q is for quandie

armitage/kenny.

Published on May 25, 2014May 24, 2014 by Quandie11 Comments

There was a quiet little holiday weekend neighborhood sale in Minneapolis yesterday. The Armitage and Kenny neighborhoods combined forces and there were about 45 houses participating.

It was a gorgeous morning, and because of the holiday there wasn’t much traffic or competition for the good stuff.

Although I didn’t fill up the truck, I did come home with some great stuff.

The blue motel chairs are perfectly chippy and fabulous.

I will paint the blue suitcase and the little wonky stool in front. The vintage desk lamp will be great in future desk photo shoots.

I found a fun old Spartus 35 F camera, a fabulous old movie camera and some great vintage gardening books.

I’ve been adding stencils to old breadboards, and I found 3 good ones!

I’m hoping the glass shade will fit on a fixture I already have.

The chenille bedspread is a new reproduction (Martha Stewart in fact), and it is in great shape. It’s always good to have extra white bedding.

We were home just a little after noon, and I already slapped some paint on the little stool. First a coat of MMSMP in Flow Blue, followed by a thick coat of MMSMP in Eulalie’s Sky. I wanted it to look chippy and old.

I popped it into the garden and took a couple of quick photos. That host in the front is June. I’m not sure what the little plant with the purple flowers is, I bought it at a garage sale! Naturally. It’s really looking gorgeous this year, covered in those purple flowers. It will re-bloom later in the summer, but it won’t be as full of flowers as it is now. Does anyone know what that is?

Can I mention that in the last week or so the garden has just popped?! Stuff is up and blooming and looking fantastic. I always love this time of year in the garden, before the slugs start eating the hostas, or a huge hail storm turns everything raggedy. The fresh growth is pristine and beautiful. Maybe I’ll have to take some more photos to share with all of you.

I staged the chippy stool with my new vintage garden books, and a fab vintage garden tool that I picked up at the estate sale while playing hooky.

I’m sure most of these items will make their way to the Carriage House Sale!

playing hooky.

Published on May 24, 2014May 23, 2014 by Quandie7 Comments

OK, I wasn’t exactly playing hooky. It was a legitimate PTO day from the day job. I had originally scheduled a couple of days off to extend the Memorial Day weekend and to get a bunch of stuff done before my upcoming Carriage House Sale.

But then, the forecast was perfect. 70 and sunny. And to top it off, my new friend Michelle was willing to head out to the big city (Minneapolis, that is) with me to check out a garden center that I have always wanted to visit. Furthermore, she’d spied an ad for an estate sale we could stop at on the way. I was really playing hooky from a day planned for furniture painting.

It was so worth it.

The estate sale was fantastic. A house crammed full of probably 75 years of stuff. An attic to dig through. And clearly Michelle knows how to dig! Look at this incredible toy dresser she pulled out of a corner of the attic.

Those tiny glass knobs are to die for.

Michelle is going to use it in her shop, Rose Mille, to display ribbons and such. First she will put her own touch on it by lining the drawers with some vintage wallpaper. I can’t imagine anything more perfect for her. Maybe Michelle will share an ‘after’ picture with us. How about it Michelle?

After seeing this amazing find, I headed over to the same corner to see what else was there. I saw a darling vintage metal toy stove and refrigerator, and a little toy sized carpet sweeper. I passed on those items, but I had to have this little hutch.

Not nearly as fab as Michelle’s little dresser, but cute. I knew I could up the cute factor with some milk paint too.

I wanted to keep the green and yellow vintage paper, so I decided on some MMSMP in Mustard Seed Yellow for the first coat, then a top coat of Linen.

Isn’t it sweet?

It’s the perfect spot to display a tiny little ironstone creamer and some vintage play silverware.

The base coat of yellow just peeks out around the edges.

I am sure that this sweet little hutch will end up at the Carriage House Sale and go home with some lucky shopper!

the apothicaire desk.

Published on May 23, 2014May 20, 2014 by Quandie10 Comments

Remember the little drop leaf desk that was so kindly donated to me by some friends?

Well, I wanted to give it an old, chippy, came out of a Victorian scientist’s lair, sort of vibe. As if the drawers are filled with handwritten ledger pages full of notes about experiments and science-y stuff.

I think I succeeded.

After Ken re-attached the drop leaf, I gave this dresser a bit of a sanding and a cleaning. Then I painted it with Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Trophy. As you can see, I got a lot of chipping, even though I had sanded quite well.

I pretty much loved the chippy look on the outside, but I was worried that the inside would chip even more since I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a good job of sanding inside those cubbies. This lead to a rash decision to paint the inside with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Old White. Nope, didn’t like it at all. Looked so fresh and white. All wrong for this chippy old desk. So, I painted over that with the MMS Trophy with some bonding agent mixed in. Still not entirely thrilled with the result though. The bonding agent adds a little shine to the paint, and I don’t love that.

Some of this shine is the freshly applied hemp oil and will tone down a bit, but still … in hindsight, perhaps I should have just let it get chippy.

You can also see that the bonding agent changes the color a bit, making the grey a bit warmer.

I added some fabulous old metal drawer pulls to the inside drawer and the drop leaf.

But really, I don’t know that anyone would actually use a desk like this for its original purpose of writing letters (or taking notes on mad scientist experiments). I think one would tend to keep the leaf up to admire the fabulous stencil.

One could still store important papers in the drawers, maybe sort bills using the cubbies.

Or just gaze at this desk and imagine a scientist tucked away in his garret in the center of Paris, making notes about his findings using ink and a quill, perhaps by candlelight. Drinking absinthe and listening to Edith Piaf.

What shall be the fate of this lovely little desk? It may make it into the Carriage House sale. But as always, if you are interested in this one, let me know.

there may be fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Published on May 21, 2014May 20, 2014 by Quandie5 Comments

Have I mentioned that I have a lovely greenhouse with an amazing statue inside? No?

Well, I suppose I should add that it is miniature.

It’s part of my fairy garden.

Several years ago, I saw a fairy garden that was planted in a birdbath while strolling around a lovely Minneapolis neighborhood (I can’t remember which one anymore). So when I saw a cracked birdbath for sale, cheap, I realized it would be perfect.

I’ve had this for many years now. Each winter I take the top off and bury it in a corner of the garden near the house and cross my fingers to see what will survive. The little evergreen tree did fine this year. But it was a tough winter and it looks like several of my miniature hostas did not come back. The bright lime green one in the front right is Chartreuse Wiggles. I had a Blue Mouse Ears, but I don’t see it coming back up. I will have to visit my hosta guy and see what he has in miniatures this year. If any of you locals are looking for a great place to buy hostas, consider my hosta guy, Gordy. He sells hostas from his yard, and he has great prices and amazing varieties. He is an old fashioned guy and literally still has a calling list and he personally calls me each year to let me know that he is open (he opened last Saturday). He is just south of highway 36 off of Rice Street. He puts up signs once he is open, and I think he’s only open on weekends until he runs out of stuff. His house doesn’t look like much from the front, but when you go around back you’ll see that he has 100’s (probably 1000’s is more like it) of hostas. In fact, the hosta that you can see in the foreground of my photo that is just starting to unfurl is from Gordy and is called June. It is one of my favorites, along with May which is a lovely bright green.

But, I digress …

You may have noticed that I transplanted the plants the I bought for my ironstone tureen earlier this spring into the fairy garden.

They were already starting to overflow the ironstone, so I knew they would be happier in the fairy garden.

I added a few more things that I picked up at Bachman’s and the fairy garden is ready to go.

“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, either”.

re-styled sideboard.

Published on May 19, 2014October 1, 2020 by Quandie14 Comments

Well, a number of you voted on what I should do with the sideboard, but I decided to go my own way (I hope at least some of you are humming some Fleetwood Mac in your head right now).

You’ll have to get used to it. I assume it annoys the crap out of my friends. The way I always ask for opinions and ideas, and then I pretty much do what I want. I do listen. And I ponder. And I consider my options. But in the end, I make up my own mind.

In this case, that meant that I re-styled the vintage sideboard to accommodate a wide-screen TV and some components.

I just felt there were more people out there that needed a fab vintage piece to put their TV on, than those that needed a place to store the china.

I basically stole this idea from a picture that one of my blog readers had pinned (thank you Meggan). I consulted with Ken, and he took out the middle drawers, built a shelf there instead and added some holes in the back for the cords.

Keep in mind that the holes seem really obvious in these pictures because they are back lit. Also, once you have some components on those shelves, they will block those anyway.

I painted it with Annie Sloan’s French Linen and finished with paste wax. I even ~~stole~~ borrowed the color from the inspiration pin. This color is a fabulous shade of greige. You know greige, right? Grey and beige. Beige and grey. A nicely warm grey. I didn’t realize until now that greige is not a made up word, it actually means:

greige (greɪ, greɪʒ)

adj. unbleached and undyed: greige linen.

Suddenly Annie Sloan’s name choice for this color makes sense.

I updated the hardware to these stone knobs in keeping with the updated use for this piece.

I staged the inside of the cubby on the side with a fabulous old locker basket, but it won’t be included, I normally use this to store my paper towels in the pantry. Although it would be a clever way to corral your DVD’s or games.

These side doors had been removed from the inspiration piece on pinterest. I did like that look, but decided that most people would rather hide stuff behind doors on the sides.

So there you have it, a re-styled sideboard. Perfect spot for your wide screen TV. A nice juxtaposition of vintage furniture meets modern technology.

By the way, the house in the background with the blue door? That is nnK’s house. She was out doing yard work and threatened to photo bomb my pics. One of these days I bet she’ll do it!

Also, the fab vintage suitcase pictured above was painted by Bees Knees Bungalow. I had to have it. She has another in brown that will likely make its way to the Carriage House Sale.

One final b & a.

As always, please feel free to leave me a comment if you are interested in purchasing this re-styled sideboard. ~~I will likely post it on craigslist by the end of the week.~~ Oops, you missed this one, it is SOLD.

linden hills.

Published on May 18, 2014October 1, 2020 by Quandie10 Comments

How do I love thee, Linden Hills? Let me count the ways.

1. Fabulous old camera and books.

2. Genuine antique light fixture and brass door knobs.

3. Boy Scout first aid kid.

4. Pair of small chairs that will get the Annie Sloan treatment. The rug in the background went home with Bee Knees. Story behind it: the seller is a photographer who worked with THE Rachel Ashwell when she was working on her Shabby Chic line for Target. This was one of their props. Of course it was! It has Rachel written all over it.

5. The mental efficiency series. Let’s face it, who couldn’t use some mental efficiency. Check out the individual titles, too funny. Wouldn’t some of these be fun to pop into a gift basket!

6. My find of the day. Tons of old door plates and knobs. We practically drooled into the box when we found these.

7. Vintage luggage! Now these I definitely won’t paint. And a fab vintage scale.

8. The darling dresser went home with Bees Knees also. She’s going to give it a fabulous makeover.

There is LOTS more. Seriously. We cleaned house in Linden Hills. I’m glad we found so many fab things, because my Carriage House sale is less than 4 weeks away and I was starting to panic that I wasn’t going to have enough stuff.

No more worries along those lines!

I hope you see some stuff that you like, because most of this will make it’s way to the sale. Be sure to save the date!

June 12 from 5 pm to 8 pm

and

June 13 from 9 am to 2 pm

I admit I’m a little chintzy.

Published on May 17, 2014May 14, 2014 by Quandie14 Comments

I like to think of myself as being careful about not ‘collecting’ too many things. This is clearly a delusion on my part, but please play along.

But I have learned that if you start to collect something, before you know it you’ll have tons of it, and then it will go out of fashion. Now what? You feel bad because you once loved these things, but you don’t want to display them anymore. So you tuck them away somewhere or you ‘get rid of them’. Sounds sinister. Like a transaction taking place in a dark alley somewhere.

Pssst! Hey you … want to buy some chintzware? Good quality stuff man.

So like I said, I try to be careful.

If people ask, I don’t collect stuff. But in reality, I can’t help myself sometimes. Maybe the true story is that I try to never pay more than a few dollars for the stuff I collect. Like my vintage clocks. Almost all purchased for less than $5 each. Or my aqua and white pottery. Almost all purchased at garage sales for less than $10 each (or dug up out of the neighbor’s yard). Thus when I get tired of these, I don’t feel bad about getting rid of them.

Which brings me to my chintzware. If you don’t know what chintzware is, to simplify things, I’ll tell you that it’s basically china with an allover pattern that is transferred on (not hand painted). It was popular in the 20’s and 30’s, but fell out of vogue in the 40’s and 50’s. There was a resurgence in the 90’s prompted in no small part by Victoria magazine (as my reader Victoria commented earlier) and people started collecting vintage pieces and new chintzware began being produced as well. And in a similar fashion, I think it has gone back out of style today for much the same reasons it did in the 40’s and 50’s. People are looking for more clean lines and Scandinavian design once again, and less of the shabby chic floral look.

But … I have my little collection. And I still think it’s lovely. I keep some of it in a glass fronted cabinet on my front porch, and some of it in my summer house. And although I’m not trying to add to my collection, when I see a gorgeous vintage tea pot in the Lord Nelson pattern called Rose Time for $10 at a garage sale, I buy it. And it was extra fun to realize that I already had the matching creamer and sugar bowl.

Another of my favorite pieces is one that my friend Sue also found for me at a garage sale.

I especially love the birds that are included in this pattern.

This pattern was produced by Crown Ducal and apparently they didn’t name their patterns. I do particularly like the designs that include birds as well as flowers.

This pair of plates are in another pattern with birds that is made by Royal Tudor Ware.

Shelley names their patterns, and this tea cup is in a pattern called Rock Garden.

This tiny little creamer is one of my favorites, and the pattern is naturally called Hydrangea and it was produced by James Kent. My friend Jeanne brought this one home from California for me knowing how much I love both chintz and hydrangeas!

I think the English pieces are the prettiest. I try to stick with mainly English pieces, but chintzware was also made in Japan. This sugar and creamer are Japanese pieces.

As you can see, these are not as detailed or colorful as the English patterns.

I do have a couple of reproduction pieces that are not vintage. The differences between vintage pieces and reproductions are easily discernible, I think. The new pieces are thicker and not as delicate as the vintage. The colors seem to be a bit brighter and to me they just simply look ‘new’.

This is a reproduction of Sophie by James Sadler.

While researching for this post, I saw this exact teapot being sold on eBay for $269.99 and the description says “Very Rare Exquisite English Sadler Sophie Yellow Chintz Teapot Mint in Box”.

The ad includes a picture of the mark on the bottom, which matches the mark on the bottom of my reproduction teapot. In other words, this is a reproduction being sold as ‘very rare’ on eBay for a crazy price. I hope no one was taken in.

So, there you have it. My chintzware non-collection. One of these days I might sell it in a dark alley somewhere, but for now I think I’ll hang on to it.

vintage dresser.

Published on May 16, 2014May 16, 2014 by Quandie16 Comments

I was planning to paint the dresser from Bryn Mawr in MMSMP in Luckett’s Green. Truly. I was.

But somehow when my hand went into the box to grab the paint, it came out with Eulalie’s Sky instead. And as soon as I saw the label, I realized that this was the perfect choice for it.

Granted, it would have been lovely in Luckett’s as well I think.

I tried to think of a clever name for this one, and all I could come up with was ‘vintage’. After all, to me this is the quintessential vintage color. It just screams vintage. So I went with it.

I find the MMS milk paint tends to be slightly transparent, especially the lighter colors. As a result, I think the final color depends on what is underneath it sometimes. In this case, you’ll remember that this dresser was rather orange.

So I think the Eulalie’s Sky went more towards the green side of aqua this time. Sometimes the Eulalie’s Sky looks more blue to me.

I also have to tell you that it took 4 coats to cover this one sufficiently. That orangey stain was hard to cover up. I probably should have mixed my paint a little thicker to compensate. In addition, I got almost no chipping. I’m OK with that, but in the end, I think I could have gotten this same effect with chalk paint in less coats. I finished this dresser with clear paste wax.

This one came with all of its hardware intact, and I am sure glad it did because look how pretty the drawer pulls are. I just cleaned them up a little by rubbing them with paste wax.

I haven’t decided on the ultimate fate for this dresser. I may hang on to it for the Carriage House sale, or I may just go ahead and list it on craigslist. It kind of depends on how much space I have to store it.

~~As always, if anyone is interested in purchasing it, please leave me a comment.~~ Woops, you missed it, this one is SOLD!

curb appeal.

Published on May 14, 2014May 11, 2014 by Quandie13 Comments

One of my very first blog posts was about my window box and how I fill it up for winter. Yikes, that seems so long ago! But I’ve survived the long winter, and it’s time to fill the window box for summer.

It runs the full length of my front porch, which faces the street. So I give it full priority each season because it is the mainstay of my curb appeal.

For the past several years I’ve been filling it with coleus in a mix bright lime greens and dark wine colors.

photo compliments of Bees Knees Bungalow

As you can see, they fill in nicely and do really well out there. My house faces north, so I have somewhat limited options. Big bloomers that love full sun aren’t at home there.

I tend to pick plants more for their foliage rather than their blooms anyway. That’s just the way I roll.

I wanted to change it up this year though, so I searched for some pinspiration and found this.

More subdued. All shade loving plants. I went a little more monochromatic and left the hot pink impatiens out of my mix.

I added some white and green Caladium and some Euphorbia.

Euphorbia likes at least part sun, so I’m taking a chance that it will do well here, but I love its ethereal quality.

I also used a fern that I discovered last year at Bachmans called Nephrolepis Jester’s Crown. It’s a little more compact and upright than the fern in my inspiration photo.

I have a little tip for you if you garden in the burbs like I do, head outside at 7 a.m. No one else is out and about so the neighborhood is quiet, the birds are singing, there is amazing light for photos and it’s just all around sublime.

Here are my tools of the trade. Coffee in my favorite Disney mug, plants, gloves. In that order.

Have I mentioned that my window box is clad in some old metal crown molding that I purchased at Oronoco Gold Rush? It started out painted white (as you can see in the first photo above), but it has chipped to reveal a layer of blue and then rusted in a most magnificent fashion.

Isn’t that delicious?

So, here it is all planted. I confess, I have artfully arranged these photos so that you can’t see how really sparse it looks right now. Also, I faked it with the Caladium. They are still in their pots because they tend to be very sensitive to the cold, and just in case we get one more cold snap here in Minnesota, I need to be able to pull them out and put them in the house overnight.

In another month or so it will fill in and the plants will spill over a bit. By the end of summer it will be bursting with white impatiens. I’ll try to remember to share some more photos with you then.

curbside desk.

Published on May 12, 2014May 9, 2014 by Quandie15 Comments

Mr. Q picked this desk up off the curb last autumn. There it sat with its FREE sign. Poor thing.

I showed it to you in my post about the items lined up in my shop waiting to be painted. The top was stripped, but otherwise it was in pretty rough shape. Several of the drawer runners had come off. Several knobs were missing, which was no real loss because they are quite ugly anyway. I suspect someone started this project, but then realized how much work it would be, stored it for a couple of years in the garage, then kicked it to the curb.

But after a little elbow grease on both my part and Ken’s, the curbside desk has a new lease on life.

I had been hanging onto a packet of MMSMP in Dried Lavender ever since I saw how lovely it looked on the interior of my friend Lori’s shelves at the Round Barn. It’s a gorgeous color, lavender, yet slightly blue, yet kind of grey. If you look out there in blogland for examples of this color in action they vary wildly. I tried hard to get the color to come across in photos. I came close, but the color looks a tad more blue in the pictures than it does in reality. I used MMS hemp oil on top of the paint.

Anyway, I had been waiting for the perfect piece to paint Dried Lavender and I decided this desk was it.

Isn’t it lovely?

I gave the drawers new glass knobs, and I think they help up the ‘pretty’ factor.

Since the top was already stripped, and since I have set a goal of learning how to stain, this desk was the perfect candidate for a stained top with its Dried Lavender body. After doing a little research, I picked up some Java gel stain by General Finishes. Most of what I’d read online made it sound pretty foolproof, which is exactly what I needed. Sure enough, easy peasy. Brush on with a foam brush, wipe off excess, let dry. That was it.

Bam! Gorgeous top. I am already planning my next stripping and staining adventure.

The back of this desk is finished off as well. I’ve sold a few desks, and often people are specifically looking for a desk with a finished back so that they can float it in the room, or allow the user to face out while sitting at the desk. I like a desk with a nice back.

I’ve staged my photos with some of the annuals I just picked up at my favorite nursery, Country Sun. The tall purple flowers are Salvia farinacea in Velocity Blue. I love the way these add vertical interest in a planter. These are destined for the copper boiler window boxes on the Carriage House and Summer House. Stay tuned for more on that later.

I believe I shall hang on to this desk until my occasional sale. Unless someone out there is interested in it now. If so, feel free to leave me a comment.