q is for quandie

Way back in March I shared this bed …

I’d gotten it at a neighborhood garage sale, and it did not come with its side rails.  But the former owners assured me it was a twin sized bed and that they used it with a twin mattress, they had just misplaced the side rails.

So after giving it a makeover with some Dixie Belle paint in Sawmill Gravy and the Cosmic Roses transfer from re.design with prima, I sold it as a ‘twin bed’.  One of my regular customers purchased it, and then purchased some metal side rails to use with it.  But after monkeying around with it to get a twin mattress to fit, she determined that this was not a twin sized bed but rather a 3/4 bed.

Lesson learned:  always measure myself.

If you aren’t familiar, 3/4 beds are somewhere in between the size of a twin bed and the size of a full (or double) bed.  It’s a little bit difficult to find a 3/4 mattress, although they can be found online.  I imagine it would be equally difficult to find bedding, especially if you want a fitted sheet that actually fits.  Jumping through those hoops might be worth it for a really spectacular antique bed, but certainly not for this one.

You can buy side rail extender thingies to turn a 3/4 bed into a full sized bed, and that probably would have worked out OK here.  You end up with a few inches of mattress sticking out past the headboard on either side.  I’ve done something similar with the bed in our own principle bedroom, I’ve converted an antique full bed to fit a queen mattress.

You could also modify some side rails to fit a twin bed, thus leaving a few inches of head board sticking out from either side of your mattress.

In this case however, my customer wanted a twin bed.  And she also wanted to place it in a corner so both the headboard and the side of the bed would be up against a wall.  That meant that having a couple of extra inches of width to the headboard would have left a gap between the mattress and the wall.  Not a good plan for a small child’s room.  Can you just imagine how many things would get stuck between the bed and the wall (including the child)?

So, long story short, I took the bed back.

Then I considered my options.  Re-market it as a 3/4 bed modified to fit a full?  Or turn it into a bench.

I’d chosen not to turn it into a bench initially because the footboard was far too low to work for creating sides to the bench like in all of the previous benches that my handyman/neighbor Ken has made.  Usually he cuts the foot board in half and creates arm rest type sides, like in this example …

But then I thought perhaps we (and by ‘we’, I mean Ken) could make an ‘armless’ bench using just the headboard.  That would have been OK.  But I really wanted to incorporate the foot board somehow.  Then a lightbulb went off in my head.  Why not flip the foot board the other way around, so that the flat part was at the top and the curved part at the bottom.  And then use it as the front of the bench.

My first job was to convince Ken that this was do-able.  He always doubts his ability, while I always believe he can work miracles.

So I sent the foot board home with him to see what he could come up with.  Sure enough, he was able to remove the center section from the legs, flip it around and re-attach it to the legs at just the right height for a seat.

Ta da!  See?  I knew Ken could do it.

After flipping the foot board, Ken added his usual planked seat.

  Don’t ask me how he does that, he just works his magic and I get to see the completed piece when he’s done.

I was able to retain the Cosmic Roses transfer on the headboard.  I just had to touch up the existing paint in a few spots and also paint the new portions of the bench.  I decided to paint the back of the headboard this time around too.  You never know when someone is going to want to place a bench in a spot where the back is visible.

I decided to play up the floral motif of the transfer when staging the photos for this bench.  Plus, Christmas is over, it’s time to start thinking spring, right?!

I added an old wooden berry tote with some pots and some lavender.  Then I painted up a cupboard door sign in a very similar shade of green.  The paint on the tote is original, but the sign is painted in Dixie Belle’s Kudzu.  I sanded it well to distress the finish, then added a coat of clear wax followed by a coat of antiquing wax.  It’s not exactly the same color, but it’s close.

So, the 3/4 bed is now a bench.  And it’s available for sale if any of you local readers are interested.

If you ever come across a 3/4 bed and you just don’t want to deal with trying to fit a mattress to it, you could consider turning it into a bench.  And if you have a piece that isn’t working ‘as is’, considering flipping it!

As always, thanks to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the paint used on this bench, and to re.design with prima for providing the transfer.

This summer I picked up another kid-sized chair at the Lowry Hill & East Isles sales.

There it is on the right hand side of this photo …

My original plan was to paint it and put a Christmas stencil on it like the ones I did last year.  But as it turned out, the seat was a bit smaller on this one and I didn’t like the way any of the Christmas stencils fit on it.

Then I ordered some new stencils from an Etsy vendor called Wallcutz, including this one …

I purchased it for another project (which I’ll be sharing soon), but I realized that in addition to being quite adorable, it was also the perfect fit for the chair.

So this past weekend I pulled the chair out of the carriage house.

And one thing that struck me about it was that the finish was in pretty darn good shape.

Normally I would automatically paint a piece like this.  After all, painting furniture is what I do, right?  Also, my experience tells me that painted pieces almost always sell better than unpainted pieces.  At least historically.  That being said, I’m noticing that more and more people are returning to wood finishes instead of paint (which frankly is kind of a bummer for me).

So I thought I’d try a little experiment with this chair.  Rather than painting it, I decided to just add the stencil to the seat leaving the wood finish ‘as is’.  Well, sort of ‘as is’, I did sand the seat lightly to make sure the stencil paint would adhere well.

I used my method for adding a little bit of a shadow to the word ‘honey’.  Basically I stenciled just that word first using Dixie Belle’s Putty, then once dry, I moved the stencil just a hair up and to the right and then stenciled the entire design using DB’s Drop Cloth.

It’s such a simple thing, yet it adds so much depth to the stencil, don’t you think?

Once the paint was dry, I sanded lightly over the seat with 220 grit sand paper to smooth out the surface.  Then I added a coat of clear wax to the entire chair.

I staged my photos with a couple of tiny pieces of ironstone.

As someone who loves both miniature versions of things and ironstone, these are a couple of my favorite things.  Especially that little tureen, it’s only about 4″ tall.

So, now it remains to be seen.  Will this chair sell?  I’ll keep you posted on that.

Or maybe one of you local readers wants to snatch it up?  If so, be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale‘ page.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Do you prefer items that are painted?  Or do you think this chair works ‘as is’?

I purchased this sofa table at the Goodwill nearly a year ago.

I struggled to get a good ‘before’ photo of it.  You can’t really tell, but the top is that sort of yellow-ish, shiny wood finish that was popular in the 90’s and the base is a dark forest green.

I’m not really sure why I grabbed this piece, except that the price was right and I figured it would be a quick makeover.

I knew I wanted to strip the top, and that’s a summer job for me.  I prefer to avoid stripping pieces in the house during the winter.  So I set this table aside for a few months.  Then last summer I stripped the top.  After I had it down to bare wood, I decided I liked the pale color but it was still a bit too golden.  So I white washed it using Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth (check out this post if you want to learn more about white washing).

After white washing, I added a top coat of clear wax.

I loved how the top turned out, so next I moved on to painting the base.

I thought it would work well to stick with the pale color scheme, so I painted the base in Dixie Belle’s French Linen.  Normally I like French Linen, but for some reason it didn’t work on this piece.  It just looked strangely washed out.  I thought maybe the piece needed more contrast between the top and the base , so I pulled out the Gravel Road next and re-painted the base.

But you know what?  I didn’t like that either.  It was too dark.

So I did what I tend to do in this situation.  I threw a drop cloth over it and used it to stack stuff on out in the carriage house for a few more months.

Flash forward to a week or so ago.  I had ordered some more Gravel Road from Dixie Belle, but somehow they sent me their Hurricane Gray by mistake.  At first I was slightly bummed by this mistake, but then I realized that the Hurricane Gray might actually be just perfect for the base of this table.

Here’s a comparison of the these three shades of gray.

That’s French Linen on the left, Hurricane Gray in the middle and Gravel Road on the right.  If the French Linen was too pale, and the Gravel Road was too dark, maybe the Hurricane Gray would be just right.

So I pulled the table out of ‘storage’ and repainted the base once again.

Perfect.

I staged it up with a few of my favorite things.

I think it works to balance the cool tones of the black & white photo and the Hurricane Gray  with the warm golden tones of the lamp, clock, books and old wooden crate .

A little bit of paint gave a fresh new look to a rather tired, dated looking piece, don’t you agree?

Hopefully the neutrality of this piece will help it sell quickly.

Speaking of which, if any of my local readers are in need of a sofa table, be sure to check out the details on my ‘available for local sale‘ page.

As always, thanks to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the products used for this project.

Last summer my sister-in-law texted from a garage sale to ask if I wanted this doll cradle.

I thought it was crying out for a paint job, so naturally I said yes.  Look at all of those flat surfaces, they would be perfect for some stenciling.

Not only did my s-i-l purchase it for me, she also delivered it which was pretty darn awesome of her considering they live way over on the other side (and then some) of the Twin Cities.  Thanks again for doing that Tracy!

I’m still not quite sure about the direction I chose to go with this one because I decided to paint it black, Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky to be precise.

Maybe I should have gone with a color that was more traditionally baby-dollish like pink or yellow.  Or even just kept it light with my favorite Drop Cloth.

But no, I went black.  Maybe it’s a metaphor for this holiday season.

No, no, of course it isn’t.  I just thought it would pack a graphic punch painted black and then stenciled.  And I added an uplifting message to ‘lighten’ it up a bit.

I painted the entire cradle in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.  Once dry I sanded to distress the edges, and then I added a mish mash of my favorite holiday stencils from Maison de Stencils using Dixie Belle’s French Linen paint.

I finished all of that off with some clear wax.

I also upgraded the bedding itself.  The stuff it came with was looking a little tired.

So I added a ‘sheet’ made from an old curtain with some tatted trim and my friend Sue sewed up a sweet little chenille blanket to add a little coziness.

The pillow case is actually a vintage hankie holder.  Back in the day one would have kept all of their pretty handkerchiefs inside this little cloth envelope (here’s one on Etsy to give you an idea of what I’m talking about).  I just stuffed it with fill to make it a pillow.

I have to tell you guys, I’ve had this thing lying around for years.  It was one of those things that I picked up at a garage sale because it was so sweet, but then had absolutely no idea what to do with it.  I’m sure I tried to sell it at my occasional sales and never had a taker.

Isn’t it funny how it ended up being just the perfect thing for this cradle?

You just never know when you might find a new use for something.

Speaking of alternate uses, the obvious use for this cradle is as a doll bed, but there are a few other ways you could use it.  Take the bedding out and replace it with evergreens for a unique table display.  Or fill it with wrapped presents under the tree.

I’ll be heading in to Reclaiming Beautiful with this on Wednesday, but if any of my local readers want to snatch it up before then be sure to send me an email.  The details can be found on my ‘available for local sale’ page.

So I’m curious, what do you think of the black?  Or would you have gone with a more traditionally girly color?

As always, thanks to Dixie Belle for providing the paint used on today’s project.