ewwww, what’s that smell?

Published on by Quandie26 Comments

As a furniture makeover artist, one issue that I have to deal with regularly is furniture with bad odors.  Nobody wants a piece of furniture that stinks, right?  In fact, I’d say “does it smell OK?” is the most frequent question I am asked by potential buyers.

Bad smells can run the gamut from cigarette smoke, to mouse pee, to just plain old age.  The fact is, furniture that is over 75 years old (which is mostly what I work with) is going to have some smells.

Eliminating bad odors is especially important in pieces that are going to be used to store clothing.  You don’t want your clean clothes coming out of the drawers smelling like someone’s old cigarette smoke.

There are all kinds of tips out there on how to get rid of bad smells, so when I brought home a dresser that previously belonged to a heavy smoker a while back I decided to do some serious experimentation and figure out what really works and what doesn’t.

Baking soda:  I placed open bowls of baking soda inside the drawers for about 10 days.  Initially I used an older box of baking soda, so when that didn’t work I went out and bought fresh baking soda, just in case that was the issue.  Nope, after another 10 days the drawers still smelled smoky to me.  Cross this one off your list.

Fresh Wave:  This is a product that claims to remove odors with all natural ingredients.  I’ve tried the spray as well as the odor removing packs in the past and not had much luck with either.  With this smoky dresser I tried spraying the drawers both inside and out with the Fresh Wave, as well as the interior of the dresser while the drawers were removed.  I sprayed heavily directly onto the wood.  It made no difference at all, don’t waste your money.

AtmosKlear:  Another product that claims to eliminate odors rather than just masking them, and another product that did not work on cigarette smoke.

Water and Vinegar:  This is something I’ve been using recently for cleaning furniture before I paint it.  However, I recently read that vinegar is not a good de-greaser, so I’m going to go back to my TSP substitute again.  And the vinegar/water mixture was powerless against the smoky dresser.  I even tried the vinegar/sunny day combo by wiping each drawer inside and out with a mixture of vinegar and water (about 1/2 cup vinegar to a gallon of water).  Then I spread the drawers out on the lawn on a sunny day and left them out for about 8 hours.  Like I said, powerless against the smoky smell.

Dryer sheets:  I like using dryer sheets to add a pleasant scent to a drawer that just has that sort of ‘old’ smell.  But dryer sheets are really just masking a smell and are not helpful for something like cigarette smoke or the dreaded mouse pee.  I’ve also had some potential furniture purchasers say that they hate the smell of dryer sheets, so they can definitely backfire on you.

Vodka:  Although I didn’t try vodka on this smoky dresser, I did try it a couple of years ago on another smelly piece.  I’d read somewhere that Martha Stewart recommended it, but I’m beginning to think that might be an urban myth.  I basically wiped the drawers down inside and out with straight up vodka.  I didn’t even dilute it with water (or cranberry juice, ha!).  It did nothing except waste some really good vodka.  I suppose you could just drink the vodka, and then you won’t really care whether or not the dresser still stinks.  That’s one way to solve the problem.

Newspaper:  After trying numerous solutions that really didn’t work for my smoky dresser I was starting to despair and think that I was going to have to go to my last resort solution (more on what that is in a minute).  But my friend Terri suggested I try newspaper.  And guess what?  It did a pretty good job!  Here’s the trick, you have to give it time, and you have to keep changing out the paper as it absorbs the smells.  This is not a quick fix, but it is a cheap fix.  Just crumple up sheets of newspaper and place them in each drawer.  Then change them out every couple of days until the smell is gone.

But if you don’t have several weeks set aside for the newspaper method, I’ve found that the one technique that eliminates bad smells every single time is … drum roll please …

Paint:  Paint works every. single. time.

Do you remember the fabulous cupboard I bought last year?

It wasn’t until I was unloading it from the truck at home that I noticed it had a bad smell.  I don’t know what to attribute the smell to, other than just old age, although it may have been stored in a barn for too long.  I cleaned it thoroughly and sprayed it heavily with Fresh Wave inside and out.  I brought the piece up to my bedroom and put all of my clothing in it, along with a few dryer sheets for good measure.  A few days later I pulled out a t-shirt and put it on.  As the t-shirt started to warm up with my body heat I noticed that it had taken on the smell of the cupboard.  Do you know that feeling?  You think ‘ewwww, what’s that smell?’ and then you realize it’s you (or your t-shirt anyway)!  The Fresh Wave definitely had not worked, and the combination of old barn smell mixed with dryer sheet was positively nauseating.  I immediately had to take the shirt off.  I re-washed all of the stuff I’d put in the cupboard, and then I spent the next six months piling my clothes on top of the cupboard instead of inside it (I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth)!

Clearly I had to come up with a better solution.

So I decided to just go with what I know works for this one.  Paint.

I emptied everything out, and then I painted all of the surfaces inside the cupboard with Fusion’s Inglenook.  And when I say all of the surfaces, I mean all of them including the undersides of the shelves and the back sides of the doors.  This is the secret to successfully blocking the odors.  If you’re working with drawers you have to paint them inside and out as well.

This might sound like a drastic measure, but it really didn’t take that long.  Maybe 20 minutes or so per coat (and I did two coats).  The nice thing about using Fusion paint for this is that I didn’t also have to add a topcoat, plus once the paint is cured it will be fully washable.  Once painted, I left the doors open for about a week so that the paint could cure a bit before I put anything back in.  Then I gave it the sniff test.  Ahhhh.  The stink was gone!

My clothes have been back inside the cupboard for over a month now and they still smell fresh and clean when I pull them out to wear.

By the way, I really like using a cupboard like this for my clothes rather than a dresser with drawers.  I can open those doors and grab everything at once.  I use locker baskets to hold scarves, underwear and socks.  It works great.

And now it smells great too!

So the next time you have a serious odor problem consider reaching for either the newspaper or the paint.

there’s no place like home.

Published on by Quandie16 Comments

Whenever I take a trip, I always feel like I’m back home in the blink of an eye.  How is it that they always go by so quickly?  Next thing you know you are waking up in your own bed at 4:30 a.m. totally unable to go back to sleep.  So here I am with my cup of coffee waiting for the 1,500+ photos that I took to load on my computer.

That’s Nyhavn in Copenhagen, taken the first day of our trip.

Unfortunately, unlike Dorothy I didn’t just click my heels together three times and wish myself back home.  Instead Mr. Q and I suffered through a very long, long day full of frantic moments of rushing mixed in with hours of waiting in long lines and enduring uncomfortable airplane seats.  Oh how I envied those lucky souls in first class with their down filled pillows and duvets.  I always love how the airline makes you walk through that area to get to your tiny cramped seat in the back of the plane as if to say ‘just look at what you are missing!’

So I added it up, Mr. Q and I waited in no less than 15 really long lines yesterday.  The worst line was either the 2 hour line to check our bags in Copenhagen, or possibly the 10 minute wait to use the bathroom at JFK in New York (I really had to go).  It’s a toss up.  We left our cruise ship at 8 a.m. Copenhagen time (the equivalent of 1 a.m. Minneapolis time) and we got home around 10 p.m.  So 21 hours.  Ugh!  I might have to burn the clothes I wore.

A funny little tidbit about the 2 hour Copenhagen line.  They seemed to be trying out a new form of security questioning.  In addition to the typical “did anyone ask you to carry an item on board the plane?” and “what is your final destination?” they also asked things like “what was your favorite thing from your trip?” and “do you have any hobbies?”  No lie folks.  They were lovely, friendly people and they made their way down the line chatting with each person in this fashion while they looked over your passport and I assume tried to guess whether or not you were a terrorist.  By eavesdropping I discovered that the people behind us were retired firefighters from Minneapolis whose hobbies were fishing and hunting.  Perhaps they are thinking that potential terrorists will be put on the spot by these unexpected questions!

We had an amazing time on our trip, so in the long run it was worth it to put up with those long hours of travel.  I have so many fun things to share with your guys.  My plan is to write a post a week about each of the places we visited.  I think it will take most of the summer to get through them all.  But don’t worry, they will be mixed in with more posts about furniture makeovers, gardening, garage sale finds, Debbie’s new house and whatever else strikes my fancy.  So I hope you’ll continue to stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’m really happy to be back home again in my own space.  There truly is no place like home.  Hang in there while I recover from jet lag, get caught up on blog comments (by the way, a big thanks for all of the congratulatory comments sent my sister’s way, she loved getting them and she is over the moon about her new house), and then I’ll see if I can remember how to paint furniture!

sometimes the chippy sneaks up on you (alternatively titled ‘hold on to your hat Betty’).

Published on by Quandie42 Comments

I’m arriving home from my trip to Norway and Scotland this evening, but it may take me a few days to recover from the jet lag and get back into the furniture painting groove.

But in the meantime, I’m sharing this pretty little dressing table that I painted just before I left.

Isn’t it sweet?

I debated keeping the painted flowers on the drawer, but in the end I just didn’t want to work with that color scheme of greens and oranges.  Instead, the Homestead House milk paint color I chose for this piece is called Stone Fence.  It’s a lovely pale greige.  If you hold it up next to a warmer color it looks quite grey, but if you compare it to a cooler grey it looks quite beige.  It’s one of those great colors that blends well with anything.

I followed my normal procedure with this piece.  I sanded it lightly, cleaned it with TSP Substitute and then painted it with two coats of Stone Fence.  I followed up with two coats of Homestead House Limestone on the details (much like I did with the Gatineau table).  I did notice some areas starting to chip before I added the Limestone, but not anything excessive.  However as I added the Limestone once again I could see that more of that color was going to chip off.

I decided to keep an open mind and just keep going.   So I sanded to distress and knock off any flaking paint, then I went over the whole piece with my shop vac.  At that point I had quite a bit of chipped paint on the Limestone details, but still only mild chipping of the Stone Fence.

That’s where I probably made a wrong turn.  I decided to add a coat of General Finishes Flat out Flat.  I thought it would seal the piece to prevent further chipping.  I’ve used it over milk paint before and had good results.

But this time I couldn’t have been more wrong.  As the Flat Out Flat dried, it lifted even more paint including the Stone Fence!  In addition, for some reason the top of the dressing table got very streaky looking.  I don’t have an explanation for this, but am just sharing my experience.  I’d say use caution if you ever decide to add Flat Out Flat over milk paint.

So hold on to your hat Betty, this one got really super chippy!

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Betty is one of my readers who isn’t terribly fond of my chippy pieces.  I once accused her of being my mother using an alias because my mom also can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would want a chippy piece of furniture.  I am very slowly trying to win Betty over to my side, but I’m betting she’s not going to like this one!

As you can see in this next photo, the sides and legs of the dressing table didn’t chip nearly as much as the front.

I know that there are fans of the chippy look out there that will love it, even though this look isn’t for everyone.

Although technically this piece is a dressing table, or perhaps could be considered a small desk, it’s really quite petite.  I think it would make a perfect bedside table instead.  It would have plenty of room for your alarm clock, some bedtime reading material and possible a reading lamp.

So what do you think?  Is super chippy for you?

Debbie buys a house.

Published on by Quandie55 Comments

Today Mr. Q and I are in Edinburgh, Scotland and we’re planning to take a Book Lover’s Tour.  Our trip is winding down at this point with just one more port of call after today.

But meanwhile back home in Minnesota, today is a super big day for my sister.  While I’m away, she is closing on her new house!  I’m a little bummed to be missing this momentous occasion.  I would have liked to pop the champagne and toast her new status as a home owner, but we’ll just have to do that when I return.

In the current housing market in the Twin Cities, you have to move really fast and you have to outbid your competitors.  Debbie learned that the hard way after placing bids that were not accepted on two other houses that she really wanted.

The first house she bid on was really adorable.  It was built in the 1920’s and had some great original details like wood floors, cove ceilings and a fireplace in the living room.  It was in a really lovely neighborhood with giant trees where the houses were really far apart.  The seller had done a really spectacular job of preparing the house for sale by repainting all of the rooms and just really cleaning things up in general.  It had a charming farmhouse style kitchen with a little breakfast nook that jutted out into the back yard, and it also had a brand new furnace and hot water heater.  Unfortunately that house had somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 bids, most of them far over asking price, or so we assume since Debbie bid slightly over asking price and was still not in the running.

Perhaps it was just as well that she didn’t get that house since it was further away from her work, and a little bit closer to some less than ideal areas of the city.

The next house she bid on had tons of potential.  It was an 1884 farmhouse and much like my own house, suburbia had grown up around it.  It was a funky place.  For one thing, it faced away from the street it was on.  I’m sure at one point in time the house was accessed from another street that was actually in ‘front’ of the house, but over time the neighborhood was rearranged.  Here’s the front of the house that faced the back yard …

 It also sat way back off the street, so much so that you couldn’t really even see it from there.  It was on a huge lot, I believe an acre.  It would have been really fun for me to blog about that house because it needed a lot of work.  The kitchen was a really big room with nothing in it except a free standing fridge, a free standing oven and one small bank of cabinets with a sink.  In other words, a blank slate.  On the down side, a lot of the original details were long gone.  At some point in the 1950’s or so someone had gone through and ‘updated’ the doors and baseboards throughout with cheap replacements.  I’m sure there must have been wood floors on the main level originally, but they were all gone and currently there was just some awful carpeting over some sub-flooring.

This time there weren’t lots of competing bids, there was just one.  And it was higher than Debbie’s.

She was even more disappointed by the loss of this house.  But in the long run I think the house would have been a lot more work than she is ready for both inside and out.  She didn’t really want a ‘fixer upper’ and this house was definitely one of those.  So it really was not meant to be.

It seems that the third time was the charm!  After missing out on those two houses, Debbie knew to move fast on the next one she liked.  She looked at the house and put in a bid on the very first day it was listed and that strategy worked.  Today she is becoming the proud owner of house no. 3 (that’s just counting the houses she bid on, not all of the many houses we looked at and passed on).

When she first started looking I told her that she needed to stay within a one mile radius of my house.  That seems reasonable, right?

Well, she came close.  Her house is 4.2 miles away from mine in a charming little neighborhood in St. Paul.  She will be just half a block from Beaver Lake.

If you go upstairs and twist your head just so, she has a lake view!

Her house is a typical post WWII 1950’s ranch.  It’s the perfect cozy size for my niece and her to share.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that my sister moved to Minnesota two years ago after living in New Jersey for the previous 30 years or so.  She’d been in an apartment in New Jersey, and then rented an apartment here for the last two years.  In other words, it’s been a long, long time since she’s been a home owner.  She’s super excited about it, and really looking forward to having her own yard and a space to host BBQ’s (hopefully I’ll be invited to lots of those).

Since Debbie is in charge of monitoring blog comments until I return, I hope you’ll take a moment to wish her the best in her new home!

recipes for success.

Published on by Quandie6 Comments

I really enjoy mixing my own custom colors with milk paint.  Of course you can also do the same thing with Fusion’s acrylic paint and also with chalk paint, but somehow measuring the different powders and mixing them up with water is so much more fun.  It’s a little ironic since I have absolutely no interest in baking.  I definitely get far more use out of my vintage measuring spoons with paint than I ever would if I used them for baking.

So far my all time favorite custom mix is the Blue Alligator that I came up with last month for this dresser …

The recipe for Blue Alligator is equal parts Miss Mustard Seed Kitchen Scale, Homestead House Upper Canada Green and Homestead House Loyalist.

A close second for favorite status is a color I called Robin’s Egg Blue.  I mixed this one up way back in April 2014 and used it on this dresser …

The recipe for this one is a little more complicated than some of the others I’ve done.

 I used 1/4 cup of MMS Luckett’s Green, 1/2 cup MMS Eulalie’s Sky and 2 T of MMS Flow Blue mixed with 3/4 cup of water.  This quantity was enough to paint two coats on the dresser, plus there was enough left over for a mirror frame.

Another pretty combo is one that I copied from Miss Mustard Seed and used on this chippy little table.

This color is a mix of equal parts Shutter Grey, Eulalie’s Sky and Layla’s Mint (all Miss Mustard Seed milk paint).

Tropical Island is a a mix of 3 parts MMS Luckett’s Green to 2 parts MMS French Enamel.  I used it on this little wall shelf.

It really easy to lighten up a color by adding some white.  When I painted this empire style buffet I wanted a pale grey, so I went with 1 part MMS Trophy to 2 parts MMS Ironstone which gave me the perfect shade of grey.

Back in July 2014 I created my own Minty Fresh green by mixing together some MMS Luckett’s, Eulalie’s Sky and Grain Sack.  Grain Sack is a white with very grey undertones and I love using it to both lighten and to tone down a color.

If you are thinking about creating a custom mixed color of your own, I have a couple of tips for you.

First of all, be sure that you mixed enough color to finish the job.  If you run out of paint halfway through your final coat, you are not going to be able to mix more that exactly matches.  That kind of precision is not something you’ll ever achieve with milk paint.

I know that it can be difficult to predict exactly how much paint you’ll need.  It’s something you’ll get a feel for over time, but at first you may struggle with it.  So, I have another tip for you just in case you didn’t get the quantity right.  Always pay a little bit of attention to how much paint you mixed up at the start, let’s say it was about 1 cup.  Then when you’ve completed your first coat, take a look at how much paint is left.  Do you still have at least half a cup left?  If you think you might be just a tad short, can you add just a little water at this point and go with a thinner 2nd coat?  If that’s not going to work, or if you think you may even end up needing a third coat, now is the time to mix more paint before you start your 2nd coat.  If the color is a little off, it won’t matter if you paint a full 2nd coat in this new mix.

My final tip; be sure to mix your paint thoroughly and then let it sit at least 15 minutes or so before you start painting.  This gives all of the pigments time to dissolve properly.  I don’t use any fancy mixing tools (like a whisk or blender), I just super cheap craft sticks and a red solo cup and then I toss them after each project.  I know, that’s not very ecologically sound of me.  When I first started using milk paint I used glass canning jars so that I could shake my paint to mix it, but cleaning those jars was a pain (just ask Mr. Q, he usually ended up with that job).

As always with milk paint, be sure you mix the paint frequently as you are using it to keep your color well blended and consistent throughout.

Do you have any favorite custom mixes of milk paint that you’d like to share?  If so, be sure to leave a comment!

the unrealistic nature of blogging.

Published on by Quandie29 Comments

One of my favorite paintings by Vermeer is called The Astronomer.  He painted it in 1668 and usually it hangs in the Louvre in Paris.  It’s a gorgeous example of Dutch realism, or genre painting.

I was lucky enough to see it in person in 2009 when the Louvre loaned it to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Paintings are always so much more beautiful in person.

Have you ever wondered what Dutch realism and blogging have in common?

OK, probably not.

But I was reading an interesting article about Vermeer by Alistair Sooke on BBC.com recently, and the parallels between Dutch genre paintings and blogging really struck me.

First a quick lesson in art history.  Dutch genre paintings are basically paintings of everyday scenes painted in a ‘realistic’ style.  Here’s another nice example, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid.

Don’t you love that basket hanging on the wall?  And don’t you want to just take a bite of that delicious crusty bread?

I think when most of us look at a painting like this we assume we are looking at a realistic representation of life at the time it was painted; a woman pouring milk out of a jug in a seemingly utilitarian room with a simple basket of bread on the table.

But Sooke’s article explained that we would be wrong.  Instead it would be more accurate to consider these paintings an idealized version of real life.  The women are always beautiful, the lighting is perfect, the colors are rich and vibrant, the scene is very intentionally composed, that blue cloth on the table is draped just so.  Sooke calls this the “unrealistic nature of Dutch realism.”

Of course the Dutch painters did this on purpose.  Their goal wasn’t to provide a historically accurate representation of real life for future generations, they were trying to sell a painting.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  The same can be said about bloggers today, myself included.

When I take photos for my blog I often wait until the light is just right.

I compose my shot with seemingly utilitarian pieces arranged just so, in colors that work well together.  I try to tell a story with my composition.  But if you think about, rarely would you actually have things arranged this artfully in your home all of the time.

And it’s not likely that I’m ever going to set up a beautiful dining table like this outdoors.

But it sure did look pretty for the pictures.

I find it interesting that in the almost 360 years that have passed since Vermeer painted The Milkmaid, not much has changed in this regard.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a fan of unrealistic realism.  I like being inspired by pretty pictures that I see online, I just have to remind myself that I can’t expect my own very real home to look like that.

leaving Debbie in charge.

Published on by Quandie30 Comments

Hey everybody!

Mr. Q and I have officially set sail for Denmark, Norway, Scotland and England.  Woo hoo!

We have some great plans made for our trip.  We’re taking a castle tour in Copenhagen to see Kronborg Castle, Fredriksborg Castle and Fredensborg Castle all in one day.  That’s alotta castles!

I’m really looking forward to visiting the open air museum in Oslo.

We’ll wander around Bryggen, the old Hanseatic wharf area in Bergen.

Maybe we’ll take the Funicular up to Mount Fløyen for the view, or maybe we’ll just wander around enjoying the overall ambiance of Bergen.

source

We’ll sail up the Sognefjorden to Flåm and do some hiking around the fjords.

We are looking forward to visiting Castle Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, the seat of the MacLeod of MacLeod, chief of the Clan MacLeod.  Mr. Q’s step-dad is a McLeod, so we have to see it just so that we can report back to him.

Our tour to Dunvegan also includes a whisky tasting, which should be interesting since neither of us are whiskey drinkers!  But when in Rome … or in this case Scotland …

We plan to take a book lovers’ tour in Edinburgh, and maybe we’ll manage to also find the Circus Mews …

We’ve hired a private guide in Inverness to take us to Dunrobin Castle …

Can you tell that I like touring castles?

And we have the guide and her car for six full hours, so we plan to tour around and see as much as we can of the surrounding area.  Perhaps we’ll run into Jaime and Claire (fingers crossed!) …

Most of all we are looking forward to having two solid weeks to chill out and not even think about things like day jobs, house work, yard work, and yes … even blog writing!

Although I was originally planning to take a blog break while on vacation, I ended up writing and scheduling a couple of blog posts to keep you mildly entertained while I am gone, but I won’t be posting from the ship.  I also probably won’t find the time to respond to comments, so I’ve left my sister Debbie in charge of that.  She’s under strict instructions to respond to comments and answer any questions that you might pose (if she can).  By the way, my blog is set up to allow comments from anyone who has previously had a comment approved, but if you have never left a comment before your first comment will need to be approved and Debbie won’t be able to do that.  So if you are new to commenting on q is for quandie, don’t think your comment got lost or is being ignored.  I promise to approve you when I get back!

Debbie will also be holding down the fort at our house.  She’s going to be house sitting so that our cat Lucy has some company.  I’ve convinced her to mow the lawn for us while we’re gone, and hopefully she won’t let my houseplants die.  But she flat out refused to paint any furniture for me, so that will have to wait until I come back too!

a few of my favorite neighborhood sales.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

Before I get on with today’s post I’m wondering if any of you can help me out.  Last Saturday there were a whole bunch of new visitors here on the blog, and I got quite a few new followers.  So, first of all, welcome to all of my new followers, I’m glad you are joining us!  Second of all, how did you find me?  I’d like to thank whomever it was that shared my blog, but since it seems to have been a Facebook thing, my stats don’t tell me where you all came from.  So if you’re willing, please share how you found out about me in a comment.

Earlier this year when Mr. Q and I were trying to decide when and where to go on vacation this year we ran into some scheduling problems.  Between both of our day jobs, both of our side jobs (mine is furniture artist/blogger, his is wedding officiant), scheduling my occasional sale and numerous other things on the calendar it was hard to find a time that we could both be away for any significant length of time.

So when we found the cruise to Norway & Scotland that we’re taking next week it seemed like kismet.  It worked perfectly with our work schedules.  It wasn’t until after we had booked it that we realized we’d be missing Mr. Q’s grandpa’s 100th birthday!  Argh!  Luckily the party is scheduled for the day before we leave, so we weren’t aren’t going to miss the party, just the actual day.

We’re also going to be gone the day my sister closes on her new house.  Dang, I would have liked to share a champagne toast with her the first time she opened the door to her new home with her very own key.  But, we’ll be home just a few days later and in plenty of time to actually help her move (she’ll be doing some painting and cleaning before she moves in).

I also think I’m going to miss the lilacs!  They generally bloom during the last half of May, while I’ll be gone.

But what I didn’t even think to factor in was which of my favorite neighborhood garage sales I would be missing!  What was I thinking planning a trip right at the height of garage sale season?!

In a recent comment, Carol asked me to share some of my favorite sales so I thought I’d do that in a post.  Even though I’m missing out on some of them this year, maybe some of you local readers can check them out.

It’s tradition to kick off the start of garage sale season with the Bryn Mawr neighborhood sale.

Bryn Mawr is always the first weekend in May.  You can check out some of my previous posts about Bryn Mawr here, here and here.

Bryn Mawr is an extremely popular neighborhood sale.  There is traffic congestion, limited parking, and tons of people.  Many of the residents have a sale every year, and in some cases that means they pull out the same ol’ stuff each year, then pack it up when it doesn’t sell and pull it out again next year.  It also means you probably won’t find any really amazing bargain prices.  Usually I manage to come home with at least a few fun things, but this year I didn’t have much luck.  The few things I found didn’t even merit a photo or a blog post.

Although you’ve already missed them, there are several other great neighborhood sales to pick from the first weekend in May including Tangletown and Summit Hill and I may try one of those next year instead of Bryn Mawr.

Another big favorite of mine is Linden Hills, and that’s one I will be missing this year.

Much like Bryn Mawr, Linden Hills is very popular (ie. crowded) and it has a great festival-like atmosphere.  Last year they even had live music.  I’m not positive, but I think Linden Hills is always the first weekend after Mother’s Day.  This year it’s on May 20.

Yep, I’m bummed to be missing it, but since I’ll be spending that day in Stavanger, Norway I guess I can’t complain, right?

The Hale-Page-Diamond Lake neighborhood sale is also on May 20 this year.  If you’re looking for something a little less crowded than Linden Hills, Hale-Page might be a good choice for you.  You can read about my last trip to Hale-Page here.

I’ll also be missing the Roseville city-wide sale this year on June 1 – 3.  This is one that I discovered last year after a tip from a blog reader.  I was on vacation from the day job so was able to get there on the first day of the sale, which is a Thursday.  My friend Meggan joined me and we had a great time.

Since I do work full time, sales that start during the week usually don’t make it onto my list.  I prefer to stick with Saturday only sales whenever possible.  Otherwise all of the good stuff is long gone before I can get there.

Although you don’t usually find many garage sales on holiday weekends, believe it or not the Armitage-Kenny sale is usually held on Memorial Day weekend and so I was assuming I’d miss this one too.  But this year they have moved it to a week later on June 3.

I always enjoyed the fact that Armitage-Kenny was so quiet compared to the other neighborhood sales.  I’m sure that was because of the holiday weekend.  In 2015 we came home with fake tattoos and plastic spoons and not much else.  Although Debbie found a great table with benches.

The East Calhoun neighborhood’s ECCO Super Sale is the sale I usually pick for the first weekend in June (also being held on June 3 this year).

Last year I found a stash of vintage cameras at reasonable prices at ECCO and I even gave one of them away here on the blog since it was a duplicate of one I already had.

Speaking of vintage camera hauls, I hit the mother lode at the Nokomis neighborhood sale in June 2015.

Eureka, right?!

But both my sister Debbie and I love Nokomis for another reason as well.  Our parents both grew up in this neighborhood.  We always make a pilgrimage to our grandparent’s former houses that day in addition to hitting the sales.

The ‘find of the day’ from last year’s Nokomis sale was a croquet set that my sister bought.  I just loved the black and white graphic on it.

This year the Nokomis sales will be held on Saturday, June 17.

Organized neighborhood sales tend to take a hiatus after Nokomis.  There isn’t much going on in July or early August.  It’s too hot for garage sales!

But they start back up again in late August with the MacGrove sale which will be on August 26 this year.  MacGrove is another of my favorites.  Last year I got a gorgeous french desk at MacGrove …

Here is how it looked when I was done with it …

Vintage luggage was the find of the day two years ago at MacGrove.

The St. Anthony Park sales and the Lake of the Isles sales take place in the fall.  I couldn’t find dates yet for this year, so you’ll just have to keep them in mind and watch for dates later this summer.

If any of you locals make it to Linden Hills while I’m gone, be sure to let me know if you find some great stuff.  Or, on second thought, just tell me it was a bust this year so I don’t feel so bad about missing it, OK?

my color comfort zone.

Published on by Quandie34 Comments

I mentioned last week that Homestead House recently sent me some more of their milk paint.  I had requested some neutral shades, and I got plenty of those (and will be sharing a piece in one later this week), but they also sent me quite a few colors that I probably wouldn’t have chosen on my own.  One of those colors is called Gatineau.

Here’s how it looks on their website.

Hmmmm.  Yep, I definitely would not have put this one at the top of my wish list.  I’m not gonna lie, when I pulled it out of the box of paint I received I really didn’t think I would ever use it.  It was way outside my color comfort zone.

We all have a color comfort zone, right?  I actually have two.  One for items I’m keeping for myself and one for items I’m planning to sell.  My own personal color comfort zone is pretty wide open.  In fact, the front door of my house is quite similar to the Gatineau …

But I tend to be a bit more cautious about color with items I want to sell.  Almost anyone can work a neutral color into their existing décor, but there just aren’t as many buyers who will be able to use a color with a lot of personality.

Regardless, while testing out a few of the more neutral shades last weekend I decided to mix up a little Gatineau to see what it looked like IRL (that’s ‘in real life’ in case you didn’t know).  I painted it on a Popsicle stick and then pushed it aside for a bit, but I kept glancing at it and finding that the color was really growing on me.  It wasn’t until the paint on the Popsicle stick was fully dry that I realized it wasn’t nearly as yellow as I thought it might be.

If you’ve mixed up green milk paint before, you’ll know that the dry powder looks yellow.  Your first reaction when seeing it will likely be ‘uh oh, I’ve got the wrong color’.  When you add the water and start to mix, the paint will still look much more yellow than the final color.  You have to be sure to give the green shades of milk paint plenty of time (15 to 20 minutes at least) for the blue pigments to dissolve before starting to paint with it, always mix frequently while working with it, and always paint your entire piece at one time (cautionary tale here).

After admiring the color on that Popsicle stick for a while I decided to be daring and step outside of my color comfort zone and paint something in Gatineau.  Specifically, this incredibly adorable little table that I picked up recently.

After re-gluing some veneer that was lifting up on the top, I sanded it lightly and then wiped it down with some TSP substitute.  Next I painted it with two coats of Gatineau.  I followed that up with some Homestead House Limestone milk paint on the details including that really cool ribbed section.

It’s interesting to note that I got a lot more chipping in the areas that were painted with the Limestone than I did with the Gatineau.  Normally I would say that is because I didn’t sand those detailed areas as much as the flat areas before I started painting, but in this case even the legs didn’t chip much and I hardly sanded those at all (the distressing you are seeing on the legs is more the result of post-paint sanding rather than chipping).  So, I wish I had an answer for you on this, but it’s a mystery to me.

With milk paint, sometimes you just have to go with the flow.  Personally, I was happy to do that with this table.

Had I lined up all of the paint colors from Homestead House in order from most favorite to least favorite, I think Gatineau would have been somewhere near the end of line.  So imagine my surprise when it ended up being one of the first colors I chose to use, and then my total astonishment when it turned out to be so perfect on this little table!

Sometimes you just have to step outside of your color comfort zone!  But the real test will be whether or not this table sells.  If any of my local readers are interested, be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more info.

But hey, how about you, do you like to experiment with color?  Any favorites that you’ve used lately?  Please share.

why I love my olympus.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

First things first, the winner of the milk paint giveaway is Vicki Bougie.  Congrats Vicki!  And thanks so much to everyone who left a comment.  You all have so many great projects lined up, I just wish I could send milk paint to all of you!

OK, so I’m not a techie person, let’s just get that straight right up front.  I rarely have the patience to sit down and learn the ins and outs of a new device.  I’ve never loaded a single app on my phone.  And I should probably spend a little more time tweaking the design of my blog.  But all in all, I’d much rather be painting furniture.

That being said, I do occasionally force myself to try and learn more about my photography equipment so I can take good photos of the aforementioned painted furniture.

Today I thought I’d share an update regarding the camera I purchased back in September since I promised to report back on how I like it.  For those of you with absolutely no interest in camera equipment, this is the point where you should go do something more interesting with your time.

For the rest of you, the camera I purchased is an Olympus OM-D E-M10 mirrorless camera and I paid $399 for it.  If you want to refresh your memory regarding why I made this choice or what a mirrorless camera is, go back and read the post.  It’s OK.  I’ll wait.

This is a great little camera in a decent price range.  If you want a little more than just the camera on your phone or a simple point and shoot, this camera is a great step up.

 Here’s why I love it.

the size.

Whoever said ‘size doesn’t matter’ would be just plain wrong when it comes to having a camera that you want to carry around with you.  The Olympus OM-D is just so much smaller and lighter than my Canon Rebel (which is a DSLR camera).  This is one of the major pros to a mirrorless camera.

 I can throw it in my regular purse without having to switch to a larger bag.  If you don’t want to carry a big bag of gear around, this is a great feature.  Just to give you an idea of the size I took a photo of it on my Salvage Style book because I thought that would put it into perspective for many of you.

In comparison, here is my Canon with the Tamron lens that I normally use.

I’ve found that I’m much more likely to throw the Olympus in my bag when taking a day trip somewhere, like when we went looking for bald eagles back in March.  Even though I don’t have much of a zoom lens on the Olympus, I find that it takes such good quality photos that I can crop my photos with photo editing software later to ‘zoom in’ on my subject.  That’s how I got so ‘close’ to this eagle.

the touch screen shooting.

I totally underestimated how much I would love using the touch screen, especially when I want to redirect the camera’s focus.  Here’s how that works, the LCD screen displays the image you’re about to take and to choose the spot where you want the camera to focus you just touch the screen there.  The camera focuses and takes the shot with just one touch, no need to depress the shutter release button.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  In this first photo I touched the screen over the vintage tablecloth in the foreground.

And here is that same shot, only this time I touched the screen over the bread box.

 Is that slick or what?  It’s something that I use really frequently.  When taking photos for the blog I often want to focus on a specific spot that isn’t centered in the shot, such as the drawer pull on this dresser …

With my Canon I have to reset the focal point, and then change it back every time, requiring multiple button pushes.  With the Olympus I can take unlimited photos one after the other with different focal points by just touching the screen in a different spot for each.

the LCD display.

I really like the LCD display more than I thought I would as well.  I’m a little embarrassed to admit the reason, but here it is.  I can take photos without having to remove my reading glasses!  I can see how my photo is composed, I can see all kinds of settings around the perimeter of the screen including a histogram, and then I can take the shot without have to take off my readers first.  I still have the viewfinder as a backup for outdoor shooting on bright, sunny days, but I rarely find myself using it otherwise.  With my Canon DSLR I am constantly putting readers on, then taking them off, putting them on, then taking them off.  You younger punks may not appreciate this feature, but those of you closer to my age know exactly what I’m talking about here.

Another handy feature of the screen is that it tilts, even as far as perpendicular to the camera.

This can be super handy when you want to hold the camera at about waist level and shoot straight on at your subject (usually a piece of furniture for me).  You can still easily see the screen.

how easy it is to adjust the exposure.

It’s also far easier to make quick changes to adjust the exposure on this camera.  You just turn the ring that is around the shutter button.  It couldn’t be easier to go just a hair lighter or darker and you can immediately see the results either through the viewfinder or on the screen.  With the Canon I have to hold down the AV button with one finger, move the ring with another and you can’t see the results until after you take the photo and then check it on the view screen (take the readers off, put the readers back on).

photo quality.

 After reading all of these glowing reasons why I love my Olympus camera you must be assuming that I don’t even use my Canon any more, but no, that’s not true.

The biggest reason that I continue to use the Canon is that I have several expensive lenses for it, and I don’t want to fork out the money for similar lenses for the Olympus.  At least not all at once.  And personally I find that the lens I’m using makes the biggest difference to the quality of my photos.  Lately I’ve been experimenting with prime lenses and have found that the sharpness of my photos (especially in lower light situations) is much better with a prime lens.  I have a 50 mm prime lens for my Canon, and it takes really sharp photos.  The 50 mm is not quite wide enough for taking photos of furniture indoors though.  At least not in my house.  I can’t get far enough away to get the whole piece of furniture in the frame.  That’s why I’ve been doing a lot of outside shots lately.

However, I did just splurge on a wide-angle 17 mm prime lens for the Olympus both in anticipation of my upcoming trip and so that I can work on my indoor shots (the 17 mm for a mirrorless camera is approximately equal to a 35 mm prime for a DSLR, so a bit wider than the 50 mm that I’ve been using, I know, this all gets so confusing, doesn’t it?).  I have two weeks to decide if I love it enough to justify the expense (it cost more than the camera itself at $599 including a good quality UV filter), so I plan to do a lot of practicing with it between now and then.  I used it to take the photos of the watering can in Monday’s post, and so far so good.

The other reason I don’t always reach for the Olympus is that little thing I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  I’m not patient about learning new technologies.  The Olympus has so many bells and whistles that it’s a serious challenge to learn about all of them.  I’ve been using it for over six months now and I still struggle with making adjustments on the fly.  But the more I learn about this camera and the more I practice, the more I use it.  I suspect that I will be using it a lot in Norway and Scotland, so I’ll be sure to report back on how it worked out for me after my trip, which is coming up soon!

In the meantime, I’ll be back next week with some more furniture makeovers so be sure to stay tuned.