q is for quandie

One of the fun things about my little furniture restyling hobby is that friends and family tend to offer me their cast off furniture.  Often it’s either me or the Goodwill (or possibly the dumpster as my friend Terri mentioned with the Parisian table).

You’d think that ‘free’ pieces are always good, but that’s not necessarily the case.  In the past I’ve taken on free furniture and wound up spending far more time on a piece than it’s worth.  Time is the one commodity that I can not get more of so I tend to be a bit stingy with mine.

So way back last winter when my friend Nan asked me if I wanted this mid-century modern blonde dresser I hesitated a little.  It’s doesn’t look too bad from this angle …

But here’s what the top and sides looked like …

Yikes!  Leopard print wallpaper!

I wasn’t sure how hard it was going to be to remove that stuff.  But I decided to take it home anyway.  And that lead to a lot of procrastination on my part.  Like about 9 months of procrastination.  It’s a big piece and it was taking up a huge chunk of floor space in my workshop, but yet it just sat there all summer.

I was determined to get it done during my recent stay-cation and yet even so, I put it off until the last two days.  It may not even have gotten done then, except I pulled the old Tom Sawyer ‘painting the fence’ trick.  You know that one, right?  You convince people that the work you’re doing is so much fun that they just have to join in.

Mr. Q and I pulled the dresser out into the yard and then I coerced my sister into helping me strip off that wallpaper.  Once she and I got started, nnK and Ken’s wife Arlene both came over.  Once they saw how much fun we were having, they were drawn in as well.  Soon all 4 of us were attacking that wallpaper.  We had it off in no time!  We found that just getting the paper wet and then using a scraper did the trick.  It came off in small pieces, but eventually we got it all off.

Once we had the wallpaper off, it was a simple job to sand the dresser down a bit and paint it.  Sort of.

I started with the gorgeous mint color on the body of the dresser and the two outer columns of drawers.  This is Dixie Belle’s Mint Julep, by the way.

Then I ran into some trouble on that center column of drawers that I painted in Annie Sloans’ Old White.  The finish bled through the white.  A lot.  But, no worries, I added a coat of Rachel Ashwell Clear Primer and tried again.  That did the trick.

I thought it was a bit odd that the finish only bled through the white paint, and not the mint.  Sure enough, when I inspected more closely I found that there were just a couple of small bleed thru spots on the top of the dresser too, so I handled the top in the same way.  A coat of clear primer followed by another coat of Mint Julep.

I finished with Annie Sloan clear wax.  I chose that brand of wax because once buffed it has a little more sheen than some of the others.  I like a little more shine on mid mod pieces.

Since my sister was still hanging out after we got the wallpaper off, she also helped me polish up the drawer pulls with some Brasso.  They cleaned up quite nicely.

I love being able to retain the original hardware on mid-century pieces especially.  They usually add so much character and this dresser was no exception.

I think this piece would work beautifully in a nursery.  It’s a great height to function as a changing table, it has tons of storage and it can be transitioned into a dresser down the road.  Check out my ‘available for local sale’ tab for more info if you’re in the market for some mid mod mint.

The clean lines of mid-century pieces appeal to me more and more these days.  How about you?  Mid-century modern, yes or no?

My stay-cation week off from the day job went by really quickly, isn’t that always the case?  And I didn’t get nearly as many projects done as I’d hoped I would.  Of course.

But in addition to lots of little things, I did get a couple of bigger pieces of furniture finished including a lovely vintage dresser.  You may remember seeing the ‘before’ of this one a while back.

It had that orangey oak-y finish.  I have to say, this one had me a little stumped.  I kept looking at it out in my workshop and not feeling any inspiration.  Finally I decided I wanted to give it a farmhouse look, something old and chippy.  I mixed up some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Farmhouse White and I started painting.  The first coat didn’t cover well at all, but that’s to be expected with white milk paint.  The second coat wasn’t much better.  Not a good sign.  By the third coat, the coverage was still not up to my standards.  Plus, I wasn’t getting any chipping at all.  Argh!

I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to just cut my losses, so that’s what I did.  I got out the Fusion paint instead.  I had a little bit of Limestone (a warm creamy white) left in a jar, so I supplemented it with some Casement (a brighter crisp white) just to be sure I’d have enough.  And then one coat did the trick.  Now to be fair, I’m sure I would have needed two coats if I didn’t already have a base of white milk paint.

Still … once painted I didn’t have to wax or add a top coat (my favorite thing about the Fusion paint).

After the paint dried, I added this gorgeous French Laundry stencil using acrylic craft paint in a nice greige sort of color.  I wanted to keep it subtle.

I think this is one of the prettiest stencils I have, and it added just the little bit of extra something that this dresser needed.

Did you notice the screen hanging above the dresser?

I’ve always been fond of a pop of black in an otherwise mostly white space.  I even have a pinterest board devoted to the idea (here).  I didn’t intend for the screen to go with this dresser (otherwise I wouldn’t have used them same stencil on both), but I wanted to add that pop of black to my photos of this piece.

I think perhaps this is how this dresser was meant to end up all along, don’t you agree?

Remember my ‘find of the day’ from the MacGrove sales?

I love the delicate proportions of this pretty little desk.  Or at least I am calling it a desk.  It could be a console table, or a dressing table.

I had originally envisioned a refinished wood top with a chippy white base.  But after I’d stripped two layers of paint off the top, I realized that I didn’t like the ‘wood top look’ with the more French looking details on this piece.  So after all of that work, I sanded it down and painted the whole thing grey.  This is approximately a 50/50 mix of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Trophy and Schloss.

And I ended up with no chipping at all.  Once again the ability to predict chippy-ness eludes me.  I knew I wouldn’t get any chipping on the freshly stripped top, but I thought for sure that painting over existing paint would result in some chipping.  Nope.

You can see that I added a bit of Little Billy Goat Gold Leaf goat stick to the details

and also to the drawer pulls.  Aren’t these pretty?

I’ve played on the classic Grecian urn motif on the hardware, the drawer front and the cross piece at the bottom by hanging my favorite gold framed mirror above it for my photos.

These two pieces pair up so nicely that I’ve decided to offer the mirror along with the desk.

I never thought I would part with this mirror, but it seems like they belong together.

I almost hate to put a chair in front of this because I feel like it would cover up all of the pretty details.  Maybe it would be better as a console table in a foyer after all.

What do you think?

Remember way back to last year when my friend Terri gave me a bunch of stuff from her deceased uncle’s house?  They were cast off items that no one in the family wanted.

This small table was among the pile and it needed a little bit of repair.  A couple of the corner supports were missing and one of the supports at the bottom was broken where it attaches to the table leg.  Luckily I have my secret weapon, Ken.

He made short work of replacing those corners and repairing that cross piece.

Ken made these repairs in short order, but then I let the table sit for ages.

I finally pulled it out last spring and painted it with two coats of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Flow Blue.  It started to chip like mad, and I felt like the red stain was bleeding through just a bit on the top.  So I shoved the table aside and worked on other projects because I didn’t feel like dealing with it.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this, right?

Flash forward another several months to a week or so ago.  I pulled this table out of the back of the workshop and realized maybe it wasn’t all that bad.  I sanded it vigorously to remove any chipping paint.

This photo shows a good example of what milk paint will look like on unfinished wood (the repaired corner piece) v. over previously finished wood.

Then I decided to add a stencil to the top.

I feel like the small amount of stain bleed-thru was totally negated by the heavy chipping and the addition of the stencil.

I finished the table with some Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax.

You may have caught a glimpse of the finished table last week when I posted the cane back chair.

It’s a sweet little side table that can be easily moved around to wherever it is needed.

It’s being added to the pile for my upcoming occasional sale!

For those of you who are local, the date has been officially chosen and is Saturday, October 8.  It’s only a month away, yikes!  Lucky I’m taking a stay-cation from the day job this week to get some stuff done.

My obsession with tiny furniture continues!

Who remembers this little number that I picked up at a garage sale in early summer?

It had an authentically aged original paint job, but I just couldn’t handle the red.  So I painted over the red with some Annie Sloan Duck Egg.  Then, the fresh coat of Duck Egg made the original cream exterior look seriously dingy and yellowed.  So I went over that with some Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Linen.

I fully expected a bunch of chipping since I was painting over paint, but I didn’t get a single chip.  When I say that whether or not milk paint will chip can be unpredictable, I mean it.

Once it was painted, I also added a tiny little ’37’ rub-on to the top.

I know it can be hard to judge scale in these photos, but this little cupboard is just 18″ tall.  It’s the perfect size for placing on a dresser or table top and filling it up with some of your crafting supplies.

It’s kinda adorable, right?

I was contemplating keeping it and letting it join its brethren in the Q Branch (my study).

But I really don’t think I need another tiny piece of furniture!

So it will probably end up at my sale in October.  I think.  Maybe.  Yes. Probably.