q is for quandie

Ladies and Gentlemen this is farmhouse dresser no. 5!

Any Lou Bega fans out there?  Am I the only one?

A little bit of Quandie in my life …

OK, moving on.  Mr. Q and I picked this dresser up one dark night a few weeks ago.  It was conveniently located just a couple of miles away.

The gentleman that I purchased it from said they had used it “up at the cabin” (a true Minnesotan thing).  I suspect there are many fabulous pieces of vintage furniture tucked away in cabins all over Northern Minnesota.  In fact, a small sidebar, after I posted my recent possum belly table makeover, my friend Meggan texted me and said “look what was shoved in the corner by the fridge” in the cabin her family had just purchased.

Isn’t that crazy?  Another possum belly table.  Meggan’s table is in much better shape than mine was and even has the original metal possum belly drawers!

By the way, I shared Meggan’s house on the blog a while back, if you missed it you can find it here.  I bet her new cabin (which, by the way, is on its own private island!) is going to be fabulous as well!

Anyway, back to this dresser.  It definitely has a certain rustic charm.  Initially I was planning to strip the top and paint the body white.  Every once in a while I like to go back to basics.  I actually mixed up the MMS Ironstone milk paint and painted one coat.  Then, I stepped back and looked at the dresser and decided white just wasn’t going to cut it.  So I added some French Enamel (blue), nope, too blue.  Then I added some Luckett’s Green.  Hmmm … too dark still, so I added some Eulalie’s Sky.  Well, you get the idea.  I mixed a bunch of different colors and ended up here …

This dresser had all but one of its original brass key hole escutcheons.  I had a couple of spare escutcheons lying around and I was just going to replace the missing one, but then I came across these little metal numbers that I forgot I had.  The color was perfect.

And thus, farmhouse dresser no. 5 was born!

When I pulled open one of the drawers, I thought for a moment that I might try to salvage the lining paper …

Unfortunately it was in pretty rough shape, and for this dresser to truly be functional I knew its new owner would prefer a fresh and clean surface inside the drawers.  After ripping out the contact paper liner, I found that the insides of the drawers had been painted already.  Some were pink and some were a very dingy white.  I gave them all a fresh coat of Fusion in Lily Pond.

You know I like to use Fusion on interiors because I don’t have to top coat it with anything.  Once cured, it is fully washable.  Also, this is just one coat and it covered beautifully.

The dresser came with glass knobs, but originally it probably had brass drawer pulls.  There were still two holes in each drawer.  Once again, I am having issues with my choice of fill material.  Remember I switched to a different brand and it resulted in purple paint?  Well, of course I knew not to use that again, so this time I tried a Minwax wood putty.  Here is the description of this product:

Minwax Wood Putty® is designed to fill minor surface imperfections in wood that has already been stained and finished. Unlike Minwax Stainable Wood Filler, it never hardens. It requires no sanding and no finishing, and comes in a variety of pre-mixed colors to perfectly match Minwax Wood Finish stains. Ideal for bare, stained or finished woodwork, paneling, molding, trim and doors.

Easy to use – no sanding or finishing required!

Yeah, well, I missed one small detail.  See it there at the end of the second sentence?  Yeah, it never hardens.  But you know me, I like to learn things the hard (pardon the pun) way.  Naturally the milk paint did not adhere to the wood putty.  That last sentence should have read no sanding or finishing “possible!” instead of “required!”

Dang.  And of course it’s the two holes on the top drawers that are the worst.  It couldn’t have just been the bottom drawers.

To add insult to injury, I didn’t notice this problem until after I sanded the dresser, which was several days after I painted it.  And remember that custom color that I mixed?  Yeah, I had used up every drop on the dresser.  I had no more paint.

My choices at this point are 1)  dig out the wood putty, refill with wood filler, and repaint the entire dresser (or at least all of the drawer fronts).  Or 2) leave it alone and assume there are people out there who don’t mind these sorts of imperfections.  I know that I don’t.  It’s not like I was aiming for a flawless finish.  I was aiming for a chippy, vintage, “I have some history” sort of look.  I am OK with this dresser looking like it spent the last 85 years up north in someone’s cabin.

Would I have preferred that this didn’t happen?  Yes.  Do I want to do all that work to fix it?  No.

But seriously, what do you think?  Would you be OK with the dresser as is?

 Seriously, I want to know.  Would this bug you, or would you just ignore a minor imperfection such as this and embrace the shabby charm?

I’m not sure if I should have called this “mid mod week” or “free is good” week!  Either way, I have another free mid century modern piece to share with you today.  Plus if you read to the end, I’m sharing a link where you can get a coupon for some free paint too!

My neighbor Karen (or as I like to call her, nnK) brought this table to me a while ago.  I think she said her dad, Big Larry, dragged it out of someone’s trash pile.  She likes to bring me trash.

Fortunately, she has pretty decent taste in junk (and apparently so does Big Larry).  She does lean towards the mid-century modern.

Shortly after she gave this piece to me I happened to be browsing through the latest Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co catalog and this page caught my eye …

photo via Schoolhouse Electric

See the bedside table?  Very similar to my freebie, no?  Certainly similar enough to provide inspiration for a makeover.  By the way, the table pictured above is available for $350 from Schoolhouse Electric … bwa ha ha ha.

This table was really dirty when I got it.  I scrubbed it thoroughly with a Scotch pad and Dawn dish washing soap and the brown gunk that came off this thing was disgusting.  Also, unexpectedly, as I was scrubbing with the Scotch pad the black paint started to come off too!  Underneath the black was the original green.  Once I dried it off, I realized I had to sand it to get more lose paint off.  Gack!

Once I had that done, I gave the legs and the bottom shelf a fresh coat of spray paint in Rustoleum’s Canyon Black in a satin finish.

Then I painted just the top level in Fusion’s Limestone.

And voila!

It only seemed fair that I stage the photos for this table over at nnK’s house.  She had the perfect mid mod props for me.  The atomic clock and the turquoise leather chair.  That chair, by the way, is another freebie.  She snagged it when the people next door to her were cleaning out the house after our former neighbor passed away.  They just thought it was an old ugly chair and were going to trash it.  It’s in fantastic condition, and that shade of turquoise makes me drool.

In hindsight, I wish I had worked harder to stage the table itself.  I just plopped a magazine on top and called it good.

But really, I felt like I couldn’t compete with that chair and clock.

I suppose I could have chosen chalk paint for the top of the table, but I chose Fusion because I wanted a little more shine than you get with chalk paint and wax.  Plus, it was a one step paint job.  Paint and let dry.  I did use two coats, but it really couldn’t have been easier.

Not bad for a free table, right?

If you have been thinking about trying Fusion paint yourself, now is your chance to get something for free too!  Clicking on the image below will take you to the Fusion website where you can request a coupon for a free tester pot of paint to be redeemed at participation locations (offer good through November 30, 2015).

For those of you who are local (Twin Cities), I checked with Jody at Farmhouse Inspired and she is participating in this giveaway.  Just bring your coupon to her and exchange it for a tester sized pot of Fusion in the color of your choice.

Hey, free is good, right?

This is not a sponsored post.  All opinions are my own.  I was not compensated in any way.

A couple of weeks ago my BFF’s sister texted me to say that she pulled a piece of furniture off the curb in her neighborhood for me (thanks again for thinking of me Laura!).  I’m always a little nervous about ‘free’ stuff, because it usually tends to need a lot of work.  There is often a very good reason why the current owner has kicked it to the curb.

But she then sent me a blurry phone photo and I was intrigued.  I do love a good MCM piece, and this one looked interesting.

Once I got a closer look at it, I could see that originally there would have been sliding doors on that bottom section, as well as a shelf in the top section.  I’m not really sure what the original function of this piece would have been, other than just a book shelf with storage on the bottom.  It does not have a pull out desk top, so you have to rule out desk.  The top part is not deep enough for a phonograph, so you have to rule out record player stand.  Although the bottom section is sized right for album storage.  Any other guesses?

Well, whatever it was, it now is a bookshelf.  I asked Ken to cut a new shelf for it, which was child’s play for him!  He also had to re-attach one of the legs.  No problemo!

This piece is painted in a color called Greyson from Little Billy Goat.

Unfortunately, this piece had some pretty significant water stains on the inside.  You can see them in the ‘before’ photo.  I painted over them with two coats of Greyson, but those stains were going to just keep bleeding through.  I could have sealed them with some shellac or Tough Coat Sealer, but in the middle of the night a brilliant idea came to me.  Paint the back in Fusion’s new metallic, Brushed Steel.  Eureka!

It’s a little hard to capture in photos, but I think the Brushed Steel looks amazing at the back of the cupboard.  It works beautifully with the Greyson.  And by the way, I finished the Greyson with my custom mixed dark wax which darkened up the color considerably.

Since I was loving the Brushed Steel so much,  I decided to ‘dip’ the feet in it too!

Oh boy, now you can see just how dirty the floor in the photo cottage is!  Please ignore that!

At first I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to stage this one, but then I pulled out some of my vintage cameras …

and some vintage suitcases …

and they added the perfect touch!

I have to admit, I’m kind of wishing I had a spot for this bookcase myself.  I need a bigger house.

But, I’m not getting a bigger house, so I have to let this one go.  If you are interested, leave me a comment!

 

The gals at Reclaiming Beautiful in Stillwater (one of the shops that carry my pieces) have started to sell a new paint line called Little Billy Goat.  When I popped in the other day I picked up a few colors to try it out, Greyson, Prize Winner and Momma’s Fridge.

I gotta say, the packaging on this stuff is fabulous.  It comes in a canning jar!  And each jar has a cloth over the top, how cool is that?  From a practical point of view, I have to say that I really love the canning jars!  It’s very easy to wipe the rim and put the lid back on.  Somehow much easier than a traditional can like Annie Sloan uses, and definitely better than the plastic lidded can that Cece Caldwell uses.

Mr. Q and I picked up this sweet little dresser a couple of weeks ago and I knew it would be the perfect guinea pig for testing this paint.

See that funky octagon on the top drawer?  There was an odd little piece of trim glued on there.  I took it off before I remembered to take the ‘before’ photo.  I gotta tell you, it looked like a nipple.  There.  I had to say it.  A big ol’ nipple in the middle of the drawer.  Yeah, it had to go.

Aside from the nipple, this sweet little dresser basically had no flaws.  I love finding pieces like this!  No repairs necessary, it just needed a new paint job.

So I opened up a can of Momma’s Fridge and happily painted away.

Wait, let’s back up a step.  First I visited the website for Little Billy Goat.  They claim their paint “rarely requires any preparation, such as sanding or priming” so guess what?  I didn’t do any prep.  Well, I did wipe it down ever so quickly with a damp cloth.  That was it.  In addition, the website says “adding water makes for a smoother surface.”  OK.  I’m down with that, so I added some water to my paint to thin it out a bit.  I like a smoother surface.  You can use it ‘as is’ if you like a more textured surface.

I painted two coats of paint on the dresser.

I then used white acrylic craft paint on the little details at either side of the top drawer to give them a little more pop.  I also added a small stencil to the middle of the top drawer.  I did that because I could still see a little ghost of that darn octagon nipple and the stencil helped to camouflage that.

Once everything was dry, I sanded lightly to distress and then finished with Miss Mustard Seed clear wax.  Little Billy Goat sells a clear matte sealer with their paint, but I have not tried that product.  I think I’d like to though.  I have to admit, waxing is hard work.  There has to be a better way.  I’ve always loved the end look of wax though, plus I definitely can use the arm workout.

The hardware on this dresser is very pretty.  I love the pulls on the lower three drawers.

I staged this piece with some vintage toys, a tiny chair and a gorgeous handmade baby dress.  Just look at that stitching.  This dress must have taken quite some time to finish.

Whereas this dresser did not!  The Little Billy Goat paint went on easily, covered well in two coats and distressed quickly.  I didn’t seem to have any problems due to not sanding my piece before painting.  So if you’re looking for an easy product to use to revamp your own furniture, this one fills the bill.

But if you’d rather purchase a dresser already painted for you, this one is available!

Please note, this is NOT a sponsored post.  I purchased this paint myself, all opinions are my own.

At the same lunch time garage sale where I found the drop leaf table, I also purchased this possum belly table.

At the time I didn’t know it was called a possum belly table.  The seller told me it was called a “Minnesota cabinet”.  I had never heard that term before and I was unable to find any sources that referred to them with that name.   But I did find lots of info about possum belly or baker’s tables and that is exactly what this is.

Usually there would have been a hutch/cupboard type top that sat on the table, and that combination of items was the pre-cursor to the Hoosier cabinet.

The possum belly drawers on the bottom would have held flour and sugar.  Normally they were lined with tin to keep rodents out (ewww).  I didn’t take a very close look at the drawers on my table when I purchased it.  It wasn’t until I got it home and pulled the possum belly drawers out that I realized they were in pretty poor condition on the bottom.

In fact, most likely unusable in the condition they were in.  I’m not a big fan of having furniture that is ‘just for looks’, so I knew that making these drawers functional again was going to be step number 1.

Fortunately, once again I was able to call on my amazing handyman/neighbor Ken!  I showed him the drawers and explained that ‘back in the day’ when Ken was a young man (I always give him a really hard time about being older than the hills, and luckily he finds it amusing instead of annoying) these drawer bottoms would have been made of tin.

That was all it took to get Ken’s mind thinking on the problem of how to fix them!

I can’t really give you a lot of detailed instructions on how Ken accomplished this.  I just consider him the furniture fixing fairy.  I go to work at the day job and come home at the end of the day to find completed fixes.  I know that he was able to find pieces of sheet metal that were already the approximate size needed.  He only had to cut a few inches off the end of each piece.  I also know that he used carpet nails to attach the sheet metal to the drawer frame.

The sides of the drawers are still the original wood.

The next step was to paint the base and drawer fronts in Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen milk paint.  I was happy to get just the right amount of chipping.  Not too much, but just enough to look authentic.

As I mentioned earlier, the top of this piece appeared to be unfinished when I got it.  It’s possible that it’s a newer replacement, but I really think it originally had a sheet of zinc over it.  If you look at the above picture you can see that there are little tack holes all around the perimeter of the top.

I decided to just sand my top down a little to smooth out the wood and then wax with Cece Caldwell’s Aging Cream.  It turned out gorgeous!

Like most of the possum belly tables I saw online, mine also has a cutting board that pulls out.

Finally, I needed to replace the hardware since it didn’t come with any.  Most of the photos I’d seen of these possum belly tables show cup pulls.  I just happened to have a set of 4 that my father-in-law gave me when he changed them out for something newer (horrors!).  When I got them, they looked like this …

In other words, nothing special.  I came up with a brilliant plan to paint them copper with the Fusion metallic paint.  But once I saw the drawers with their new sheet metal bottoms, I realized I needed to stick with just one metallic look so I repainted them in Fusion’s Brushed Steel.

And finally, the end result of all of this …

With holiday baking season almost upon us, couldn’t you use a possum belly table in your kitchen?

This one is available.  If you are local (Twin Cities) and interested in it, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you with details.

Linking up with:  Finding Silver Pennies

My house is not large.  Just in case you hadn’t noticed.  It’s also old, built in 1904.  Back then, unless you were building a mansion like Glensheen, rooms were not that big.  My house was originally a farmhouse, so definitely not a mansion.  So, it’s no surprise that my living room is a modestly sized room.  Not only that, but one wall has a large arched opening that leads to the piano room …

and another wall has a large arched opening that leads to the front hallway …

Leaving the wall with windows, built in book cases and radiator and a second wall with just one window (it’s behind the sofa, just out of range of this photo).

By the way, these are all old photos, I have’t actually decorated for Christmas already.

One the positive side, all of the these open archways make the space feel open and light, but on the downside, furniture placement is a challenge.  Sometimes in summer I’ll move the sofa in front of the radiator, but putting a giant piece of furniture in front of your heat source isn’t the greatest plan for winters in Minnesota.

In the past, since it’s typically just Mr. Q and I hanging out in the living room, our sofa and chair combo has worked out great.  I get the sofa and Mr. Q gets the chair for movie viewing.  But now that my sister and niece have moved to town, we need more seating.  We can all squeeze in on the sofa, but that’s a little too touchy-feely for us (and my sister always gets annoyed when I try to touch her with my feet, which of course means I do it frequently).  However, I don’t have a lot of space for more seating.  So I have been on the hunt for a smallish side chair that would be at least somewhat comfortable.  I also didn’t want too spend much on it.

When I came across this barrel cane back chair on Craigslist, I wasn’t quite sure about it.  The price was definitely right at $40 though.  I also noticed that it would be a simple staple job to re-upholster it, always a bonus!  But still, it did have that 70’s – 80’s vibe that I’m not too fond of.

Whenever I’m looking at a piece and can’t decide whether or not it can be helped with paint, I generally then head to pinterest to see if I can find some examples.  Bingo!

This chair, by the way, is priced at $699 at Horchow.com (bwa ha ha ha).

Anyway, dang!  It’s pretty cute, right?  As it should be for $699!  Especially with all that chippy-ness going on.  All my chair needed was a chippy paint job and new fabric on the seat and it too could look this good, for a mere fraction of the price!

I started by removing the seat.  It was just screwed on from the bottom like most dining room chairs, but in an interesting twist it had this row of piping at the front.  It was held in place by staples …

I ripped that off and kept it, not sure at that point if I was going to re-cover it and put it back on, or just go without.

Next I sanded the chair lightly and cleaned it with TSP substitute. Then I used my spray paint trick on the cane back first, and then painted the rest of the chair using Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen.  Since this chair was for me, I wanted plenty of chipping.

And I got it, along with some crackling too!

For the seat, I purchased some heavy linen upholstery fabric and painted on a blue grain sack stripe using my favorite skinny tape (some girls have skinny jeans, I have skinny tape).

I used acrylic craft paint and a stencil brush to stipple the paint on.

I decided the chair didn’t really need that length of piping trim along the front, what do you think?

I do think it needs a small pillow to really be comfortable though, so I stole one from my patio chairs for now.

It was such a beautiful day last Saturday when I finished the chair that I couldn’t help taking advantage of it and staging these photos outside.

My “Boo” pumpkin is a fake, FYI.

I think it looks pretty good for a fake though.

But, back to the start of our story.  I purchased and revamped this chair to provide additional seating in my living room.  Here it is in place and just in time since I’m having my sister and niece over tomorrow night.  We are going to have a barrel of fun watching scary movies and eating Halloween candy (since I always buy some, but seldom actually get any kids at the door).

Here is a fun ‘aerial’ view of the living room (taken from the front hall stairs).

This chair has to sort of float in the room, the back is fully visible from the piano room.

Luckily it looks good from all angles!

At least I think so, what do you think?

Sharing at:  French Country Cottage and The Curator’s Collection