q is for quandie

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.

Happy 4th of July!

And to all of my readers from other countries, happy Monday!

I’m probably sitting on a beach at the Jersey shore right now, but I scheduled this post in advance so you all wouldn’t miss me too much 😉

Earlier this summer I picked up a few kid-sized chairs at various garage sales.  I love painting these little chairs.  You can see others I’ve painted {here}, {here}, {here} and {here}.

Yep, I’ve painted lots of them and since I didn’t want to repeat myself I had to really give some thought to what I wanted to do with them.  I definitely wanted to go with milk paint for a chippy, aged look.  On the first chair, I started with Miss Mustard Seed’s Flow Blue.  I added an off-centered grain sack stripe in white using a stencil and some white acrylic craft paint.

For the second chair I pulled out Miss Mustard Seed’s Tricycle.  I didn’t want these chairs to match, but I wanted them to coordinate.  Red seemed like a good choice.  Once I had the chair painted, I gave some thought to what sort of embellishment to add.  I didn’t want to do the same stripe as the first chair.  So, I went with a Swiss flag look.

I used frog tape and just taped off the cross and painted it with Fusion’s Limestone.

Then, since I seemed to be on a roll with the blue and red, and since the 4th of July was coming up, I decided to paint the third chair in Miss Mustard’s Farmhouse White.  I also added a simple little stencil to the seat.

Which gave me a trio of chairs in red, white and blue!

Perfect for a 4th of July blog post.

I love the idea of hanging the chairs in a row on the wall to act as shelves.

You could keep your vintage American Government book on them.

Wouldn’t this book be fun to use as a 4th of July table decoration?

I took the chairs, the books, and even the little sailboat off to Reclaiming Beautiful a week or so ago.  Hopefully they will find new homes from there!

Recently I’ve been telling friends and family that I have placed a moratorium on bringing home any more furniture.  I don’t have a lot of space for storing pieces, so I have to be sending just as many out the door as I’m bringing in the door.  And somewhere along the line the balance got thrown off.  So for the last month or so I have been trying not to bring in any new pieces to work on until I get some of the ones that I already have finished.

But then I found an awesome desk at a garage sale for just $15.  How do you pass that up?

And then there was a bedroom set that my friend Meggan’s husband’s co-worker (or something like that) was selling.  Meggan had texted me about it a while back and I made an offer at the time.  Then I basically forgot about it.  So when they accepted my offer a few weeks later I felt like I should ignore the moratorium and bring the set home.  I figured I could squeeze them in somewhere.  So last week Mr. Q and I drove out to pick them up. The set includes a tall dresser, a dressing table and a full size bed.

I decided to start with the tall dresser.

There was nothing terribly wrong with this dresser, it just needed to be lightened up.

So I got out my Little Billy Goat paint in Momma’s Fridge, which is a lovely pale aqua blue.

I took just two coats to get good coverage.  I like to water the paint down a little for the second coat because it goes on a little more smoothly.

Once the paint was dry, I added a stencil to the top of the dresser to give it a little extra personality using white acrylic craft paint.

I finished with a coat of Miss Mustard Seed furniture wax.  Just so you know, you must seal Little Billy Goat’s paint with a top coat of some kind.  Otherwise water will take the paint off.  This is handy for distressing with a wet paper towel, but not so handy for daily use, so always seal pieces painted with Little Billy Goat.

The hardware that came with this dresser is so pretty.  I just added a little more gold to them using a Little Billy Goat Goat Stick in Gold Leaf.

If you haven’t tried one of these, they are really so easy to use.  Keep in mind that they are self-sealing, so you have to peel off the waxy coating, or rub the stick on paper until it comes off, each time you use it.  It’s really pretty slick and so much more user friendly than the rub ‘n buff (which I find dries out in the tube, and then you have to toss half of it away).  Here was my process for these drawer pulls; first I rubbed off the waxy coating on the stick, then I ran the stick lightly around the pull itself.  I didn’t press hard or cover the whole thing, I just wanted to get some of it on there.  Then I went back in with a q-tip and blended it.  Think of it like blending your eye shadow.

I added the hardware back onto the dresser, and it was done.

A super easy makeover.

Please check my ‘available for local sale’ tab to see if this piece is still available.

Please note that Little Billy Goat has supplied me with paint and goat sticks, but all opinions are my own and I am not compensated for this post.  If you would like to try Little Billy Goat paint and you are local, you can find it at Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater.  You can also find Little Billy Goat products online at piperclassics.com.