q is for quandie

I think you all know that I do a lot of painting.  To save my back, I usually use a small child size chair to sit on when I paint towards the bottom of pieces of furniture (unless I put them up on saw horses).  It really works great, but the other day nnK brought something home for me that I think will work even better.  And old doctor’s stool.

The seat goes up and down and I can just scoot around the piece of furniture on it.  Fab, right?

Now, I could have just used it as is.  The color isn’t terrible and I’m only using it in the garage (and probably in the house come winter).  But looking at that seat I had an idea.  We’ve all seen people paint leather or vinyl chairs with chalk paint, right?  Well, although it always looks great when it’s freshly done, I can’t help but wonder if it really holds up over time.  This stool gives me the perfect opportunity to test it out.

I got out my chalk paint and mixed up my own color using some of Urban Rooster’s Jaded Rooster and a lot of Annie Sloan’s Old White.  I wiped the seat down with some TSP substitute and that was the only prep I did.  Then, I painted on three coats of paint.  Once dry, I added a stenciled ‘2’ just for fun.  Once that dried, I sanded the seat lightly with 220 grit paper and used Fusion’s bees wax to seal it.

And voila!

Dang!  Isn’t it cute?

It turned out so fab that I almost hate to use it as a perch for painting now.

Freshly painted it looks fantastic.  The paint seems to be adhering (I’m pretty sure this is vinyl by the way).  Here is a nice close up photo where you can see the texture of the material.

And you can see where I distressed around the edges as I sanded it.

So now the test begins.  I’ll use this stool for a few months and then report back.  We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not painting vinyl with chalk paint will stand the test of time.

 

 

 

For those of you not in the know, ‘waterfall’ is a style of furniture that was mass produced in the 1920’s – 1940’s.  The waterfall name comes from the curved front edge that the pieces all have.  In it’s day, it was inexpensive and was marketed to newlyweds.  In 1930, a couple setting up housekeeping could buy an entire matching bedroom suite of furniture including a bed, chest of drawers, dressing table and nightstands for less than $50.  Bedrooms suites were most popular, but you can also find dining room sets and other pieces.  As I was researching the history of waterfall furniture, I came across a new word, coiffeuse.   Apparently this is the French word for dressing table or vanity, and literally means a place with a large mirror where a lady could dress her hair.  In which case, today’s piece is definitely a coiffuese.

I seem to have a soft spot for waterfall pieces.  Something about their art deco style really appeals to me.  I used to have a waterfall buffet in my dining room, although I sold it last winter to make way for my dining room makeover (still in progress!)  A little while ago one of my readers, Victoria, mentioned that she isn’t terribly fond of waterfall style vanities, especially the ones with big round mirrors.  Ahem.  Well, I thought this piece would be a good chance for me to try and change her mind.

Once again, I went with stripping and staining the top in dark walnut.  The finish was in terrible condition!  But once I got it stripped, I could see that the veneer was quite pretty and in good shape.

There was also an interesting sort of dentil molding on the mirror and on the center drawer, and I decided to strip and stain that as well.

There is that distinctive curved edge I was talking about.

I painted everything else in Annie Sloan’s Coco.  This color is the perfect warm, greyish, brownish, neutralish, darkish, sort of rich color.  I would never have thought I’d like it until I saw it on another waterfall piece a couple of years ago.  Since then I’ve painted several pieces in this color.  I think I’m on my third can of it.

Another thing that waterfall furniture is known for is unusual hardware.  Oftentimes these pieces have drawer pulls made of bakelite.  My buffet had metal handles with bakelite inserts.  The pulls on this piece aren’t bakelite, but they are pretty fab.  I had to keep them as they add so much personality to the piece.

Remember the vintage radio I scored at a garage sale earlier this summer?  It was perfect for staging this piece!

As was my bakelite alarm clock …

I’ve used this old photo before for staging pieces.  This came from a big tub of family photos that my relatives in South Dakota have.  No one knows who this couple is, but they are standing in front of my grandparent’s home in So. Minneapolis.

I wish I knew who they were.  Don’t they look like a really fun couple?  I’m sure that she sat at a similar dressing table and made sure the wave in her hair was just right before this festive gentleman came calling.  She might have been listening to Bing Crosby or Glenn Miller on the radio.  She probably pulled on those fabulous cat eye glasses to read the love letter he sent.

They were likely heading out to catch a street car to Lake Harriet for the afternoon.

Her waterfall style dressing table probably wasn’t painted.  But I bet if she’d seen this one, she would have loved it!

Well Victoria?  Still not a fan of the waterfall vanities with big round mirrors?

Sharing at Finding Silver Pennies Sunday.

I hope today’s post is better late than never!  Usually I have my posts scheduled in advance for 7 a.m., but the rainy weather we’ve had of late here in Minnesota has not been conducive to photo taking.  Plus I’m working on a huge piece that is taking forever to finish, so I don’t have a lot to share.

Today I am playing hooky from work (it’s OK, an authorized vacation day).  So far it has been quite blissful.  Coffee in bed with a good book at 7 a.m., sold the marble topped dresser at 9:30 a.m., staged today’s photos at 10 a.m. and now I’m enjoying the Diana Krall station (any other fans?) on Pandora and pulling together this post while eating a fluffer nutter.  Anyone know what that is?  A peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.  I hope you aren’t reading my blog looking for healthy eating tips because you clearly won’t find them here!

Alright, on with today’s feature item.  Way back in June my friend Cathy nabbed this 50’s metal cart for me (thanks again Cathy!)  When I got it, it was plain white, and rather beat up.  The wheels didn’t say on and one of the drop leaf sides wasn’t working.

I started by painting it with Fusion’s Laurentien.  I just adore this color (have I said that too many times?) and it helped play up the mid-century vibe.

I painted the drawer front in Fusion’s Picket Fence, a nice crisp white.  I also changed out the original hardware, which was a tacky black plastic drawer pull.  This chrome cup pull is a much better choice for this piece.

Once the paint job was finished I decided to have a little fun!  I cut “eat, drink and be merry” out of white vinyl on my Cricut and ran it across the top.

Thus officially turning this into a bar cart!  The fact that the Fusion paint is fully washable after 30 days of curing time makes it perfect for this piece, because we all know that there will be spilled drinks!

I stocked it with some bar essentials; glassware, straws, ice bucket, etc.

I also painted inside the drawer just to clean it up a bit.

The leaves can be folded down …

or left up.

This cart would be so much fun for holiday entertaining, easily rolled out to where you need it.

Well, I’m off now to enjoy the rest of my vacation day.  I believe I shall eat, drink and be merry!  In fact, I’ve got the entire weekend in front of me for that.  How about you?

And P.S. the bar cart is for sale.  If you are an interested local (Twin Cities), leave me a comment and I’ll email you with details. SOLD.

Sharing at Finding Silver Pennies Sundays!

Today’s piece began life as a vanity/dressing table.  I wasn’t terribly fond of the mirror that was attached to it though, so I took it off and decided to reinvent it as a more serious piece of furniture.  A desk.  I don’t have a ‘before’ picture of it, but it was part of the matching set that included the dresser I painted last week.

This gives you some idea of the color of the finish; kind of a yucky orange.  Looking at the top though, I could see that the grain was quite pretty and I thought that maybe I could salvage it.  So I stripped it, sanded lightly, and then used a Dark Walnut gel stain on it, followed by a coat of Cece Caldwell Aging Cream.

So pretty, and such a nice rich shade of brown now.  Here is a tip for those of you who don’t already know this.  Always do the stripping and staining of the top first.  It will likely be at least a little messy, and that way you don’t have to worry about messing up a freshly completed paint job.

After seeing the end result on the top, I knew I wanted to paint this with MMS’ Marzipan milk paint.  The same lovely almond color that I used on the Ironstone and Almond dresser.

However, I did suffer a little hiccup in the process.  First, let me explain that the veneer at the bottom of the sides on this piece had gotten a bit of water damage.  As a result, it was quite warped.  I have a little cheater method of dealing with that problem.  I run a blade horizontally just above where the veneer is loose, then I remove the veneer up to that line.  Then I use some wood filler to smooth over the transition from veneer to no veneer.  It’s not a perfect method, but it’s fairly well disguised once it’s painted and it gives new life to the piece without completely removing or  replacing veneer.  I use this method when the veneer is too warped to re-glue.

So, that’s what I did on this piece and I used a different brand of wood filler than normal.  I decided to try this brand when my last bit of wood filler ran out.  It is Elmer’s Carpenter’s Color Change Wood Filler.  The packaging says it is paintable and stainable.  It goes on purple and when it turns white you know it’s dry.  Sounded like lots of fun at the time.  So, I applied it and waited until it turned white, sanded it smooth and then started painting with the MMS milk paint.  And yikes!

You guessed it!  The watery milk paint reactivated the purple!  Good gracious.  I probably should have seen that coming, but I didn’t.  I then got out the MMS Tough Coat Sealer and put not just one, but two coats of sealer over the purple.  Unfortunately, that did not do the trick either.  After it was dry, I painted over it and again, the purple bled through.  At that point I wasn’t going to mess around anymore.  I got out the spray paint primer.  Yep, you read that right.  Spray paint.  This is one of my oldest tricks for dealing with bleeding of any kind.  Spray paint will seal it up in no time.  And in this case, I really just needed to spray a quick coat over the areas with filler.  It did the trick perfectly, and once that was dry, my milk paint covered it up just fine.  It would be super clever if I had remembered to take a photo of the finished repair for you, but nope, I forgot.  But, you now don’t have to learn this the hard way.  Don’t use the filler that starts out purple if you’re going to use milk paint over it!

I again kept the original hardware with its fab patina, and I highlighted that raised trim detail with white paint.

Although the rest of the piece is all painted with the same paint color, I feel like the drawers are just a hair lighter than the body of the desk.  Sometimes that happens with milk paint.  Even though I mixed the paint all in one batch, I painted the drawers entirely first (while waiting for those veneer repairs to dry on the body), then painted the body last.  Some darker pigments must have settled to the bottom.  But, I do think that it works on this piece.  It’s just a slight difference and it gives a very subtle two-toned look to the desk.

So there you have it.  A seriously studious desk.  What do you think?

You all were very kind in leaving positive comments about my first Nieman Marcus knock off nightstand.  Thank you for those!

But I knew I could do better!  So last weekend while garage saling in Lake of the Isles, I picked up another candidate for the Nieman Marcus look!

This one has more delicate features and it has some great details that I knew would be lovely highlighted in gold.  Someone had done a rather awful ‘make-over’ on it in the past.  It had a coat of drippy, shiny, poorly applied poly on it.  In fact, it looked as though they hadn’t even bothered to remove the drawer pulls, but just poly’ed right over them!

This time I did use MMS milk paint in Trophy!

And this time I added gold to all of the details, the braided trim around the top edge, the carved bits on the sides and bottom of the front and even the drawer pulls.

I staged it simply with an alarm clock and some lovely vintage jewelry in a gold rimmed bowl.

I am much happier with this version of my Neiman Marcus knock off nightstand!

Which is your favorite?

Linking up with the Making Broken Beautiful party at The Curator’s Collection.

If someone had predicted that I was going to be stenciling purple flowers on a green dresser I would have said they were absolutely cray-cray.

But never say never is a good motto!

In this case it was sort of a custom job.  When my niece, Kristine, mentioned that she wanted a dresser for her new apartment and that she wanted one with doors at the top rather than all drawers, I began the hunt on craigslist.  I found one relatively quickly, and it was just over in Stillwater so not far away.

Fits the bill perfectly, right?

It had a little flaw.  Some of the trim above the left front leg was missing.

Ken took care of that in short order.

Kris wanted green, so I lobbied heavily for In a Pickle milk paint from Sweet Pickins.  I just love that shade of fresh green, and I thought it would add a modern twist to a vintage dresser.  But no.  She wanted MMS Luckett’s Green.  I’ll admit I cringed a little.  I’ve had trouble with Luckett’s before so I was reluctant.

But this dresser was for Kris, so I decided to suck it up and get out the Luckett’s.  I mixed up my paint and started prepping.  Then I got sidetracked.  I can’t even remember what now, but something came up and it was another two days before I started painting.  I’ve certainly used two day old MMS milk paint before, so I didn’t think anything of it.  However, shortly after I began painting I noticed something strange.  The blue pigment in the paint kept rising to the top in my cup of mixed paint.  I kept stirring, and it would blend back in for a few moments, but then rise again.  To make matters worse, I noticed it was also rising to the top on the surfaces I’d already painted.  I kept painting and hoped for the best.  Unfortunately, that was a bad plan.  When the paint dried it looked like this.

Can you sort of see how the blue pigments were floating to the top?

I was puzzled, so I emailed Jennylyn Pringle, the President of Homestead House Paint Co, the manufacturers of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint.  She very kindly got back to me right away and explained that the blue pigments are lighter (in weight, not color) than other pigments, go figure, and the best way to solve the problem was just to mix a new batch.  So, I did.  Here is a comparison of how the paints looked in my cups.

See that blue film in the “bad” cup, sort of like an oil slick?  That was my problem and it just wouldn’t go away.

So, another lesson learned.  Some of the milk paints can’t be kept hanging around for two days once they are mixed!  I know there are a lot of you out there that believe that milk paint just isn’t worth the effort because of issues like this.  I will totally agree with you that it can be finicky sometimes.  I certainly have run into my fair share of problems with this paint.  However, I still go back to it over and over as my favorite.  There is just something about the end result that makes it all worth it for me.  And on the bright side, I am learning these things the hard way and sharing them with you so that you don’t have to!

Anyway, I mixed up a new batch and painted one last coat and it looked fab!

Back to the custom paint job.  My niece wanted Luckett’s Green, but she also wanted a creamy white on the doors with a flower stencil in purple.  Well, it’s her dresser!  If she wants purple flowers, that’s what I’ll give her.  I painted the insets with Fusion’s Casement and the purple was an acrylic craft paint that Kris picked out.

Kris also purchased the stencil herself.  I’m not sure where she got it, but I can tell you that it definitely was not of the same quality as the stencils from Maison de Stencils that I am used too.  It was rather warped, which made it difficult to get nice crisp lines.  But Kris is very happy with the end result, and that is all that matters!

You may have noticed that I changed out the hardware on this one.  That came right after Kris made ‘that face’ when I asked if she wanted to keep them.  You know ‘that face’, the one that says “gag me with a spoon”.  OK, maybe people don’t use that expression anymore, but you know what I mean.  When I asked her “what don’t you like about them?” in an attempt to figure out what direction to go in, she said “they look old.”  Oh boy.  That’s usually precisely what I do like about things.  Hmmm.  I wonder what she thinks about me!  I’m pretty sure I look old.

Fortunately I had these ivory ceramic knobs on hand though, and once I held them in place we both realized they were perfect.  They even mirror the shape of the stenciled flowers.

They definitely gave it a newer, more updated look.

I thought I would have trouble finding the right props to stage this one for photos, but as it turned out I had some great vintage purple and green books.  And at the last minute I threw in my potted lavender.  The purple was a perfect match.

I certainly never pictured using a green and purple color scheme anywhere else but in the garden when I potted it up last spring, but hey, you just never know.

Kris seems very happy with her new dresser, and I’m certainly happy I was able to pull it together for her.  We brought it over last night and she’ll have just enough time to get it in place before their house/apartment warming party this weekend!

Sometimes buying and selling on craigslist can be a real pain in the you know what.  For example, last week I sent inquiries on three different pieces and never heard back on any of them.  The ads are still posted.  What’s up with that?  I’d like to point out that if you don’t contact your potential buyers, it’s hard to sell your item.  Just in case that isn’t obvious for anyone else.

OK.  I got that out of my system.  And what I actually wanted to say was that this time it was the total opposite.  It couldn’t have been easier.  I contacted the seller, she got back to me right away, and as it turned out she was located less than a mile from my Wednesday night Zumba class.  Not only that, but it actually was Wednesday.  Plus the seller was fine with an 8:45 pm pick up time.  So after Zumba, my sister and I popped over there to pick it up.  The cherry on the sundae?  The seller had it all ready to go in the garage.  We basically had to carry it about 10′ from the garage to the back of the truck.  Easy peasy.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any ‘before’ shots this time.  Oh well.  I got plenty of ‘after’ shots!

This is a marble topped dresser.

Since the marble is white with grey veining, I decided I should keep the dresser in the same colors.  I painted the body in MMS Trophy and the handles and trim in MMS Grain Sack.

I got lots of great chipping on this piece.  It’s been a while since I’ve gotten some genuine chipping, so that was pretty exciting (what can I say, I live a pretty thrilling life).

I staged this with a gorgeous monogrammed linen tablecloth that I picked up at a garage sale last week.  I just love a good monogram, even though I usually have no idea what letters they are supposed to be.  I’m going with SWS on this one.  Maybe?

The hydrangeas are starting to turn for fall, so I had to throw some of them in the photo as well.  These are Limelight hydrangeas.

Before I let you go, a public service announcement for my local readers:  if you didn’t happen to notice it in the comments last week, Jody at Farmhouse Inspired in Hudson is offering a 10% discount on the Junk Gypsy paint that I used on my painted pots last week.  Check out the Junk Gypsy colors here.  I think that I am “Modern Farmhouse” …

With a little “Coastal” thrown in.

Check out the different styles and let me know which one fits you!