q is for quandie

Remember how my dresser in the ‘room formerly known as my craft room’ looked before?  If not, here is a reminder.

It was looking a little worse for the wear.  You can see that some of the veneer was breaking off the top edge above the drawers.  And I never liked those drawer pulls.  Plus, it didn’t really fit with my vintage farmhouse theme for the room makeover, so I gave it a little spruce up.

First I took all of those pulls off, which had two screws each, and filled one of the holes.  You all have seen tutorials on how to do that a million times, right?  If you’ve never tried it, don’t be intimidated.  It is really easy to pull off.  You just need some patience to fill them with wood filler, let them dry (there will be shrinkage no matter what the manufacturer says), fill again, let dry (sometimes I even need a 3rd pass with the filler, but not always), then sand.  Easy, peasy, but putzy.

Next I also sanded the numbers off.  I didn’t want to see the outline of them through my new paint.  The rest of the dresser got a light sanding too.  Then I painted with Cece Caldwell’s Young Kansas Wheat.  A few years ago, if you had told me I was going to paint anything in a warm, greyish beige color I would have told you that you were crazy.  But, I didn’t want this piece to be the showstopper in this room.  I wanted it to blend a bit, especially since it is so big.  This color works very well for that.  After all, when one of the other pieces in the room is a saturated blue cupboard with a rooster feed sack, well, that makes enough of a statement for one room.

Are you wondering why I didn’t use milk paint on this piece?  Especially since I wanted a rustic, farmhouse look?  It was mainly because of the existing white latex paint.  I didn’t want to see an undercoat of white through any chipping.  For some reason, I just have a thing about white undercoats.  They remind me too much of primer maybe.

Let’s chat about the stencils for a moment.  I used sections of two different stencils to add something to each drawer.  I wanted it to be subtle, but maybe not quite this subtle.  When I painted the stencil before waxing the piece, there was much more contrast between the dresser color and the acrylic stencil paint.  When I added the wax, the Young Kansas Wheat chalkpaint got darker, the acrylic stencil paint did not.

The top drawer has been waxed, the lower two are not waxed.  See the difference?  At first I was disappointed, but I’ve gotten over it now and I like the subtlety of the stencil.

The knobs that I added are from Hobby Lobby.  They are brand new, but look old and grungy.

It’s probably a stretch to take a piece like this with very traditional lines and try to turn it into something ‘vintage farmhouse’, but I think the color, the distressing, and the new hardware help.  The stencil just adds that little bit of french-ness that I love.  So maybe this dresser isn’t exactly what you picture when I say “french farmhouse”, but it’s working for me.

I’ve added some rustic wooden crates to the top of the dresser for more height, and more display space for some of my favorite collectibles.  My vintage cameras, my mini furniture and some of my ironstone pieces are right at home here now.

Eventually I would like to replace this piece with something a little more ‘me’, but for now I need the storage and this piece will serve that purpose until I find the perfect thing.

I was waiting for one last piece, a rug I ordered from Overstock.com, to complete my room makeover.  It arrived last weekend, so if you have been following along, stay tuned later in the week when I’ll be posting a final reveal of the whole room.

I mentioned in my previous post that I’m going to start calling the room I’m currently revamping ‘the study.’  But really, that name isn’t quite right either.  Let’s face it, I don’t do any studying in here.  As part of making over the room, I gave some serious thought to what I need the room for and how it should function.  In the end, there are two main purposes for this room;  I write my blog (and do other computer stuff), and I store my creative supplies here.  What shall I call it?  Got any ideas for me?

After giving some serious thought to functionality, I realized that the desk had to go.  Here it is, in case you don’t remember it.

It is beautiful, but see that base?  That was annoying.  My legs are far too long for this desk.  It would be perfect for a shorter person who likes to raise their feet a little under their desk, but I am 5’10”.  My feet always had to be tucked under my chair.  Plus, this desk (technically, it’s a library table) was just large enough that I tended to pile crap on it.  Empty surface area = piles of stuff to look through later.

And let’s just mention the chair for a moment.  Those wheels were leaving big black marks on the floor.  I was able to get them up with a magic eraser, but still.  Not good for the floor.  Although it was quite comfy.

But all of that brings me to my new desk!

A bit smaller for sure, but enough space for exactly what I need, a perch for my computer.  It’s now tucked in the corner which makes the room seem ten times larger.  I angled it to avoid the look of furniture just lined up along the walls.  Once Mr. Q and I put the angled desk in place, I realized that the space behind it was perfect for my chalkboard door.  See those pipes running up the wall behind the door?  Those are radiator pipes going up to the 2nd floor.  Because of those, nothing could really be tucked right in to this corner of the room.  And I now have a fab little vintage suitcase hiding all of those electrical cords, but I forgot to put it in place before this photo.  Dang.  In an older house, lack of electrical outlets can be a big challenge.  This room has two, neither of which are in a good spot for the desk.

So let’s talk about the ‘desk’ itself.  Do you recognize it?  It’s the Boxwood farmhouse table!

I tried selling it at my last Carriage House sale, and there were no takers.  Clearly it was meant to stay.  As much as I loved the green, it just wasn’t working in this room.  So, I really quickly slapped on a coat of MMS Flow Blue followed by a coat of MMS Artissimo.  We’re seriously talking ‘slapped on’ here folks.  The lighting was dim, I didn’t try to get 100% coverage.  I wanted the look of a piece that has been painted multiple times.  And here is what I got.

Love it!  Perfect chipping with layers of color.  Just what I wanted.

As for the chair, I have to laugh, I started out with this chippy farmhouse chair (oh, and there is the little suitcase in this shot).

That chair lasted all of about five seconds.  I don’t know what part of my brain thought that I could actually sit and write blog posts in that chair.  It looked cool, but was definitely not going to be functional.  Thank goodness I still had my french cane back chair out in the photo cottage!  It’s perfect for the new desk.

It is super comfy (I’m sitting in it now as I’m writing this).

There is just enough room on the desk for my computer, a couple of external hard drives (note to self, come up with way to disguise these!), some pens, a little container of business cards and a little ‘Q’.

I’ve used some vintage hangers and metal clips to add a little ‘pin board’ of sorts to my chalkboard door.

So now you’ve seen both the farmhouse cupboard and my farmhouse desk.  Are you sensing a theme?  Stay tuned next week when I reveal what I did with the dresser on the other side of the room, plus a final room reveal (if one final piece arrives in time!).

In typical fashion, my decision to get rid of the chartreuse walls in my craft room snowballed into a more comprehensive room make over.  My original thought was to just repaint the room, maybe repaint some of the existing furniture and restyle the room a bit.  But as I thought about it, I realized that painting over the black on my existing cupboard wouldn’t give me the result that I wanted.  I decided that if I could find a new-to-me cupboard at a reasonable price, I could buy it and then sell the black one on craigslist … hopefully with a net outlay around $0.

And within days I found this guy.

A clean canvas for whatever color I wanted.

But boy oh boy, did I go round and round about what color I wanted!

First, I was convinced that I had to paint it in my signature aqua.  Love that color!  And I pinned this example for inspiration.

Yes, it would have been gorgeous in this color.  I seriously considered it.

Then, I had a moment where I thought ‘white!’  Back to basics.  Keep the entire room bright and filled with light.  I even found a cupboard on pinterest that is very similar in style and painted white.

Also very nice.  But as much as I admire this all white decor, it just isn’t me.

I like color.  And I wanted this cupboard to be the focal point in my study (that’s what I’m going to call it now since I rarely actually do any crafts in here).  So I decided to go with a rich shade of blue.  Miss Mustard Seed painted her jelly cabinet in exactly the color I was looking for, so I decided to just copy her technique.

She started with a layer of Artissimo, so I did too.

I really wasn’t sure about this pine finish that I was painting over.  I suspected it might chip like the dickens.  But the first coat of Artissimo really didn’t chip at all.  Hmmm.  OK.  I wanted a little chipping, so I was a little disappointed not to get any.  I waited a full day and then moved on to add a coat of Flow Blue on top of the Artissimo.  And then guess what?  It started chipping.  And then it chipped A LOT.  I freaked out.  Some cuss words may have been uttered.  This is the point in many projects where I decide to sleep on it.  Maybe even wait a couple of days before making any decisions.  But I really thought I was going to be sanding it down and starting over with chalk paint.  Not the end of the world, but I’m not a fan of starting over.

Then, on day 4, I came home and took another look at the cabinet.  I pondering the extreme chipping and I realized that it was starting to grow on me.  Maybe I could just go with it, maybe play it up a little.  And thus, the chippy farm cabinet was born.

I love it!  Every time I walk in to the room, I smile a little inside because this cupboard makes me happy.  I think it’s the rooster.  Whatever it is, this is the response I want to get from my decor.  So if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, that is OK, because it is definitely mine.  And since I’m keeping this one, I’m the only one who has to like it.  Well, it’s a bonus if Mr. Q likes it too, and he does.

A couple of things about the color.  First of all, my color doesn’t really look much like Miss Mustard Seed’s jelly cupboard.  I think I followed her exactly, a coat of Artissimo, followed by a coat of Flow Blue, and then finished with her antiquing wax.  Why so different looking?  Maybe because my piece started out a different color?   Maybe because the lighting is different in my photos?  In addition, in person the cupboard doesn’t seem to have such a color variation between the top and bottom.  I’m not sure if that is another trick of the lighting, or if it’s just something that isn’t so noticeable in person.

I added some vintage drawer pulls to this piece from my stash.  I wanted it to feel ‘old’, and these helped with that quite a bit.

What really pulled it all together for me on this cupboard was the rooster feed sack.  That was just a little bit of fate at work.  I knew I wanted to put something behind the glass because I want to be able to shut the doors and not see all of my stuff (unlike the old cupboard).  I figured I would do a stenciled piece of linen or something, but as I dug through my fabric I came across this feed sack.  The coloring couldn’t have been more perfect.  And that rooster is just plain handsome, isn’t he?

I staged the cupboard with some ironstone and some blue canning jars just for these pictures.

Once I have it in place in the study, I’ll show you how it will look in ‘real life’.

But in the meantime, what do you say?  Chippy farmhouse?  A ‘do’ or a ‘don’t’?