.  I guess you wouldn’t really call them ‘doors’ at all, they are just stationary panels.  So I couldn’t get to that fretwork from the front.  OK, so next I removed the back of the cupboard.  I figured I could then remove the shelves and easily get to the fretwork from the back.  Um, nope.  The shelves are firmly glued in place.

Then I asked Ken to come over to consult.  He strongly recommended that I find a way to live with leaving the fretwork in place.

I still didn’t want to let my initial vision for the piece go, so I went ahead and painted one coat of grey.  Then two months went by.  I kept procrastinating and feeling guilty for not finishing the hutch, but I couldn’t bring myself to work on it.  Finally I realized what the underlying cause of my procrastination was.  The grey just wasn’t working with the brown wood of the fretwork, and that was keeping me from finishing the job.

So I pulled out my Annie Sloan chalk paint in Coco, a much better color choice with the wood fretwork.  I added a coat of Coco over the gray and realized it was just what I needed.  Once the paint was dry I started to sand the piece to distress the edges and quickly realized that the undercoat of grey was showing wherever I sanded in a way I also didn’t like.

Ugh.  I’d have to add another coat of Coco.  Frustration kicked in yet again and another couple of weeks went by.

With winter weather looming, and a trip to Disney World coming up, I knew I needed to get my act together and get this piece finished.  It’s really too big to work on in the house.  Plus I wanted to use up some Annie Sloan wax that I had on hand and I won’t use that product indoors.

So a few weeks ago when the forecast called for sunny and a high of 75 I took a day off at the day job to just get this hutch finished!

I have to tell you guys, the entire time I was waxing this piece I was cursing my decision to use the chalk paint.  It would have been so much easier to just use Fusion’s Algonquin.  It’s very similar to the Coco and I wouldn’t have had to wax it.

What was I thinking?  I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I wanted to just use up the Annie Sloan products that I had on hand rather than go buy some Algonquin.  Such a foolish choice.  It would have been worth every penny to just buy a pint of Algonquin.

Well, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.  But now the labor is behind me and this hutch really turned out lovely.

I made a lot of decisions while working on this one.  The first was to stencil the inside back with a French poem.  Since I had the back off anyway, I figured I might as well go for it.  It was a simple detail to add before putting the back on again.

I painted the panel with two coats of the Coco, then stenciled it with an acrylic craft paint.  Once dry, I waxed it with Annie Sloan wax and then put it back on.  I think it adds a great little subtle detail even though it will be mostly hidden behind the contents of the cabinet.

I also added some ‘grain sack’ liners behind the glass on either side of the hutch.  These are just some strips of fabric that I stenciled with “1918”.  They are just tacked into place, so the future owner of the hutch can opt to remove them if they prefer.

I swapped out all of the knobs on this one for vintage brass knobs that I thought suited it better.

So, a mere 4 months later, this piece is finally done!

 It’s such a pretty china cupboard, perfect for displaying a non-collection of ironstone or possibly your grandmother’s china.  Or for a little less traditional look, it could be filled up with books.

This hutch is available for sale locally while it lasts.  If interested, be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

Mr. Q and I picked up this petite secretary hutch a few weeks ago.  The gal we purchased it from said she got it from a friend who said that his grandfather made it.

It had a couple of flaws, but nothing major.  However, as you can see in the ‘before’ photo, one of the drawers fell apart as we were unloading it.  That was an easy fix that just needed some glue.

In addition, there were no stops in place to keep the drop down desk surface from falling back inside the piece when it was up.  The only way to keep that piece in place was to use the lock mechanism, which was rather tricky.  Ken solved that problem by just adding a small peg on either side.

When I first brought this piece home I had envisioned a fabulously chippy milk paint finish on it.  That didn’t quite work out.  I did start out painting it with a couple of coats of Homestead House milk paint in one of my favorite pale greys, Bedford.

However, when I came back out to the workshop the next day I saw that most of the paint had chipped off the fronts of the drawers and the front of the drop down desk.  The paint on the sides of the piece didn’t chip, but it looked really blotchy.  I had a feeling before I painted this one that I might end up with this problem.  You see there were spots on the sides where the previous finish was entirely worn away.  Those spots absorbed the milk paint quite differently than the spots that still had some finish on them.

I thought that maybe I could still work with the milk paint and just go really chippy and distressed, but in the end I knew I wouldn’t be happy with it.  So I wrote off the milk paint and switched to Fusion acrylic paint in the same color, Bedford.

First I vigorously sanded down the super chippy drawer fronts and drop down desk front.  If I hadn’t, the chippy texture of the milk paint would have shown.  Once I had those mostly smooth, I wiped them down and then added a coat of Fusion’s Bedford.  I didn’t sand the sides of the piece that hadn’t chipped, I just painted right over the milk paint.

It only took one coat of paint to get good coverage and to solve the blotchy problem on the sides.

I added another Iron Orchid Designs transfer to this piece.  I thought this design suited it perfectly.

I painted the inside of the hutch in Fusion’s Midnight Blue.  I thought this would be a great color if one has some ironstone that they want to display and they want to make it pop.

I also painted the inside of the desk in the same dark blue.

I had a heck of a time trying to get photos of this piece on a brilliantly sunny fall day.  The glass in the doors reflected everything.

I even resorted to moving the hutch inside, but I didn’t think those photos were any better.

Maybe outside was better after all.

Either way, I think the hutch itself definitely looks better painted.

Would you agree?

After getting distracted by other projects, I finally got my Jenny Lind bed painted.

As a reminder, here is the before photo.

I’m going to be honest with you guys, I didn’t do much prep here at all.  I tend to slack a bit more when I’m working on items I’m going to keep for myself.  If it doesn’t hold up over time, well, no big deal.  I can easily re-paint it.  If I was going to sell this piece, just to be on the safe side, I would have done my typical prep, a light hand sanding followed by cleaning with TSP substitute.  Instead, I just wiped it down with a damp cloth.

I mixed up some of the Homestead House Ochre milk paint (no. 2) that I chose after comparing 3 different shades of yellow (thanks again to Homestead House for providing me with the paint) and once I had it good and mixed, I started painting.

It took 3 coats to get good coverage with the pale yellow over that dark wood.  That’s something you should know about milk paint.  It is not as opaque as other kinds of paint, and if you’re covering something dark with a pale color it may take a few coats.  Or, as I learned this weekend from Miss Mustard Seed, another good option is to paint the piece in a medium shade first, then cover that with the lighter shade.  Next time I’ll give that a try.

All of those spindles!  Oy vey.  I’m not a big fan of painting spindles.

Today’s Qtip:  I did get some awesome chipping on this piece and you can chalk that up to the lack of preparation.  Had I done more sanding and cleaning with TSP, I wouldn’t have been as likely to get this amount of chipping.  Prep is the key to controlling chipping.  Check out {this post} for tips on how to get the perfect chippy finish.  Or just take your chances like I did with this bed.

I sealed the bed with The Real Milk Paint Co’s Dead Flat which will help halt any further chipping.

It wasn’t until I was making up the bed that I came across this single vintage pillow case in my linen cupboard.  I’d forgotten all about it.  Somewhere my sub-conscious must have had this in mind when I chose the yellow for this bed, don’t you think?

I still need a few final touches for my guest room.  I’m looking for the perfect something to hang over the bed.

I definitely need a bed skirt, as well as some sort of duvet cover.

But so far the guest room is really coming together.  Slowly maybe, but also very inexpensively which is a good thing.  I spent $40 on the headboard and another $25 on the frame.  I traded my former full size guest bed mattress and box spring for this twin set with my neighbor across the street, nnK.  She even included the sheets and duvet, so it was quite the bargain.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted as I continue to make progress in the guest room!