q is for quandie

I mentioned that I bought a little matching table at the same estate sale as the Lily Pond dresser.  I’m not a fan of using ‘matching’ furniture pieces, so often when I buy pieces that came from a ‘set’, I split them up.

I’m still going green, but this time with Miss Mustard Seed instead of Fusion.

There are lots of shades of green out there.  Avocado, mint, grass, pea, pear, forest, moss, the lily pond I used on the dresser …

I have to say, some times with the MMS milk paint greens, I feel like there are a lot of shades in the same bag of paint!  One of the quirks of milk paint is that you can never be entirely sure precisely what shade you will get.  You really need to be OK with that if you’re going to use it.  I knew that going in when I decided to paint my little estate sale table in Boxwood.

I’ve used Boxwood before, and loved it.  But this time it just wasn’t working for me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s bad.  It’s just not quite what I was going for.  I got some great chipping, which I loved, but the color just felt a little flat to me.  A little too 80’s country maybe?  Maybe the problem was the orange finish showing through the chips.  I don’t know, but something about it wasn’t speaking my language.

So I came home from work one night and decided to add a layer of Luckett’s green over the Boxwood.

Ahhhh, so much better.  I love the little peeks of Boxwood showing through.

I tucked some toile scrapbook paper inside the drawer.

Is it possible to not love this color? or the chippyness of milk paint?

Or maybe it’s just simply the layering of colors that appeals to me so much.

It works great next to a chippy chair.  Wouldn’t this be a great combo in your potting shed?  Or maybe on a covered porch?

And on a more personal note, today is my sister’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Deb!

Are you digging that mid-century bookcase?  Debbie was this size when mid-century was just called ‘new’.

Last night my mom flew from Las Vegas to New Jersey to help her celebrate, and then to keep her company on the drive to Minnesota.  They will be hitting the road bright and early tomorrow morning, and my sister will be an official Minnesotan by Sunday!  Woo hoo!  How lucky am I?

As part of my ongoing attempt to clear out a back log of furniture in my carriage house, last weekend I painted this guy.

I don’t even have a ‘before’ shot of this one, I was so anxious to just get it done.  I sent Mr. Q out to pick it up last fall.  From the picture on craigslist, I thought it had more of a mid-century vibe.  I was going to paint the body white, and then do an ombre effect on the drawers.  However, when I saw it in person it wasn’t at all what I expected.  It is big, and sort of ‘heavy’ looking.

Honestly, I was so uninspired by this piece in person that I was just going to turn around and re-post it on craigslist as is.  However, the finish was in such bad shape I simply couldn’t do it.  I decided it would be better to just give it a quick chalk paint makeover with some Annie Sloan in Aubusson.  I then realized that I needed to go with a wood top to balance out all of that blue, so I stripped the top.  Unfortunately, that only made it more obvious that someone had used the top of the dresser as an ashtray.  Jeesh.  Have you ever seen that?  Burns about the length of half a cigarette all the way around the perimeter of the top.  Clearly someone had rested their lit cigarettes on the edge of the dresser and left them to burn there.  Why do people treat furniture with such disrespect?

I tried bleaching the burn spots, then sanding them down, then bleaching again, then sanding again.  They lightened up a little, but were still pretty apparent.  So in the end I decided to try and cover them with General Finishes Java gel stain.  I think it did a decent job of covering the marks.

If you look closely you can see that the Java gel went on darker in the areas around the edges where I sanded heavily.  But this is such a great improvement over how it looked before that I am happy to call it good.

By the way, in case you are wondering, I topped the Aubusson with some of my custom mixed dark wax.  I’ve mentioned this before, but for those of you who missed that, I mix 1 part dark brown Briwax with 4 to 5 parts cheap Johnson’s Paste Wax to create my own dark wax.  The Briwax on its own is very dark, but mixed with the Johnson’s it is just the right color.  I would never use it indoors, because it’s quite smelly.  It’s also probably bad for the environment and one’s health.  But when it’s nice enough to work outside, I sometimes pull it out because I really like the end result I get with it, and let’s face it, it’s cheap.  I bought the Briwax for $1 at a garage sale, and the Johnsons is about $6 per can.

I’ll be the first to admit that this piece isn’t my usual style, but I like to think that I saved this dresser from an uncertain future.

And now it is done, and hopefully will go to a good home and I can move on to some of the pieces I have waiting that are more ‘me’.

I was continuing my British theme from last week’s Union Jack desk while staging the photos of this dresser.  I used some London map paper on the wall and my Perfect English Farmhouse book.

And on the other side, look kids, Big Ben!

So, do any of you need a big blue dresser?  Ooops, sorry you missed it, this one is sold.

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!