q is for quandie

My friend Meggan is a master thrifter.  I’m not sure what qualifications are required for that title, but whatever they are, she has ’em.  A while back she texted me from the thrift shop with a heads up on a sweet desk.  It had been marked down and she could tell it had potential.  Luckily Mr. Q was available that day, so I sent him right over to nab it.

Its biggest problem was that it was GRUNGY!  Someone had treated this poor thing like crap.  It was also missing a couple of handles as you can see.  That’s OK, I didn’t love them anyway.  But otherwise it was structurally sound and the drawers open and close as smooth as silk.

Oddly enough, each drawer had 3 holes for hardware …

… which leads me to believe that the original hardware had been swapped out at some point anyway.

I started by stripping the top of the desk and while that was percolating, I filled two holes on each drawer just leaving the center hole.  To accomplish that I always put a piece of painters tape over the back of the hole so that I don’t loose any filler out the back, then I fill with wood filler.  In this case I used Elmer’s Wood Filler in Mahogany.  I let the first load of fill dry, then went back and topped off each hole.  Once dry again, I sanded to make it smooth.

Remember last Friday when I mentioned that my sister said she preferred stained and poly’ed over rustic and waxed?  Well, she was looking at the Dragonfly dresser and this desk side by side when she said that.

You can’t blame her for preferring this look, it is gorgeous.  This is Dark Walnut gel stain topped with a matte finish wipe on poly.

I seem to paint a lot of desks black.  I’m not sure why that is except that they always turn out so fantastic.  There is just something about pairing black paint with a wood top on a desk that appeals to me.  This time I used Little Billy Goat’s Old Pickup (which is the name of their black).  Here’s a funny side story.  Whenever I try a new brand and/or color of paint, I always go to pinterest first to see if I can find any finished pieces in that brand and color.  So I entered “Little Billy Goat Old Pickup” into the search field on pinterest, and here is what I got.

Bwa ha ha, kinda literal, huh?

What I did not get was any sort of photo of furniture painted in this paint.  I want to change that, so could y’all please pin some of these next few photos for me?

I want to mention that this is just one coat of paint.  I’ve talked before about how the Little Billy Goat paint goes on thick if you don’t water it down a little.  Sometimes it works great to just leave it thick and get away with one coat.

Next thing I want to mention is that this paint distresses extremely easily.  I just use fine sandpaper for my distressing, but you can also use a damp paper towel which will take the paint right off.  Keeping that in mind, you definitely have to top coat this paint with either wax or a sealer of some kind.

This time around I used a new black wax that Little Billy Goat will be adding to their product line up soon.  I don’t have all of the details about this product yet, so I was just kind of winging it.  I applied lightly with a rag, waited a couple of minutes and then buffed with a clean old sock.  It went on quite easily.  I felt like it didn’t require nearly as much elbow grease as some of the other waxes on the market.

  The black wax sort of reminded me of shoe polish in appearance.

I will warn you though, it does have that chemical-ish smell that I’m not too fond of.  This is one that I would reserve for use in my outdoor workshop, or a well ventilated room.

That being said, I loved the results of the black wax over the black paint.  It gave me a deep, rich black color.

The level of sheen is contingent upon how much you want to buff it.  I’d say I stopped at a mid-point.  If I had kept buffing I could have gone shinier, but for me this sheen is perfect.  I will definitely continue using this black wax on my future black pieces.

There was no getting out of lining the drawers on this one.  As I mentioned earlier, the previous owner had not taken good care of it.  Which was too bad because some of the drawers were in good shape and the wood bottoms were lovely, but others were a mess.  So I lined all of them.

When it came time to put some knobs back on, I checked my stash and I had 4 of these Hobby Lobby knobs that were a perfect fit.

Luckily I was able to find 4 more at my local store since I needed 8 of them.

I’m beginning to realize that I should be picking up single chairs when I see them at garage sales so that I have some to pair up with desks.  I don’t have a chair to go with this desk. I used my super chippy farmhouse chair for staging some of the photos, but it’s not quite the right partner for the desk.

Note to self:  buy chairs!

Note to you:  buy desk (that’s not very subliminal is it?)!

It has been a busy, busy week here!  Two home tours on two different blogs and now to cap it off, a furniture makeover.  All to be followed by some serious napping time this weekend I think.

I’d forgotten just how long ago I picked up this pretty little dresser until I dug out the ‘before’ photos.

Hmmmm.  No leaves on the trees, brown grass and last year’s hydrangea blossoms still on the bush.  This had to have been April, if not earlier.

I’m not sure my ‘before’ photo captured it, but this dresser had a really ugly finish on it.  It looked like one of those ‘antiquing’ finishes.  You remember ‘antiquing’ from the 70’s, right?  It was weird.  All I know is that it had to go.

I followed my usual m.o.  I stripped the top and then waxed it.  I used Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax instead of a tinted wax.  I love the pale wood top, and I’m happy with leaving all of its imperfections as is.  My sister took a look at it and declared that she prefers when I stain and poly the tops.  That’s OK.  There are lots of different opinions out there, I’m just hoping that there are potential customers out there who like the rustic patina of this top as much as I do.

Next I painted the body in the Real Milk Paint Co. milk paint that Reclaiming Beautiful is now carrying.  This time I chose a color called Dragonfly.  Just for fun I snapped a ‘behind the scenes’ photo for you guys while the paint was still drying.

This is my preferred method of painting lower pieces like this one.  I find it difficult to sit on the floor for too long, or to bend over for too long, so I hoist the furniture up onto the horses and this way I can reach everything with ease.  It also makes it so much easier to paint the feet.  Sometimes I stand while painting and sometimes I use my painting stool.  It is far easier to sand and wax things at this height also.  And yes, I did finish this one with a coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s furniture wax.

Here is the finished dresser.

I am officially in love with this color and with the perfectly distressed finish I got using the Real Milk Paint Co. paint.

The Dragonfly is a gorgeous rich blue green.

By the way, those are my Endless Summer hydrangeas and that is the sum total of blossoms that were on it this year.  So sad.  And yes, the pink and the blue came from just the one bush.  I know that supposedly the acidity in the soil determines the color, but it seems odd to me that one bush has differing levels of acidity in different branches.  What do you think?

Anyway, I got plenty of chipping on this piece, which I think works perfectly with the age and style of it.

I discarded the knobs that came on the dresser.  I’m quite sure they weren’t original to the piece, they had a sort of tacky 70’s vibe.  These gorgeous glass knobs from D Lawless are much better suited.

I’ll be sharing a more in-depth tutorial on using the Real Milk Paint Co. paint on the Reclaiming Beautiful blog in a week or two.  It’s going to include a giveaway of some of the products I used.  However, the giveaway will only be open to those who can pick up the prize in person at their shop in Stillwater, so you locals might want to keep an eye out for that.  I apologize non-local readers, first you had to suffer through not being able to go to the barn sale, and now you miss out on a giveaway.  I’ll try to make it up to you down the road somehow.  But for you locals, if you don’t already follow me on the Reclaiming Beautiful blog, you should pop over there and do so (by clicking here).  If you follow by email you’ll get an email every time I post something new.  I promise you won’t be inundated with numerous emails since I only post over there 2 or 3 times a month and that way you’ll be sure not to miss the post.

Meanwhile, this lovely dresser is available to the first person that wants to snap it up.  For more details, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page (click on it just below my logo at the top of this page).

This dresser came to me from my friend Cecelia.

When Mr. Q picked it up, the top was separated from the bottom.  That was probably one of the easier fixes that Ken has had to deal with for me.  One of these days I have to write a blog post about the cool little tool that he uses for reattaching tops like this.  Next time he does that I’ll have to try and get some photos of the tool and the process.

The strange thing about this dresser is how discolored that middle drawer is, it really kind of jumps out at you.  I really don’t know what would cause this phenomenon.  If any of you have any ideas, I’m all ears.  IMHO, this ‘flaw’ made it a good candidate for a paint job and I love using milk paint on these old pieces. The shop in Stillwater where I occasionally sell my pieces, Reclaiming Beautiful, just started carrying a line of milk paint from The Real Milk Paint Co.

I picked out Peacock based on the sample sticks they have in the shop.  For me the hardest part of using a new brand of paint is getting to know the colors.  You can look at photos of the colors online all day long, and somehow the color always looks different in person.  The plus for me with Miss Mustard Seed milk paint is that I know exactly what all of her colors look like in real life.

But I also have to admit that I’m getting a little bored with the MMS colors.  It’s time for a change.

So after stripping and waxing the top of this dresser (with Cece Caldwell’s Aging Cream), I mixed up some Peacock.  It mixed up pretty much exactly like the MMS milk paint that I’m used to.  The only slight difference I’ll note is that it foamed up a little more than I’m used to.  The Real Milk Paint Co has a product called Anti-Foaming Agent that I’m going to try next time.  But I didn’t run into any trouble with the foaminess, I just let the paint settle a bit before I started working with it.

This color is deep, rich blue green that almost looks black in low light.  It leans a little more towards green on my piece than on others I’ve seen it used on.  I wonder if that is because there was a lot of red to the wood underneath.  Milk paint can be a little more transparent than other paints, so the color you are painting over can make a difference.

I also used hemp oil as my topcoat and that really changed up the color.  It brought out a lot more green, and darkened it up quite a bit as is typical of hemp oil.  By the way, the Real Milk Paint Co has a hemp oil in their line, but I used MMS hemp oil because I already had it on hand.

The hardware on this dresser is just stunning, isn’t it?

You can also see the green of the color a little better in that last photo.

I was hoping for more chippiness, but it eluded me once again.  Next time I’m going to try another product from this line called Chippy Paste.  Have any of you heard or it, or used it?  I’ll be sure to let you all know what I think of it when I try it.

I used an old copy of Moby Dick in staging this piece.

The colors on it worked perfectly with the Peacock.

Funny though, it wasn’t until I was editing the photos for this post that I noticed the sea horse motif on the cover.  See it? Isn’t that cool?

Have any of you tried the Real Milk Paint Co milk paint?  If so, let me know what you thought of it.  I’ll be trying out a few more of their colors soon.

As usual, please check my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details if you’re interested in purchasing this dresser.