q is for quandie

I was checking out one of my favorite blogs the other day, Ranger 911.  Vickie from Ranger 911 is a fellow Minnesotan although she is way up north.  I’ve always considered the Twin Cities to be in a ‘warmer’ climate than the truly hardy souls who live anywhere north of Duluth.  As I write this post it is currently 36 degrees in St. Paul, but only 32 degrees in Hibbing, MN.  See?  Way warmer!

But anyway, not only do Vickie and I live in the same state but we have another, more important thing in common.  Here’s a clue …

Here’s another clue …

Yep, we both love tiny dressers!  Be sure to visit her blog and look around because she has more!

But today’s post isn’t about tiny dressers.  It’s about gorgeous, vintage, pale yellow dressers.  Vickie recently posted about a makeover in her ‘bedroom no. 3’ and it included this gorgeous pale yellow dresser.

I love that subtle pop of pale yellow in her mostly white room.  And that shade of yellow is perfectly vintage isn’t it?  And check out that authentic chipping!  Vickie tells me that she purchased this dresser ‘as is’ at an estate sale and she thinks this finish is authentically vintage.

As I was drooling over it I remembered that Homestead House sent me some of their milk paint in Buttermilk Cream.  I knew it would be very nearly that same shade of yellow.  And although there is just something about an original old painted finish, you can get pretty close to that look with chippy milk paint.

 

And now that I am armed with my foolproof method for creating the perfect chippy finish, well, I knew this was going to be a slam dunk.

I happened to have a lovely vintage dresser on hand too.

And sure enough, it was just that easy.  I followed the foolproof method and 3 coats of Buttermilk Cream later, voila!

I used the Salad Bowl Finish around the edges of everything, but didn’t use it on the big flat expanses (the drawer fronts and the top) which gave me chipping just where I wanted it.

My original ‘vision’ for this dresser involved replacing the hardware with glass knobs, but the original hardware is so gorgeous and it was all there.  I had to keep it.

It seemed apropos to stage my Buttermilk Cream dresser with a tiny dresser.

Thanks again for the inspiration Vickie!

If anyone local is interested in purchasing this perfectly adorable vintage dresser, please check my ‘available for local sale’ tab to see if it is still available and other details.

I was surfing craigslist just before Christmas looking for a large cupboard.  I have an idea in my head for a piece for my q branch (a.k.a. my study).  It’s one of those ideas … you know, the ones where you can picture exactly what you want in your head but trying to find it is like searching for a needle in a haystack.  But every once in a while, I search for ‘cupboard’ or ‘cabinet’ on craigslist on the off chance I’ll find it and it will be less than $1,000.

I am still searching for that large cabinet, but luck was on my side on this particular day because I did find this …

I call this a jelly cupboard.  I’m not sure if that is exactly right, but I’m going with it.

I almost never see these on craigslist.  When I do see them, they are usually priced way out of my budget.  This particular item had only been posted for about an hour and the price was not fantastic, but OK.  So I totally snatched it up!

Milk paint was a no-brainer for this piece.  I wanted a chippy (be careful what you wish for), been in the barn for 75 years, held all of the homemade jelly, farmhouse look.

I debated color.  Black would have been easy.  I could have probably gotten away with one coat, possibly needing two.  White might have been most marketable, everyone loves white, right?  But what I really wanted to go with was aqua.  You all know it’s my favorite.  And Homestead House had sent me that free sample of their Laurentien milk paint.  I just couldn’t resist.  I don’t plan to keep this cabinet, but my thinking was this:  if no one buys it, I will just have to find a spot for it.  Or repaint it white.

Well, as I hinted, be careful what you wish for when it comes to chippy.  I mixed up my paint and while the pigments were getting good and dissolved, I sanded the cabinet lightly and then wiped it down with a damp cloth.  I didn’t want to over-sand, because as I mentioned, I wanted a chippy look.

I painted on my first coat of paint and then went downstairs to check on my laundry.  Then I washed some dishes.  Then I walked back into the room where I paint and out of the corner of my eye I saw this …

Then I panicked.  I did not see this coming.  That paint is not sticking at all.

Then I reminded myself that I have been here before.  No need to panic.

I got out the sandpaper and as I suspected would happen, sanding took off nearly all of the paint.  OK, no problem.  I vacuumed away the dust, wiped it down and then added a coat of Miss Mustard Seeds’ Tough Coat Sealer.

Take that you chippy cupboard!

Once the sealer was dry, I added a fresh coat of paint.  As it dried, I noticed that it was still chipping quite a bit.  This cupboard really wanted to be chippy.  By this point it was getting late.  I decided to just go ahead and add another coat of paint and go to bed.  But as fate would have it, I ran out of paint with just one side left to finish.

The next day I sent an email off to Jennylyn at Homestead House and asked if they could please send me just one more package of Laurentien, stat.

I spent the next week looking at the cupboard ‘as is’.  Except for that one side that still needed another coat of paint, I realized that I really loved the way the cabinet looked.  My own rooster cupboard is just as chippy and judging by how often it gets pinned on pinterest, I think there are others out there who love that look too (not you Betty from Ontario, I know this is not your cup of tea).

When the paint arrived I mixed up a small batch and painted that last remaining side.

And now it looks like this …

I left the inside of the cupboard alone.  Personally I like how rustic it is.

And I love this little wooden latch that can be used to keep the left side door closed.

The cupboard will likely continue to chip a little over time.  Although I sanded and vacuumed and got as much off as I could, I didn’t seal it.  I have found with other super chippy pieces that they continue to chip unless you seal them with the Tough Coat Sealer.  But that’s OK with me.  I like pieces that wear over time.

I debated removing the door insets and replacing them with screening, which would be quite easy to do.  I think that would be a really awesome look for this piece.  Something similar to this photo from pinterest …

If I was keeping it I think I would definitely do that, but I’m not keeping this cupboard.  I am selling it (check my available for local sale tab to see if it is still available).  So … I thought I’d see if I get any takers with this look first.

And who knows?  If it doesn’t sell I can always go back to the drawing board and paint it white.

I know it’s kind of silly, but I actually purchased this dresser because of its mirror.

I wanted to try an idea I had for the mirror frame and you all saw the results back before Christmas, the farm fresh chalkboard.

That still left the dresser.  It’s just a simple little Eastlake style chest of drawers.

I decided to strip the top and give it a rustic waxed finish, and then paint the rest.  Originally I was thinking white, but when I started to dig through my paint I remembered that Homestead House had sent me some of their milk paint in a color called Bedford.

I’d used their Fusion paint in the same color and I knew it was a lovely warm ‘greige’ so I decided it might just be perfect for this dresser.  Some of my photos wash this color out a bit, but this next one comes closest to representing the color well, although I still think the color a just a bit richer in person.

I used Miss Mustard Seed’s Grain Sack to pop the carved details down either side of the drawers.

You may not have noticed in the before photo, but this dresser was missing one complete handle and part of another.  The amazing thing is that I had two matching handles in my stash of misfit hardware.  What were the chances?

I hadn’t waxed the wood top before painting the dresser and once I had the Bedford paint on it I felt like the top had a reddish brown cast to it.  I didn’t love the way it was pairing up with the Bedford so I decided to try a tip I’d just read about in Miss Mustard Seed’s ‘lookbook two’.  Mixing waxes.

I mixed the Homestead House white and black waxes to create a grey wax.  It worked beautifully on the top of this dresser giving the wood a weathered look with a hint of grey.

I love how it turned out, it has a sort of driftwood look.

This ended up being such a pretty, yet neutral, look.

What do you think?

I’m going to go with ‘definite improvement’.

This lovely dresser is for sale.  Be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more info.

 

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).