q is for quandie

The other day I was running some errands over my lunch hour when I spied an ‘estate sale’ sign on the side of the road.  Fortunately, there was no one behind me, because I slammed on the brakes to make the turn.  I quickly purchased a sweet little nightstand (you’ll see that later) and some German redwork …

I also noticed a charming maple dresser that was marked $90.  In general, I find that estate sale prices on furniture are a little too high for me.  It was a cute dresser, but not worth $90 to me.  However, there were signs posted throughout explaining the ‘bid’ policy for this sale.  Basically, I could leave a bid, and if the dresser didn’t sell for full price, the sellers would give me a call if they wanted to accept my bid.  I placed a bid for $65 and dashed back to work.  There was some strategy involved in coming up with this amount.  On Day 2 of the sale, the dresser would be reduced to $60 if it was still there.  However, they would hold it for me at the $65 until I could get back to pick it up.  Nice.

On Saturday morning, I got the call.  My bid was accepted and the dresser was mine.  I just had to go back and pick it up.

A little sidebar story for you.  Why, oh why do I ever leave the house in paint splattered sweatpants and without makeup?  I usually make a rule to never, ever do such a thing.  However, on this particular Saturday I had painted all morning, and was going to do yardwork all afternoon.  It seemed silly to change clothes and add makeup just to quickly pick up this dresser.  After all, who could I possibly run into at an estate sale?  Sure enough, the moment I walked in the door I heard “hey, need some help loading that dresser?”  Oh boy.  One of our local fire fighters, whom I happen to work with at the day job.  So embarrassing!  From now on, it’s makeup and real clothes, even for an estate sale!

Back to the dresser.  Once I got it home and scrutinized it more closely, I found that it had a … hmmm, what should I call it?  Sort of a crack in the wood that left a pointed jagged edge sticking out.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of it before we fixed it, but once again, I forgot.  I thought I could just use some glue and a clamp to hold the jagged edge in place, but I wasn’t able to even budge it.  So, I called in my handyman neighbor Ken.  He always has some little trick up his sleeve for stuff like this.

Basically, he used a chisel to add some ‘give’ to the jagged piece of wood.  The chiseled line will ultimately be hidden behind that pretty braided trim.

We glued and clamped, and voila, the pointy bit is back in place.  I’ll fill in the crack with some wood filler, sand it down, nail the braided trim back down and paint will hide this repair quite nicely.

I had originally consider both red and yellow for this dresser.  I have found that when I paint things in those colors they take about 3 times as long to sell.  They do sell eventually, but they don’t fly out the door like the aqua/blue/mint green tones do.  Still, sometimes I ignore that and go with my gut, and this one said red.

But then Fusion offered to send me some paint from their new Michael Penney collection.  I saw Lily Pond and decided to go for it.

I sanded the entire dresser, wiped it down with a damp cloth, and then painted one coat of paint.  I added a second coat to the top of the dresser, but believe it or not, the rest was just fine with one coat.  Talk about easy. I waited about an hour or so, until the paint was dry to the touch, and then I used 220 grit sandpaper to lightly distress.

I found that it distressed quite easily at this point.  In the past, I have waited longer to distress and with the Fusion that isn’t a good idea.  As this stuff cures, it gets harder and harder to sand off.  So distress promptly.  Unless of course you don’t want any distressing.  But aside from that little tip, using Fusion really couldn’t get any easier.  There is no need to wax, unless you just prefer that look.  Waxing has never been my favorite thing, so it’s nice to do without it now and then.

Isn’t this a sweet shade of green?  While pulling out stuff to stage the dresser, I realized it’s just a tad more subtle than the green on the vintage clock I picked up while shopping in Las Vegas last year.

It also works beautifully with some of my vintage wallpaper.

It’s that sort of 50’s vintage green that I love so much.  I have a bread box in this color in my pantry.

What do you think of Lily Pond?  I think it would be utterly charming in a nursery.  It’s got a little bit of a beach cottage vibe too.  Ahhhh, if only I had a beach cottage!  And don’t you just love those fat cinnamon bun knobs?

I’ll probably post this one on craigslist soon, although with my sale coming up in June pretty soon I’ll have to start hanging onto pieces for the sale.  But for now, this one is available.  Ooops, sorry, this one is sold.

My neighbor, nnK, has been busy dumpster diving for me again.  This time she came home with a old school desk and an industrial stainless steel cart.  You’ll have to wait to see the cart, but I finished up the desk this week.  Here is what it looked like when she brought it over.

I had to laugh when I saw that it was literally labeled as “trash.”

The desk has a metal base with a formica top and is the perfect job for Fusion paint.  I knew it would stick to both of these surfaces.  Initially I was going to paint all of it, the base and the top.  But as I started working on it, I decided I liked the patina on the base, and if I could find the right color scheme for the top, it could work as is.  I hate to cover up a good genuine aged patina.

The inside of the base was another story though.  It was kind of disgusting, so I opted to paint that with one of Fusion’s new colors from their Michael Penney collection, Seaside.  These colors will be available for a limited time, so if you love it, you’d better get it now.  The Seaside is very similar to Annie Sloan’s Aubusson.  As a matter of fact, I was painting a dresser in Aubusson at the same time I was working on this piece and they were practically indistinguishable (you’ll see that dresser next week).

Now that the inside is painted, you can feel comfortable tucking your favorite books inside without them getting grungy.

As for the top, I knew right away that I wanted to do another Union Jack.  I could have done it in the traditional red, white and blue (and Fusion does have an awesome navy and red), but I wanted to change it up a bit.  I started with a base of Seaside.  Then I taped off the lines for my Union Jack and painted the next layer in Fusion’s Champlain, which is a shade of white with a tiny hint of grey in it.

You may be noticing at this point that I forgot the diagonal lines.  Ooops.  Drat.  I had to wait for this to dry and then go back and add them.  I’ll note here that I let each layer of color dry for about 24 hours before moving on to taping the next one.  As a result, my tape came off very cleanly and didn’t remove any paint with it.

The final layer of my Union Jack was painted in Fusion’s Bedford, which is a nice warm greige.  And voila!

Once the top was dry I sanded it with a fine sanding block.  That removed some ridges of paint that had developed around the tape lines and left a nice smooth finish.

One could use this desk as a desk, although it is rather small if you like to spread out. I think it would be more fun to re-purpose it as a bedside table.  Or use it next to your sofa, or in your foyer as a place to drop your keys and mail as you walk in the door.

I am rather in love with this desk now.  After all, who doesn’t love Jack?

 Please note that I have not been compensated by Fusion for this post, but they did send me some free samples of their paint to try out with no obligation which was awfully nice of them.

Eureka!  I finished the chairs!

Took me long enough.

But in my defense there were two.

I am relieved to have them done.  Turns out that upholstery might not be my favorite thing.

I managed to replace the arm patches, but don’t look too closely at my work.

It will not hold up to intense scrutiny.

I’d give you all of the details on how I did them, but you probably don’t really want to copy my work.  Look to Miss Mustard Seed for legit tutorials on upholstery.

The nice thing about these chairs is that they are totally neutral and could be dressed up with throw pillows in any color.  I’ve shown you three different options in my photos.

Despite my whining and complaining about how much work these were, I went out and purchased a claw foot antique settee on Wednesday and I’ll be jumping right back in for more upholstery work.

I know, you’re now thinking to yourself ‘what is wrong with her?’  Or perhaps it’s just me wondering about that.  Am I a glutton for punishment or what?

Well, here’s the thing.  Every year I set myself the goal of trying something new.  Last year it was stripping and waxing wood.  I had been afraid of this process for a long time, so I decided I needed to tackle it.  And as it turned out, it’s pretty easy.  Now I often strip and wax the tops of my pieces.

This year’s goal is to get a handle on upholstery.  I don’t sew, so I’ll never do any serious upholstery work, but I want to be able to tackle the basics.  I think that like anything, more practice will help me get more comfortable with it.

The beauty of this particular settee is that it won’t require any sewing.

Also, I should note that this is all the fault of my friend and Carriage House Sale co-conspirator Sue.  She just finished a fab settee herself and it inspired me to tackle one too.  I’m going to share her’s with you next week, so stay tuned!

This poor dresser has been wasting away out in the carriage house all winter.

 Somehow its plain straight lines just weren’t inspiring me.

But I have made a commitment to get to all of the pieces that are waiting for me out there, and this one was next up on the list.  It is a great example of how my plans change as I begin working on a piece.  My original plan was to paint it grey with white horizontal stripes on the drawers, much like this inspiration photo from pinterest.

I was going to use Fusion paint, because I knew that would handle the taping of the lines quite well.

I even ran to Hobby Lobby and bought some really pretty crystal knobs that I thought would work well with this rather more formal look.  However, while picking up those knobs, I also grabbed some glass pulls just to see how I liked them on this piece.  Since it already had two holes for each pull, I thought maybe, just maybe, the glass pulls would work.

Sure enough, they were exactly the right size.  To me, glass drawer pulls give a very ‘vintage farmhouse’ feel to a piece, which meant I had to change gears and go with milk paint.  Also, after taking a closer look at the dresser, I decided it would be the perfect piece for stripping the top and refinishing it with my favorite wax for that, the Cece Caldwell Aging Cream.

All that remained was to pick a color.  I debated several Miss Mustard Seed colors, but in the end I realized I was kind of bored with the “out of the bag” colors.  I needed something custom mixed.  I went to my favorite place for inspiration, pinterest.  I keep a pin board for MMS colors and I try to pin custom color examples whenever I see them.  I considered using a color that Dear Emmeline created called Eucalyptus.  It is a mix of Boxwood and Ironstone.  But I wanted more blue in my color.  Then I saw a dresser painted by Abbe Doll and decided it was perfect!  A mix of 3 parts Luckett’s Green to 2 parts French Enamel, and I just happened to have plenty of both colors.  I don’t think that she named her color, so I’m calling it Tropical Island.  It’s a beautiful shade of blue green, like the waters surrounding a tropical island.

And since I was on a roll with the whole ‘island’ thing, I decided to turn the dresser into a kitchen island!

Ken and I worked together to add new casters.  Why new?  I wanted them to be functional.  The vintage casters tend to look pretty, but you wouldn’t really want to roll your pieces around on them too much.  These larger casters also added the perfect amount of height to bring the top up to counter top height.

I staged the piece in my own kitchen first to see how it would look.  I thought it would be perfect to take photos in the early morning when the light is flooding in.  I forgot to factor in that the light would be flooding in behind the island.

Hmmm.  Not the best plan.  Although I like that you can now easily picture this piece as an island.  And since it is intended to ‘float’ in the room like this, I did paint the back.

You can see that I added a little hook to the side for hanging a towel.

In the end I hauled the tropical kitchen island out to the photo cottage to take advantage of better lighting.  I staged it with a lovely French ironstone bowl and some other pretty vintage kitchen items.

As is typical with MMS milk paint, there is some slight color variation in the paint.  You can really see it more clearly in this close up.  The drawers are a little more green than the body of the dresser.  But in this case, the drawers are all the same, and I think this look works on this piece.

After having the island in place in our own kitchen, Mr. Q and I have decided we really don’t have room for a kitchen island.  So, this one is for sale?  How about you, do you have space to fill in your kitchen?

Remember the cane back chairs I picked up a while back?

Well, they are promised to one of my favorite customers, Nikkii.  We once added up all of the pieces she has purchased from me, and it was in the double digits.

I think the very first piece she purchased from me was this bed, back in my pre-blog days.

 She also has the Duncan Phyfe sideboard …

and this sweet white dresser …

Not to mention the footboard chalkboard.

Plus a bunch more!

So I am happy to be working on these chairs for her.  I know they will be right at home along with the other pieces she has!

However, they are turning into one of those projects.  The ones where you just keep running into snag after snag.  And they still aren’t done, but I thought I would give you an update (mainly because I don’t have anything else to share today!).

My original plan was to start with removing those arm rest patches so that I could just paint the arms.

Easier said than done.  The Velcro slipcover thingie came right off, but the upholstered arm cover had about 400 million staples holding it in place.  I spent over an hour on the first one, and still had about 20 firmly embedded staples left in the arm that I simply could not get out.  It was time to consider a plan B.  I am going to attempt to re-upholster them.  Miss Mustard makes it look so easy, I hope it is.

Once I made this decision, I decided to go ahead with the painting.  I painted one coat of chalk paint on the first chair, and quickly realized that it was going to be a challenge to cover all of that cane with a brush.  Time for another plan B.

I decided to spray paint the cane first, then cover it with a final coat of chalk paint.  I generally avoid spray painting indoors though, so I had to wait until the weather cooperated so I could haul them outside for this step.  I am not a big fan of spray painted furniture, but when it comes to both cane and wicker, it can often be the best option.

While manhandling the chairs for spray painting, I realized that one of the arms was really wobbly.  I thought I could shore it up by just tightening the screw that holds it in place.  No dice.  I called my handy man/neighbor/furniture miracle worker, Ken, for a consultation.  He decided he could work some magic with glue and by adding an additional screw where the arm meets the chair back.  Since I’m going to paint these, he knew I could patch and paint over the screw head.  Thank goodness for Ken, but of course this was another delay in getting the chairs painted.

Meanwhile, I was working out a plan for the cushions.  Luckily my friend and Carriage House Sale partner, Sue, is a fabulous seamstress who doesn’t mind tackling the occasional sewing job for me.  I sent the cushions home with her along with some drop cloth fabric.  She whipped up some slip-covers for me in no time!

She made them with an unstructured pillow sham-like design, so they could be slipped off and washed.  Since Nikkii has some little ones at home, I know she will appreciate this feature.  Here is the underside, with two ends that overlap so the cushion can be slipped out.

And here is how one looks on a partially finished chair.

Nice, right?

So … progress is being made … but I’m not quite done.

I still need to add another coat of white, distress and wax, then re-cover the arm patches.  I’m hoping to get all of that done this coming weekend.  Wish me luck!

On a related note, for you Fixer Upper fans, remember when I first posted about these chairs and I mentioned that Joanna had used similar chairs in one of her fixer uppers?  Well, she did it again.  In the most recent episode, Asian Ranch, she used them again …

Does she re-use furniture for staging the homes for the show, and then take them back and use them again?

Or does she have a supplier of these chairs that she just goes back to for more?

Does anyone else wonder about this?

And while we’re on the subject of Fixer Upper, did anyone else notice the piano in the Asian Ranch episode?  It came with the house and looked like this …

And they kept it in the house …

See it tucked away back there behind the table?  It’s a little difficult to see in this photo, you can see it a little bit better in the episode, but I think they painted it black.

And I love it.

So now I’m tempted …

What do you think?  Black piano?  I could use MMS Typewriter milk paint.  Do I dare?