q is for quandie

It was definitely time for me to get my paint brushes back out and start painting some furniture.

Taking a break over the holidays left me refreshed and feeling excited about getting back into it.

I’m starting small with this antique spool table.

It was pretty wonky, but I sent it over to Ken’s workshop and he shored it up.  When Ken shores up a piece of furniture, he likes to take it apart first and then put it back together using fresh glue.  When he was disassembling this one, he found this old nail holding the top on.

I always get a kick out of it when Ken saves these sorts of finds and leaves them for me with little notes (sometimes he even types them up on an old portable typewriter).  He knows I am fascinated by these sorts of details.

I think the age of this square nail gives some indication of how old this little table is.  I’m calling it a ‘square nail’, but if you look closely it’s actually rectangular.  Truly square nails were used prior to 1800.  Rectangular nails were used from 1800 – 1880 (Chervenka).

I found a very similar table online that is dated 1840 – 1860 (and the price tag is $1,295, bwa, ha, ha, ha).  The expensive antique has some finer details than my table including some hand cut dovetails, but the style is very much the same.

Given all of that, I wanted to give this table a paint job that would feel original and of the right period for its age.  For me that means milk paint.

Milk paint has been around for thousands of years, even some early cave drawings were done with a form of milk paint; a mixture of milk, lime and natural pigments.  Oil paint was developed in the early 1400’s and became the more popular choice of paint in medieval times (Rodgers).  However, during the French Revolution (late 1700’s) some of the ingredients of oil paint became hard to find which led to a resurgence in the use of milk paint.  The various French recipes for milk paint then made their way to Colonial America and became very popular (Candee).  Had this table originally been painted, it likely would have been painted in milk paint.

Fortunately, we don’t have to make our own milk paint with a recipe these days, we can just buy the powder, mix it with water and get painting.

Just before Christmas the lovely people at Homestead House offered to have Santa put some of their new black wax in my Christmas stocking.  I asked them if Santa could throw in some of their Coal Black milk paint too because I had this project in mind.

Since this table was so dark to begin with, I knew I could get away with just one coat of black milk paint.  It could not have been easier to paint this table!  Once the paint was dry, I sanded lightly.  Then I used the painters tape trick to force some chippy spots.  Next I added a coat of black wax.

The Homestead House black wax is so creamy, it goes on quite easily.  And it has very little smell.  This is so important to me when I’m working inside my house during a Minnesota winter.  You can’t be opening up a window to air the place out when it’s below zero outside!

I like to use a brush to apply wax when I’m working with spindly pieces (like the legs on this table).  It’s so much easier to get the wax into all of the crevices with a brush.  I have a brush devoted to black wax, another for clear wax and a third for white wax.  You can clean your wax brushes with soap and warm water, but I’m a bit lazy for that.  I’d rather just have three brushes!  I’ll admit I don’t wash them after each use, but I do clean them once or twice a year.

I apply the wax with the brush and then remove any excess using an old black t-shirt to avoid leaving any light colored fibers behind.  The black wax deepens the color of the black milk paint a bit.

I had to discard the knobs that came with the table.  They were metal and one of them was badly misshapen.  No loss really, they were pretty blah.  I replaced them with two of the knobs that I picked up at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago.

Along with a few vintage clocks, I used my painted books to stage the table.

Who remembers back when I painted these?  It was way back when my blog was practically brand new.  They are also painted in black milk paint (Miss Mustard Seed’s Typewriter).

I took off for a weekend last month just to try and recall the whole year.  All of the places and all of the faces, wonderin’ where they all disappeared. – Jimmy Buffet

Jimmy Buffet didn’t ponder the question too long, he was hungry and went out for bite, ran into a chum with a bottle of rum and they wound up drinking all night.  But I thought I’d ponder it a little bit longer and skip the drinking all night part, reflecting back on the pieces I painted in 2016.  It’s always fun to look back and remember some favorites.

I painted the book page dresser way back in January 2016.

It’s painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Marzipan.  I used pages from an old Swedish bible to fill in spots of missing veneer and I also used them in the library card catalogue style pulls.  The aged book pages worked beautifully with the almond color of the Marzipan.

The spoon carved dresser that I painted in June definitely belongs on my favorites list for 2016.

And hey, it’s also painted in Marzipan.  Perhaps I like that color more than I realized.  I highlighted the spoon carving with a brighter white, and I really like the way it was emphasized in a subtle way.

I have to include the bed bench from Belgium on my list.  Obviously I loved it enough to keep it, so that says a lot right there.

I purchased the bench at a garage sale after my friend Meggan spotted it and sent me a text.  I wasn’t necessarily planning to keep it, and I wasn’t really looking for a bench for my house, but it turned out so fab that I knew it was meant to be.  It’s painted in a mix of Miss Mustard Seed whites (Ironstone, Linen and Grain Sack).

So far all of these pieces have a few things in common.  They are all shades of white, they are all painted in milk paint, and none of them have a significant top coat.  Huh?  What did I just say?  Yep, no top coat.

Last year I played around with not using a top coat over milk paint.  As is true with most things these days, there are all kinds of differing opinions about this.  I’d like to first point out that I am not an expert!  I think it would be more accurate to call me an experimenter instead.  As it turns out, I like the look of the lighter shades of milk paint better without a top coat.  And I’m finding that the milk paint holds up quite well without a topcoat.  It may wear a bit more, but I’m trying to achieve a worn look so that’s a bonus for me.  I will say that if you need to be able to ‘wash’ the surface of your piece you will need a top coat.  I certainly wouldn’t attempt a milk paint tabletop without a top coat.

Not all of my favorites from last year were white though.  This pretty little french desk was painted in a 50/50 mix of Miss Mustard Seed’s Trophy and Schloss.

I used a Little Billy Goat goat stick in Gold Leaf to add some gold to the details.

And not all of my favorites were painted in milk paint.  The the l.b.d., or little black dresser, was painted in Little Billy Goat’s Old Pickup.

For some reason I didn’t have high expectations for this dresser, but I absolutely loved it when it was done.  The black body paired with the pale wood top and the simple touch of the Parisian address stencil were perfect.

And just in case you thought I’d forgotten to add a little color last year, this pretty little charmer was painted in one of my favorite Fusion colors, Inglenook.

I painted several pieces in this color last year, it’s such a pretty subtle pale aqua.

So how about you, did you have a favorite among the pieces I painted last year?  Are you a fan of color?  Or white?  Or black?

Here’s to another year and hopefully lots more painted furniture!

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who left an encouraging comment on my last post.  You all have convinced me to not give up on home improvement projects in 2017, and you’ve reminded me that it’s OK to keep plugging away at them over time rather than feeling like I have to get things done in the blink of an eye.  So maybe you’ll see one of two in 2017 after all!

But in the meantime, I’m getting out my paint and going back to basics with painting some furniture starting with some projects using Homestead House milk paint.  I mentioned a while back that they gifted me with some of what I like to call their ‘house brand’ of milk paint so I’m going to dig in and start painting!

I don’t know about you, but I tend to find that paint colors in real life almost always look a little bit different than they do in photos on the computer screen.  In fact, sometimes they look a lot different.  This is something that I really struggle with when editing my own blog photos; trying to get a realistic representation of a color in the photos.  I work on getting the white balance right so that the color looks true, but I know I sometimes miss the mark.

One of the reasons that I’m so comfortable working with Miss Mustard Seed milk paint is because I’ve used nearly all of her colors before so I know exactly what they look like in person regardless of how they look in photos on pinterest.  I know what shade of blue to expect if I paint something in French Enamel for example, and I know how it’s going to change if I put hemp oil on it instead of wax.  It’s my comfort zone.

So when Homestead House asked me if I’d like to try some of their other line of milk paint I got a little nervous.  I didn’t know what these colors were really going to look like in person!

However, as I was going through their color choices I realized that some of the Homestead House milk paint colors are the same as their Fusion colors.  So far I’ve been happy to find that the Midnight Blue milk paint looks pretty much exactly like the Midnight Blue Fusion paint.  And the Limestone milk paint looks pretty much like the Limestone Fusion paint.

But the Homestead House milk paint line also has some really pretty colors that they don’t make in Fusion paint, Cartier, Craftsman, Loyalist …

I’m sure you can see why these colors appealed to me!

Before using a new color on a full sized piece of furniture, I like to mix up a small sample and paint it on a board.  Just so I have a good idea how the color looks in real life as opposed to on a computer screen.

So I mixed up 4 of my new colors to give them a look-see.

1 Craftsman, 2 Upper Canada Green, 3 Loyalist, 4 Laurentien.

Pretty, pretty, pretty, right?  I’ll be using all of them down the road for sure, but my favorite was the Laurentien.  This should come as no surprise to anyone since Laurentien is my favorite Fusion color.  I was so hoping that it would be just as gorgeous in milk paint and I was not disappointed.

So I chose the Laurentien to spruce up the little thrift store chair that I purchased a while back.

If you look closely towards the bottom of the chair, you can see that it was spray painted.  I’m guessing that the painter was running out of paint, or maybe running out of time, because they didn’t get good coverage there.  I knew that adding just one coat of milk paint would be a quick fix and help even things up.

I gave this chair a quick pass with some Homestead House furniture wax and added a stenciled number to the back rest just for fun.

You may be wondering why I didn’t get much chipping when painting milk paint over spray paint, but I actually did get a bit.  You just don’t notice it because the colors are so similar.  If you look closely at this next photo you can see the chipping on the back rest especially right under the ’19.’

See the paler blue looking spots?  That’s chipping.

Now that I have my color tests done, I’ve picked out colors for several upcoming projects so be sure to stay tuned.

If you’d like to try Homestead House milk paint yourself, you can order the paint as well as the furniture wax directly from their website {here}.  If you are feeling limited by the colors available in Miss Mustard Seed paint, this is a great way to expand your horizons a bit.  If you prefer to buy your paint in person, check out their map of local retailers {here}.  There is a map of retailers in North America, and also links to retailers in the UK, Europe and Australia.  Unfortunately for you locals, I don’t see any retailers in Minnesota yet.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we get some soon!