q is for quandie

Last summer my number one craigslist spotter (a.k.a. nnK) forwarded me a craigslist ad for a garage sale that was in our neck of the woods.  It was accompanied by just one photo.  This one.

Do you see what I see?

Yep, a tiny dresser!  You know I simply can’t resist miniature furniture of any kind.  Ironically, nnK hadn’t even noticed the small dresser, just that there seemed to be a lot of furniture and it was close by.

Unfortunately, the sale started on a Thursday at 9 a.m.  I have to be at work at the day job on Thursdays at 9 a.m.  Argh.  We ‘day job’ people miss a lot of the bargains this way.

So I said to myself “you know what?  it never hurts to ask!  maybe they would be willing to hold it for me, or better yet, let me come over Wednesday evening and pick it up.” and I sent them an email.  I even offered them a little extra cash.

And guess what?!  They were happy to let me come over early for it.  They were the sweetest older couple.  Their children and grandchildren had played with this little dresser, but now they were all grown up and none of them wanted it.  The sellers really wanted it to go to a good home.  I assured them that I would take good care of it.  I’ll admit, I didn’t exactly mention that I would be painting it.  You know how that is, right?  Some people are just simply anti-paint.  I always listen for clues, you can usually tell if you’re dealing with anti-painters.  But this little dresser really wasn’t made out of a beautiful grained wood (I believe it’s probably maple).  It didn’t have a beautiful time-worn patina or anything like that.

Sadly, I could have sworn that I took some ‘before’ photos of this one (other than the craigslist ad photo above), but dang if I can find them now.  Argh.  So that brings us right to the ‘after’.

I did my usual prep, light sanding and a wipe down with TSP substitue.  I wanted two layers of color on this one, so I began with two coats of Miss Mustard Seed’s Layla’s Mint.  Next I added two more coats of MMS Linen.  In hindsight, the Mint was a waste of time.  It barely shows on some of the edges.  Also, the contrast between the Mint and the Linen isn’t strong enough for the little Mint that does show to even be noticed.

But I can hardly be upset about that because I totally love how it turned out!  I got some fabulous chipping.

I replaced some ugly yellow floral 70’s porcelain knobs with vintage glass knobs.  In fact, these are the knobs that came off farmhouse dresser no. 5.  I’m happy to have put them to good use!

I thought that it would be fun to stage all of my furniture pieces for Christmas during the month of December.  For this one I used a boxwood wreath that I just purchased at Target.  It’s the 11″ wreath from the Smith & Hawkin line.  It was on sale for $17.99.  It was Rhonda’s comment on my mirror post that inspired me to use the small wreath on this piece, wasn’t it a great idea?!  Thanks for that Rhonda!

I added a little box of vintage mini-ornaments.

And my favorite tiny Christmas elf.

Here’s a photo without the wreath just to give you a better look at the mirror.

This little dresser is a bit bigger than my usual mini dressers at 35″ tall.  For the moment I’ve put it in my living room, but I don’t plan to keep this one.  It’s just a tad too big for me.

So it is for sale.  Although I won’t be too sad if no one buys it and I just have to keep it after all.

Sometimes it’s a bit wild how things just come together.  I believe some might call it serendipity.  In this case, I painted a dresser last Friday in one of my new Little Billy Goat colors called Prize Winner.

 It wasn’t until I started writing the blog post about it that I realized I would also be announcing the prize winner from my Thanksgiving giveaway in the same post!  Now, I’d like to be able to say that I very cleverly planned this little play on words with my paint color choice, but no.  It didn’t even occur to me until I started writing.

Well, with no further delay, the winner of the giveaway is Sarah M.  I’ve already contacted Sarah and she’s super excited about winning!

And now for the prize winner dresser!

It started out looking like this when Mr. Q purchased it via craigslist.

I was particularly drawn to the little finials on the harp that holds the mirror in place, and also to the fact that the seller included a photo of the label in his ad.

That little detail in his ad really caught my eye.  I love a good vintage label.

To me this dresser has a little yin and yang going on.  A feminine mirror with a slightly curved top on a masculine tall dresser with straight lines and no fuss.  I decided it would be lovely painted in a rich, dark blue.  I debated using Miss Mustard Seed’s Artissimo or Annie Sloan’s Aubusson, but then I remembered my new Little Billy Goat paint in Prize Winner.

After doing as much furniture painting as I’ve done, I’ve learned to not fight against the existing color on a piece of furniture.  The finish on this dresser was quite dark, so trying to paint it in a pale shade would have likely required several coats of paint.  I got away with just one coat of Prize Winner, with just a quick 2nd coat on only the top to touch up a couple of spots.  Yep, that is just one coat of paint on the fronts of those drawers.  I finished with Miss Mustard Seed clear wax.

Mr. Q did all of the prep work on this one and he really struggled with the knobs.  They all had some sort of glue holding them on in addition to the screw.  I suspect people do this sort of thing because they want those knobs to be FIRMLY attached.  They aren’t thinking ahead to some far flung future date when someone wants to take them off again.  In the end we had to get Ken’s help drilling out one of the screws altogether because it just wouldn’t budge.

Once the knobs were all off, I really wasn’t planning to put them back on again.  I was going to use some pretty clear glass knobs.  But the holes for these knobs were really large.  The glass knobs had too much wiggle room.  I consulted with Ken on this and he suggested we glue dowel sticks in all the holes, and re-drill.  A great idea, and it would have been the proper fix, but it would have been seriously putzy.  I vetoed that idea and put the original wood knobs back on!

I have to say, this color is really gorgeous.  I tend to have a hard time capturing these dark blues in photos, but these photos come fairly close.  The color might be just a tad darker in person.

Isn’t this little cup I used to stage this dresser lovely?

I’m pretty sure I paid about a quarter or so for it at a garage sale.  I just thought the design was so pretty.  For a long time I used this little cup to measure out plaster of paris when making my own chalk paint.  Now it’s filled with moss and I just keep it in a window sill.

Since so many of you mentioned how much you enjoy the ‘before and after’ pics, I’m going to try to be sure and include them from now on (promises, promises, but I’ll do my best).

This dresser is available.  If you are local (Twin Cities) feel free to leave me a comment if you are interested.

First, this is just a quick post to say thank you so much for all of your kind comments yesterday!  What an awesome day.  I really enjoyed hearing from each one of you.  Remember, you have until Sunday to get your comment in if you want to participate in the drawing.  So if you didn’t get one in yet, you still have time.

Second, I just wanted to share the fix for farmhouse dresser no. 5.

You remember, from the other day …

I had issues with the non-hardening filler that I used to fill some old drawer pull holes.  It resisted the milk paint and ended up looking like this …

Although I badly wanted to go along with some of you who said it was fine as is, in the end the spots really bugged me, which is what the majority of you said as well.

And some of you had some really great ideas for fixes.  I loved the idea of adding vintage wallpaper or floral napkins to the drawer fronts.  I thought the idea of re-filling the holes and adding some vertical stripes of paint to camouflage them was awesome too.

But in the end, I decided different hardware was the easiest fix for me.  Also, the spacing of the holes was just right for some glass drawer pulls from D Lawless Hardware.

Unfortunately, this fix was expensive at $38.90 for 10 glass drawer pulls.  It was a costly lesson about non-hardening filler and milk paint not mixing.  At least the rest of you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.

And although I think I preferred the look of the single knob over the look of a pull, I do think these pulls fit this dresser.  I feel better about not leaving the poorly filled holes as they were too.  So thanks to everyone who left a comment on that post with either an opinion or an idea for a fix.  All were much appreciated!

If anyone needs a fabulous chippy farmhouse style dresser with glass drawer pulls, leave a comment.  This one is available!

Last week my no. 1 craigslist spotter (that would be nnK) spotted this dresser.

Pardon the bad ‘before’ shot.  I forgot to take one until just moments before I started painting.  As you can see, my operations have moved indoors for winter!

The drawer pulls have been removed for sanding, so you can’t see how fab they are.  But the drawers pulls were what pulled me in (get it? pull? ha!).  This isn’t my usual style, but the price was also a no-brainer at $25.  Add to it the fact that this dresser had never been used!  Instead it had been stored somewhere with stuff on top of it, so the top was in very bad shape.  Lots of deep scratches.  But the rest of the dresser was in very good condition.

nnK sent me the ad for this piece within about an hour of it being posted, and Mr. Q went and picked it up about an hour later.  Items that are a bargain like this go fast on craigslist, at least here in the Twin Cities.  So, if you are wondering how I find these things, the answer is 1) with help and 2) by moving quickly.

Those drawer pulls gave me an immediate ‘pottery barn’ vibe, so the obvious color choice was black.

Here’s an example of a similar pottery barn dresser.  This one is part of a set that includes a bed.  If you get the queen size bed, the set is $3,569 … and that is a sale price!

Wowza!  Who are these people that are spending thousands of dollars on furniture?  All I know for sure is that I am not one of them!

Here is my pottery barn wanna be …

I asked Mr. Q to help with the prep on this one.  The top needed quite a bit of sanding due to the scratches, and it was getting pretty cold out in the carriage house.  So, Mr. Q sucked it up and sanded it for me.

Then we brought it inside and I quickly painted it with just one coat of Cece Caldwell’s Beckley Coal.  I chose chalk paint over milk paint for this one because I didn’t want a chippy look.  I probably wouldn’t have gotten much chipping since the previous finish was pretty dull and also because Mr. Q had sanded quite thoroughly, but I had some Beckley Coal on hand so I went with it.

After sanding to distress the edges, I add a coat of MMS hemp oil.

This dresser was fun to stage for photos!

I used a fab old birdcage that I purchased recently.  I plan to use it for a Christmas decoration, but for now I added some sheet music wrapped plants and used it in today’s photo shoot.

I used some of my painted books …

 and I used my vintage postal scale …

If have to say, if you’ve been thinking about trying your own hand at furniture painting, this is one of the easiest looks to copy.

But if you don’t want to do the painting yourself, this dresser is available!