q is for quandie

On the agenda for this weekend, here is the dresser that I want to paint indigo blue.

Before anyone blows a gasket about painting wood, or antiques, let me explain the most glaring problem with this piece.  It’s missing one drawer pull.  Just one.  Sigh.  I want to post a public notice that explains to people that missing ‘just one’ handle is a problem.  I’ve purchased countless pieces that are missing just one handle, and the seller always thinks this is minor, it’s ‘just one’.  At first I was optimistic about this guy.  I took a handle off and carried it around in my purse for weeks.  I checked eBay, Etsy, Rochler, etc.  I naively thought I could find a match.  Ha!  Then, I thought that if I could find something very similar, I could buy two and put them on the top drawer and leave the rest.  Ha!  For about 5 minutes I entertained the notion of putting entirely different knobs on just the top drawer … but, I’m pretty sure that would look stupid.  Any way you cut it, the integrity of this piece as an antique is pretty much lost along with ‘just one’ drawer pull.

Another issue with this guy are the little knobs that were added to the top jewelry drawers.  Follow the arrow on my photo:

Yep, I’m pretty sure those are not original.  They kind of overlap the key hole, and they aren’t screwed into the wood very far because the metal lock mechanism is behind them.  I’m definitely not an expert and I don’t even play one on TV, but I think these small drawers were intended to be opened with the key, not a knob.  Are there any experts reading this?  If so, please enlighten me if I’m wrong.  Either way, I’m taking them off.  Luckily, I have a key!  It didn’t come with the dresser, but I have a stash of old furniture keys and found one that will open all of the locks except ‘just one’ (naturally)!

One last furniture lesson for today.  This piece also has ‘pin and cove’ joinery.  From what I have read online, where all serious scholars do their research, this type of joinery was only done in the U.S., and only for a relatively short period of time around the 1890’s.

So, yes, this dresser is old, but is it an antique?  Here is how Wikipedia defines an antique:

An antique (Latin: antiquus; “old”, “ancient”) is an old collectable item. It is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human society.

It is common practice to define “antique” as applying to objects at least 100 years old.

So, maybe it is, but I think ‘antique’ is in the eye of the beholder.  To me, the missing drawer pull and weird added knobs make this an ideal candidate for paint.  Especially if I can manage to make the paint job look properly aged.  That is what I am hoping to achieve.  Stay tuned.

I told you that I had a plan in mind for this guy, and that it was inspired by my painted books.  As a reminder, here is the before.

I went through a ‘black period’ a few years ago.  I painted a lot of black pieces then, including the desk that I am posting from right now.  And then, I was over it.  I did one black desk early last summer only because it was already black and I just touched it up.  Then I did the owl pull dresser using my bizarre spray paint method, and that was it for black last year.

However, while working on the painted books, I decided it was time for another black piece, and here it is.

I painted this with the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Typewriter.

That is my own vintage typewriter by the way, but I am guessing that Miss Mustard Seed has something similar that inspired the name for this paint color.

Here is how the paint looks once it’s dry, before sanding and adding the hemp oil finish.

Not great, right?  But after sanding and adding a coat of hemp oil, the black is gorgeous.

This french beauty is posted on craigslist SOLD.

I mentioned I was thinking of painting a dresser with MMS Flow Blue.  But, turns out the color wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

First, let me show you my inspiration.  The cover of the latest Pottery Barn catalog.

Nice, right?  Love those indigo blues.  Obviously there are many different hues of indigo on this cover, but are you like me?  You imagine a particular color in your head, and that’s the one you want.  The dresser I’m painting next is calling out for a rich indigo.  Not too dark, not too light.

I thought Flow Blue was what I wanted, but it’s not.  I have also worked with MMS’s Artissimo.  It might work for this piece, but it’s just a little darker than I want.  So, I thought perhaps a mix of the two might be just right.  I decided an experiment was in order, so I pulled out the paints and did some mixing.

In this picture you are seeing Flow Blue on the left, Artissimo at the bottom, and a mix of the two at the top.  I find that you don’t really get a good feel for the colors by just adding the water and mixing.  So I pulled out an old piece of wood and painted each color on.  I ended up doing about 5 coats because the wood was very porous and just drank up the paint.

Here is the board with the wet paint.

Since adding the hemp oil tends to really deepen the color, once the board was dry I sanded it lightly and added the oil.  Here are my final results.

After all of this, now I think perhaps Artissimo was what I wanted all along.  Or perhaps something like a 75/25 mix.  It was fun to play with the colors, and I think I have a better feel for them now.  I’ll probably look at my board in a couple of different lighting situations before I make up my mind what color to chose.  Stay tuned to see how the dresser turns out.

You may have noticed this chair in the pics of my front hallway.  It currently resides at the foot of the stairs.

It belonged to my grandparents, and in fact there is a seat cover under that Bemis grain sack that my grandmother needle-pointed by hand.

Originally there were six of these chairs.  They were split up when my grandparents moved out of their house in Minneapolis.  My mother took 2 and my aunt took 4.  When I moved away from home nearly 30 years ago, I ended up with one from my mom.  My brother had the other, but that’s a long story, let’s just say it fell off the back of a truck when he was moving … I think that was what he claimed.

Anyway … problem is, this chair has never really been my style, even though I love the fact that it came from grandma’s house.  In fact, I have photographic evidence.

This photo was actually taken before I was born.  That is my mom on the far right.  The blonde girl is my cousin Nancy who is somewhere around 8 years older than me.  And in the foreground, the chair in question.  So you see, it is older than I am!

I had been living with this chair in its original state for about 25 years when I finally decided to paint it.  I’m fairly certain that my family still thinks that it was sacrilegious, but I did it anyway.  However, this was before I discovered MMS milk paint, and since I find it rather putzy to paint chairs with a brush, I spray painted it.  Then I covered the seat in the Bemis sack, but I did retain the needle point cover underneath.

I thought I would like it in the grey, but I have to say, the spray paint grey was never quite right.

Recently, I purchased some MMS milk paint in Flow Blue.  I wasn’t at all sure what the color would look like in person, having never used it before.  I find that looking at the Miss Mustard Seed paint online doesn’t always give you an accurate picture of her colors.  I’m considering Flow Blue for a dresser I want to paint, but first I wanted to paint something smaller to see what it really looked like up close and personal.

First things first, I mixed the paint.  I think this is one of the reasons why I like MMS paint, I like mixing it.  It sort of reminds me of making mud pies as a kid.

I purchased these measuring cups at a garage sale for a dollar.  Why not use something pretty to measure my paint?  So, I used about 1/4 cup of the powder and about 3/4 cup of warm water.  This made plenty for the chair.  As you can see, the color of the powder is no indication of the color of the paint.  I mix my paint in canning jars.  I prefer my paint shaken, not stirred.

I admit, I was a little scared when I saw the paint.  Quite a bit brighter than what I had pictured.

Here it is going on, and then as it dried.

Oh my gosh!  I just realized, reading this post may be no more interesting than watching paint dry for some people.  If you are one of them, I apologize, please feel free to skip to the end of the post if you haven’t already.

But for those of you interested in milk paint, I’ll tell you that as this dried, I could see I would get a lot of chipping.  I’m sure this is because I painted over a spray painted finish.  I did sand the surface, and the well sanded areas didn’t chip, but the rest did.  Also, I can tell you that yes, it was still a sort of bright, scary blue as shown above.  However, after I sanded it down and added a topcoat of hemp oil, the color toned down a bit.

And here it is.

I have to say, it is not quite the color I expected.  I was thinking it would be a bit more of an indigo blue.  Not quite so teal.  You can see that the grey shows through where the new paint flaked off.  It is pretty, but I am not sure now if I will use it on the dresser I intended it for.

For now, grandma’s chair has returned to the bottom of the stairs.

Those of you with a keen eye for detail will notice that the carpet has been removed from the stairs.  Shhhh … don’t tell the others, they may not notice.  I’ll post more on project domino effect soon.

One more little note to this story.  I mentioned above that my aunt ended up with 4 of the chairs.  A couple of years ago, she was downsizing to a much smaller home and she mentioned that she didn’t have room for the chairs.  She had offered them to her daughter (cousin Nancy in the picture above) and all of her grandchildren, and sadly no one wanted grandma’s chairs.  At that point, she said to me “I would give them to you, but I know you would paint them.”  Ouch!  I guess she knew me well.  Ultimately though, Nancy took them.  She removed and saved the needlepoint seats and tried to sell the chairs on craigslist with no luck.  Finally, she gave up and offered the chairs to me.  And yes,  I painted them and covered the seats in grain sack.  Then I sold them at my occasional sale to a lovely woman who is using them in her dining room.  Isn’t it better for them to be refurbished and go to someone who will use them?

I’m sorry Aunt Marilyn, but I still think I did the right thing.

Here it is!  My recent craigslist find.  OK, so I couldn’t help myself.  I had to do just one more Kitchen Scale buffet.  I chose to use this color again for several reasons.  First, I had many inquiries on my craigslist ad for the last one and it sold really quickly, so clearly it’s a popular color.  Second, it’s just so darn easy to work with.  And third, I just knew this buffet would also be stunning in this color.

So, here it is.  Vintage buffet no. 3

So very lovely.

Once again, this one had just the right amount of chippyness.  You can see the detail in this picture of the leg.  Also, I think this picture is a better representation of the actual color.

I chose to not paint the inside (as usual) because it’s just so putzy.  I know there are furniture restorers out there that do gorgeous things with the insides of their pieces, like adding a fabric lining and so on, but that isn’t me.  Plus, this isn’t an item that will sit around with its doors open for all the world to see.

This one is for sale on craigslist, you can see the ad here.  Update:  this one did not sell on craigslist, so I brought it up to the Round Barn.  I think it will do better there!  It’s so pretty in person, surely someone will fall in love with it.

Don’t worry, I promise not to use Kitchen Scale on the next one.  Even I am growing a little bored with it.

This guy is up next.  I have an idea percolating in the back of my mind, inspired by my painted books.  Check back to see what I do with him!

I love craigslist.  It boggles my mind that someone came up with this fantastic idea, and that it is FREE!  Really, let’s take a moment to stop and reflect upon that.  Thanks Craig, or whoever you are.  I really appreciate it.

The other day I was surfing the ‘list’, and I came across an ad for a buffet and this was their picture.

Yep … that’s the picture that they thought would encourage someone to want to buy it.

My first thought was “yikes! trash house!”, but my second thought was “gosh, that might be really pretty!”  So, I contacted the seller.  The first good sign was that her name was Linda … anyone named Linda can’t be bad.  The second good sign was that the buffet was still available.  After speaking with Linda, I got the full story.  Her brother was hired to clean out a friend’s abandoned house, and this buffet was buried amongst the rubble.  She posted the ad, but I would be dealing with her brother.

Off we went to the big city (that’s Minneapolis, for future reference) to take a look.  I confess, I was a little nervous.  I had visions of trying to clear a path through piles of trash to get to the buffet, maybe a couple of rats running to and fro.  Horrible smells permeating the air.  That kind of thing.   But in the end, Linda’s brother was a super nice guy.  Very friendly, and obviously not afraid of a little hard work, since he had already removed two dumpsters of trash from the house, and really had it looking pretty cleaned up.  He apologized for the musty smell of the house before we even went in, but I have to say, it wasn’t that bad.  I’ve definitely smelled worse!  Turned out, his niece was one of my husband’s former yoga instructors.  Small world, huh?

Anyway, we descended into the basement and there she was.  It was love at first sight.  I didn’t even try to bargain for a reduced price, or hide my delight.  I handed over the cash and said “I’ll take it!”

She isn’t super ornate or elaborate, not a lot of frilly details, but filled with sinewy curves that are just elegant.  And look at those legs!  Naturally I will be painting this … in fact, I am going to start as soon as I stop typing.  Check back soon for the after pics!

I was heading home from work one day early last spring with the top down on my car (ahhh, I can only dream of this now), and what did I spy out of the corner of my eye??  A garage sale with some beat up looking furniture poking out of the garage.  I screeched to a halt and whipped a u-turn to check them out.

At first I really just wanted the dresser, even though these were being sold as a ‘set’ (you all know by now how I feel about matching sets).  The sellers were a lovely brother/sister duo, and oddly enough, the dresser was his and the desk was hers, but they were selling them together … go figure.  Just as I was about to conclude a tough negotiation for just the dresser, I realized I was being an idiot and just bought them both!  I may have bought them together, but I didn’t have to keep them together!

You can tell by my brown grass that this is truly early spring … forgive me for that.  And you can see that both of these were in pretty tough shape.

I worked on the dresser first, since he was so charming.  He had some issues with  his veneer, so I patched him up with some putty.  Ken worked on the upper doors so they would function smoothly.  Then I painted him white using my own faux chalk paint recipe of 2 parts paint, 1 part hot water and 1 part Plaster of Paris.  Then I added the French words in black and finished with a coat of paste wax.  The drawer pulls were spray painted in Oil Rubbed Bronze, and the two little door knobs were replaced with some very cute ones that I had on hand.

It took me a bit longer to get to the desk.  At first I just wasn’t inspired by it, but then I decided perhaps it would be the perfect canvas for my French poem stencil.

I painted the body of the desk grey and the drawer fronts white, also using my faux chalk paint recipe.  Then I stenciled the drawers in grey with the words of a french poem.  The drawer pulls were painted in Oil Rubbed Bronze on this one too.  Isn’t she pretty?

This was about the time that I was learning to never try and take photos of furniture near a giant red carriage house when the light is bouncing off it.  Everything looks vaguely pink.  Lesson learned.

So there you have it, a classic brother/sister do-over.