treat the cheese nicely.

Published on by Quandie31 Comments

Welcome to the next installment of our house tour series.  Today we’re visiting the kitchen.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’ve probably figured out that I don’t really cook.  You’ve wondered how I can find the time for a full-time job, plus a blog, plus furniture painting?  Well, the answer is, I don’t cook.  OK, maybe that’s not the full answer, but it’s certainly part of it.  Any cooking that takes place at our house is usually done by Mr. Q, and occasionally even by my sister.

That being said, having a gourmet kitchen is pretty low on our list of priorities.  We are very happy with having a mostly functional kitchen instead.  We have the basics; a stove, a microwave, a sink, some cupboards and a fridge.  None of which are fancy or expensive.  And in case you are wondering, no, we do not have a dishwasher.  But who really needs one for just two people who rarely cook?

But you know what?  Let’s stop here and put this kitchen in perspective by hopping into the time machine and heading back to 2006.  This was another of my domino effect decorating projects.  It started out with a plan to put in a new sink and counter tops, re-paint the cupboards and walls and tile the floor.  But it ended up morphing into something a little bit bigger.

To begin with I started out by removing the existing wallpaper in preparation for painting only to find that the lower half of the walls were covered with a thin layer of hardboard.  When we pulled that off, we discovered that the board had been put in place as a quick fix for plaster walls that were in really terrible condition as evidenced by this old page out of my ‘home redecorating’ scrapbook.

At that point my friend/picker/co-worker Sue and her husband kindly offered to help us remove the plaster so we could put up sheet rock instead.  Looking back, I still can’t believe how generous that was of them.  I’m pretty sure I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

That lead to the next unexpected decision, to open up the wall between the kitchen and the piano room.  You see, Sue’s husband accidentally got a little carried away with the sledge hammer and went right through that wall to the other side.

Rather than panic, we decided that it was sign that we should open up that wall and I’m still grateful to this day that he did that.  This change added much more light to the kitchen and really just opened up the entire first floor of our house.

Since we had the walls down to the studs, at that point it made sense to update the wiring in the kitchen and why not put in some counter top lighting as well, right?

Luckily Mr. Q’s brother Joel was able to help us out with that.

We had also planned to rip up the linoleum and do a ceramic tile floor instead.  We had even purchased all of the tile.  However, when we pulled up the linoleum we found wood floors underneath.  So instead we had the wood floors refinished in a checkerboard pattern.

The dark squares are stained and the light squares were left natural.

We hired various people to do most of the rest of the difficult work including sheet rocking the walls and ceiling, and putting in that new arched opening to match the other existing arches in the living room.  Plus putting in new counter tops, a new sink and faucet and tiling the back splash.

I still love the simple white subway tile back splash 13 years later.  It’s a timeless classic that works really well with the age of our home.

We also purchased new appliances back then, and as I’m writing this blog post I realize that means our kitchen appliances are all 13 years old too.  Yikes!  They’ll probably start dropping like flies soon.

We have just the one wall of cabinets and we never even considered replacing them.  Doing so would be expensive and I like the charm of these originals.  They are in really good shape considering they are over 100 years old.  I did switch out the knobs though.

They badly need to be repainted at this point though, maybe I’ll get to that next summer.  Next time around I’ll likely use Fusion paint for its durability.

Those cupboards at the very top originally had solid doors.  We cut out the inserts and replaced them with chicken wire.  Since they are up so high it was never practical to store anything we needed to be able to access on a regular basis up there.  So it made sense to make them decorative instead.

I have them filled with white (not all of it is technically ironstone) china serving pieces.

The rest of the decorative details were up to me and as per usual there are a lot of garage sale finds in this room.  That sisal runner in front of the cupboards was purchased at a garage sale and it’s the perfect size for that spot.

The little cupboard above the radiator by the stove is also a garage sale find.

I keep some of my favorite dishes inside including my french cafe au lait bowls, my numbered plates from Target and a couple of ironstone pieces.

My favorite garage sale find in the room though is the pair of plates hanging on the wall between the pantry door and the bathroom door.

I’ve learned that these are Norwegian cheese plates.  I had found an article once that said the writing on them roughly translates to ‘treat the cheese nicely’, but I’ve since lost track of that article.

  If any of you out there reading this know anything about these plates, I’d love to hear it.

Anyway, I paid just $1 for these plates and the man selling them said they had belonged to his Norwegian mother.  I love them, and even though they didn’t come from my own Norwegian grandmother I still treat them as though they did … and I also always treat the cheese nicely too 😉

Be sure to check back next Wednesday when we’ll take a look behind that pantry door!

tangletown 2019.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

Temps have been cooling down here, the days are getting shorter and the leaves are starting to turn.  That can only mean one thing.  Neighborhood garage sale season is almost over.

But there are a couple of good ones still left, and this past Saturday Debbie and I headed out to the Tangletown neighborhood in Minneapolis for their sales.

Last year the Tangletown sales were held the first weekend in May, but this year they scheduled them for September.

Once again, Debbie and I got tangled up in Tangletown.  They provided a map for the sales, but you couldn’t read most of the street names on the map.  They also provided a listing of each address participating in the sale, but that was hard to follow too.  So we just drove around randomly looking for signs.  This was probably not the best strategy and might explain why we came home with a smaller than normal pile of goodies.

The pair of bistro pairs was my first buy of the day.  They aren’t vintage, so normally I would pass on them.  But I thought they might be a fun winter painting project, so I grabbed them.

Debbie purchased the pair of blue pots.

At only $1 each, they were a no-brainer.  She’s going to put them on her front stoop with some mums in them for fall.

Even though I’m not a huge fan of painting chairs, especially chairs with lots of spindles, I couldn’t resist this next chair.

To me this chair looks more authentic than the chunky 70’s & 80’s versions of the captain’s chair.  I like the cleaner lines of the spindles on this one and the way the back and arms are one solid piece that curves down to meet the seat.  This chair is going to look amazing once painted.

I snagged this trio of old gold picture frames for $2 total.

They are somewhat beat up, but I still think they look great.  I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do with them yet but I’m sure I’ll find a home for them somewhere in my house.

I was also drawn to this small black globe.

I’ll carry this one around the house trying to find a spot for it too.

I’ve saved ‘find of the day’ status for the bed.

Maybe not quite so much because it’s a pretty fab bed, but more because of the story that goes with it.

My sister and I had just pulled up in front of a garage sale when we saw a guy across the street carrying things out to the curb.  The bed was already leaning up against a tree and had a sign on it that I couldn’t read from the car.  Sure enough, as I got closer I could see that it said “FREE”.  Our timing could not have been more perfect.

Ironically we had just come from another sale that had a similar bed priced at $80, which was far too high a price for me.

I asked him if this was a twin sized bed (because sometimes these old pieces can be off sizes).  He didn’t know, but his wife popped her head out of an upstairs window and said ‘yes, it’s a twin!’  Then she also told me that she bought it at Hunt & Gather (you locals are probably familiar with this shop in Minneapolis).

Again, it’s another piece that will be totally transformed by paint.

So, not a huge haul, but still some great finds in Tangletown.  Be sure to stay tuned, Wednesday I’ll be continuing my house tour with a look at our kitchen!

 

the church sale desk.

Published on by Quandie30 Comments

A while back one of my local readers, Jackie, contacted me and asked if I wanted a spoon carved secretary desk that she found at a local church sale.  The price made the desk too hard for her to pass up, I believe it was $20, so she snatched it up and then offered it to me.

You guys met Jackie back when I toured her scented gardens (part 1 and part 2).

As you can see by the ‘before’ photo, I brought this desk home before my gardens even filled out last spring.  I don’t know why it kept getting shoved to the bottom of the pile over the summer, but for some reason it did.  Now that September is here, and I’m done with my magic wand decorating project, I’m trying my best to get all of the larger pieces in my workshop painted before the snow falls.  Wish me luck on that.

There were a couple of issues with this desk.  For one thing, someone had added wooden knobs instead of the original pulls.  I’m sure I’m going to offend someone here, but one of my pet peeves is when people put knobs in the two holes that originally accommodated a drawer pull, thus giving the drawer two side by side knobs (top two drawers).  IMHO, that just looks wrong.

They had also added a knob to the pull down section of the desk where the original key hole was.  This desk would have originally been opened only with a key.

Let’s start with the inside of the desk though.  Somehow I managed to miss getting a ‘before’ photo of it.  But basically Ken had to add a new chain to hold the drop down leaf, and then I used the RustOleum chalk spray paint in Charcoal to paint it.

Obviously there was no way I was getting inside all of those little cubby holes with a brush, and unlike the last secretary desk I painted, this time the insert was not removable.  So I simply painted it in place.

Once the paint dried I added a small section from Prima Marketing’s Beautiful Home transfer on the fronts of the little drawers.  This is a white transfer that’s perfect for using over dark paint.  Once the transfer was applied, I sanded over it lightly with 220 grit paper and then used a clear wax to seal it.

I lined these drawers with some scrapbook paper that I have stockpiled.

I painted the outside of the desk in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.

I chose to wet distress this piece instead of using sandpaper.  First of all, Dixie Belle paint is really easy to wet distress.  Second, I think this results in more of ‘worn off over time look’ than sanding does.  If you’ve never tried it, you should give it a go on your next project.  Simply use a damp cloth to rub away some of the paint around the edges.

I have so many things I want to mention about the outside of the desk that I don’t know where to start, so let’s just start with those drawer pulls.   I just happened to have four matching antique pulls on hand.  What are the odds?  Trust me, not that great.  I usually just have a mishmash of mismatched hardware.  But this time it totally worked out, they even fit in the existing holes, so no more double knobs.

You might have noticed that the middle drawer on the bottom and the door were originally missing the trim around the keyholes (take a look back at that ‘before’ photo to see what I mean).  I basically stole the trim from around the keyhole on the drop leaf to use on that middle drawer, thus giving all of the drawers that same round trim.  By ‘stole’ I mean I carefully pried it off the drop leaf and then glued it onto that drawer instead.

Then I made new keyhole escutcheons for both the drop leaf and the door using one of Prima Marketing’s new molds called Grandeur Keyholes.

I used Prima’s Modeling Material to make the molds.  If you want to learn more about using the molds and the modeling material, check out my previous post on that.

I learned another valuable lesson about the molds while working on this piece.  As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, the molds will shrink as they dry.  Now I’ve also learned that if you glue a mold on and paint over it before the mold is dry it will reveal some unpainted wood as it shrinks.  See that outline of unpainted wood around the keyhole?  That’s what I’m talking about.

Not a huge deal, but from now on I’ll wait for the mold to be completely dry and hardened before painting.

Still, isn’t this a completely fabulous way to make up for missing keyhole escutcheons?!  I love it!  I chose to downplay my molded keyholes by painting them to match the piece, but you could apply some metallic wax to make them stand out more which would also look great.

You may have noticed that I now have a key in that drop down leaf too.  Don’t be fooled, this is not a functioning key for that lock.  Instead, Ken came up with a way of permanently affixing the key so that it can be used like a ‘knob’ to open the drop leaf.

I was going to attempt to describe how he managed it, but honestly it’s over my head.  Suffice to say that somehow he made it so that the key has a threaded end now and is screwed on from behind.  Then he made a little trap door to cover that up from the back (which ends up being the top of the drop leaf when it’s open).

I filled around it with Dixie Belle Mud.  Once dry, I sanded it smooth and painted over it.

Now you’d barely know it was there.

Once again I used Big Mama’s Butta as a finish over the Midnight Sky paint.

I really like the look of this product over the black paint.

You may remember that in my post about my piano room makeover I mentioned that one reason I kept my faux board and batten so tall was so that I could crop out the dark gray upper wall in my staged furniture photos.

As you can see, it worked like a charm for this piece.

I feel like I was able to restore some of this desk’s former glory, what do you think?

As always, many thanks to Dixie Belle for providing the paint and the Big Mama’s Butta, and to Prima Marketing for providing the transfer, the molds and the modeling material for this project.

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Prima Marketing products check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy the Dixie Belle products, you can shop with them directly online or find a retailer near you.

And finally, if you happen to be local (Twin Cities, MN) and in need of a secretary desk, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

the piano room.

Published on by Quandie50 Comments

The room that we call the piano room was originally intended to be a formal dining room.  In fact, we did use it that way for many years until we became the proud owners of a baby grand piano when one of my co-workers moved away and needed to get rid of it.

I had grandiose plans of learning how to play, assuming that naturally I would become some sort of jazz pianist in my spare time.  You know, all of that spare time I have that isn’t spent working, gardening, garage saling or painting furniture.

Yeah, you get the idea, that never happened.

However, I did discover that this piano makes the perfect surface for things I do spend time on like painting stuff, or wrapping presents, or folding laundry, or even mixing drinks.  So it has become a fixture in the room and I can’t imagine anything else that I could swap it out for that would be as functional and yet still attractive.

Over the years this room has seen quite a few looks.  When we bought the house it was wallpapered in a very bland wallpaper.  I’m pretty sure the previous owners felt that wallpaper was an easy way to cover up a flawed plaster wall, but they didn’t feel that it needed to be decorative.  I replaced that wallpaper with a white on white damask patterned wallpaper that was very trendy at the time, but that was back in the early 90’s.  Later that wallpaper came down and I tried a multitude of different colors on the walls; mustard yellow, red, and grey to name a few.  I didn’t love any of them, and somehow despite its gorgeous trim, built in bookcases, and stained glass window, the room always managed to look rather boring.

I finally landed on horizontal stripes about 8 years ago and I painted them in shades of green the first time around.

I loved the stripes, but the colors weren’t good at all.  Especially since this room contains the only blank wall in my entire house that is suitable for staging furniture photos.  So I then exchanged the green stripes for grey and white stripes.

The colors were definitely better, and I loved the way they looked.  But eventually I got tired of seeing that striped wall in the background of so many of my furniture photos.

So a while back I repainted just that wall white.

That brought me to last winter when I decided to tackle redecorating my living room and piano room.  I broke the project down into what I thought would be manageable chunks.

  1.  repaint the insides of the bookshelves in the living room
  2.  repaint the living room walls
  3.  replace the living room furniture
  4.  paint the baby grand piano
  5.  replace the ceiling fan over the piano
  6.  repaint the piano room walls

And actually, I did pretty good right up until I got to item no. 6.  That’s where I completely got stuck.  Mainly because my original plan was to just finish painting out the stripes in the rest of the piano room with plain white walls.  However, in the back of my mind I knew that wasn’t going to be enough.  The room needed something more.

I toyed with the idea of faux ship lap.  That worked really well in our master bedroom.  But ship lap felt just a bit too casual for this room and its baby grand.  Then I came across a picture of board and batten and realized it would be perfect.

I’m not going to attempt a tutorial on how to do board and batten.  There are a million of those out there, all done far better than mine would be (just google it, or look on pinterest).

I can tell you that it cost around $90 for the wood.  We used solid Aspen rather than cheaper furring strips because it had a nicer, smoother finish.  The wider boards are 1/2″ x 4″ x 6′ and the horizontal trim board above that wider board at the very top is 1″ x 2″ x 4′.

I played around a bit with the distance between the vertical boards.  I didn’t want any of them to end up in a corner and I didn’t want to have to cut around any electrical outlets or other obstructions.  We ended up keeping them 20″ apart.

  The paint cost another $80 or so, but I have lots left over for other projects.  So for less than $200, this made a huge impact on the room.  At least I think so.

I must point out here that we definitely could not have done this project without our handyman/neighbor Ken.  He had all of the necessary tools, and he had the know-how.

I opted to go fairly high up the wall with the board and batten for two reasons.  The first is that I wanted to carry in the dark grey color from the living room walls at the top, but I wanted to keep that to a smaller segment of wall.  The second reason is so that I can still do furniture photo shoots in here and easily crop out the dark grey (as long as the pieces aren’t really tall).  You’ll see an example of that on Friday when I share my latest painted piece of furniture.

The top of the board and batten is at 6 1/2′ tall.

I knew using the dark grey at the top of the wall would really make our pretty window frames pop.

We didn’t add any vertical boards to that entire east wall.  The angles of the wall make it feel consistent though.

This project was a bit more work than I thought it would be.  I took a week off at the day job and figured I’d have lots of time for other things plus this project.  Instead I just barely got this room done by Friday.

I painted the walls, both top and bottom.  Then I sanded and painted all of the boards (before installing them).  Then it took an entire day for Ken and I to install the boards.  Then I filled nail holes, patched seams and added a 2nd coat of paint to the boards.  I painted the chair to match the piano.  I also painted the bookshelves under the window.  Phew!

Luckily I didn’t need to repaint my pretty pale blue ceiling, and we already had both the ceiling fan project and the piano painting project completed.

We took care of some final details on Friday like changing out our thermostat to something a little fresher looking and hanging things back on the walls.  I also painted all of my switch plates.  They were an oil rubbed bronze sort of color so I just gave them all a quick paint job with some basic creamy white spray paint.  I didn’t want them to stand out.

I moved some things around a bit.  The yardstick shelves with my non-collection of vintage alarm clocks went into the living room, while the window framed black and white photos came out here.

I moved my aqua McCoy pottery into my pantry and opted to keep these shelves monochromatic like the living room shelves.

A couple of things stayed in the same spots, like my French subway sign scroll and the black suitcases on top of my Specimens cupboard.

So, instead of six weeks it actually took just over 7 months, but I am finally done with my redecorating plan.  It would have been so much easier to just wave a magic wand, if only I had one.

But it feels so good to finally be able to check this last item off the list.  I’m not sure which room I’ll tackle next but I’m sure I won’t be undertaking anymore redecorating projects until 2020.  I have a trip to DisneyWorld with my sister coming up in October and then the holiday season will be here before we know it (I know, scary, right?).  In the meantime, I’m back to furniture painting.  So be sure to stay tuned!

chair no. 18

Published on by Quandie18 Comments

I’m so excited to share my piano room makeover with you guys, but I’m holding out until Wednesday in order to stick to my regularly scheduled room tour series, and because I haven’t quite finished writing that post yet.

But I am going to share just a small portion of the project with you today, the chair that I have paired with my piano.

This chair is obviously not one that came with the piano.  I don’t remember precisely, but I’m sure I bought it at a garage sale.  I love it’s sort of vintage industrial vibe.  You may remember that back when I painted the piano I was on the fence about what to do with the chair.  Initially I was going to leave it unpainted, but I really didn’t like how the wood tone looked with the black piano.  I was reluctant to paint it in a matching black because I thought that would be too matchy-matchy.

Obviously having a seat that matches your piano isn’t really a bad thing, but I wanted to have something unexpected and more unique than your typical matching piano bench.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for an alternative seating option for this spot, but haven’t found one yet.  I was really thinking I’d end up painting this one white and calling it good.  It wasn’t until I had the entire room finished that I decided that black was the right choice after all.

This couldn’t have been a quicker, easier makeover.  I simply sanded the chair very quickly (not thoroughly at all) and then wiped it down with a damp rag.

I used my cheater method to paint the cane seat of the chair.  In other words, I spray painted the cane with matte black primer.  Then, while I was at it, I did the same with the slats on the back.

Once the primer was dry I went over those bits with my final paint.  It doesn’t matter if I didn’t quite get every spot because the black primer makes that fairly unnoticeable.  It’s so much easier to make sure I get into all of the nooks and crannies with spray paint first, especially on that cane.

Next I painted the rest of the wood parts of the chair with Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky, the same color I used on the piano.  I just did one coat.

Since I planned on distressing the chair anyway, I didn’t need perfect coverage.  Plus the black paint over the dark wood covered quite well.

Because I was keeping this chair, I wanted to add a little touch of whimsy with a stenciled number.

What can I say, I love a good number.

I added the same stenciled number to the back of the chair too since the chair is seen from both sides.

I used a new product from Dixie Belle to topcoat this chair.  It’s called Big Mama’s Butta and it’s available in two scents, Orange Grove and Suzanne’s Garden.  Plus you can get it in an unscented version.  It contains all natural hemp seed oil, coconut oil, beeswax, carnauba wax and essential oils.

I would describe this product as a wax meets hemp oil sort of combination.  It has a consistency similar to vaseline, although not quite as soft.  It goes on much more easily than wax, but also leaves more of a greasy feel behind.  Sort of like … well … butta!

Not to worry though, that greasiness goes away as it dries.  Just be sure to wipe away any excess product after applying it.

I’m using the Orange Grove version and I love the smell.  I have heard some say it’s too overpowering, but I don’t think so.  The scent does dissipate over time as well.

Even though I went matchy-matchy with the color, I do think this vintage office chair is a bit unexpected when paired with a piano.  So in the end, I’m quite happy with it and don’t feel like I need to keep searching for an alternative after all.

Thanks to Dixie Belle for providing me with the Midnight Sky paint and the Big Mama’s Butta that I used on this project.  If you’re wondering where to purchase Dixie Belle products you can find their website here.

Be sure to check back on Wednesday to see the full reveal of my piano room makeover!

thankful autumn.

Published on by Quandie28 Comments

I know it’s a bit early to be thinking about Thanksgiving itself, but this year I’m going to take some inspiration from one of Prima Marketing’s newest transfer collections and practice gratitude for the entire fall season.

On Wednesday I posted about the tree that came down in our yard and how thankful we were that nothing else was damaged, no one got hurt, and the entire mess was cleaned up before 9 a.m. by some tree guys that were already in the neighborhood.

Just the other day I mentioned to Mr. Q how blessed I am to have my sister and niece living nearby now.  For those of you who might be new here, my sister got married and moved away to New Jersey when I was 18 years old.  We didn’t live in the same state for over 30 years until she and my niece moved here to Minnesota 4 years ago.

Now I can’t even imagine them not living here.  We have so much fun together.  How did I ever get by without them for so many years?

I regularly give thanks for my neighbor/handyman Ken too.  Never more so than this past week as we’ve been working on a little home improvement project together.  I’m going to share it next Wednesday, so be sure to check back for that.

I also feel incredibly lucky that Prima Marketing chose me to be a member of their design team.

It’s so fun to get a sneak peek at the designs each time they come out with a new release, which brings me to today’s quick and easy project.

I started with a pile of vintage plates and platters.

Then I pulled out one of Prima’s newest transfer collections called Thankful Autumn.  This collection will be available to purchase on September 15.  You can find a retailer near you, or an online source for Prima’s transfers here.

Then I just cut out the various designs and added them to the plates.

A quick q tip for you:  when working with the transfers over glass (or china in this case) be forewarned that they stick like mad to these surfaces.  As soon as that transfer touches the surface, it is stuck there.  So be sure you get your placement right before allowing contact.

I was a little off on this next one.

But the sentiment is still there.  Even if it’s a little wonky, there’s no place like home sweet home.

the q branch.

Published on by Quandie22 Comments

Yesterday my handyman/neighbor Ken and I worked on a project in my piano room that is almost finished, and I’m so excited to share it with you guys.  I’m planning to have that room ready for next Wednesday’s room tour.

In the meantime, before I get to today’s room tour, I have to tell you all that we’re feeling pretty fortunate here at our house.  We had a ferocious (Mr. Q’s word) storm blow through here on Monday night and the maple tree in our front year came down.

I’m a bit bummed because this tree had finally gotten to the right size to block the street light from our bedroom window.  I also really enjoyed listening to birds singing in this tree in the early morning hours.  However it missed our front porch by about a foot, which is incredibly lucky.  It didn’t do any damage at all except to one little corner of my front garden.

As you can see, there are plenty of bigger trees around our house that would have done much more damage if they had come down.

Not only that, but when we got up in the morning there was a tree service company working a block over so I asked them if they’d look at my tree too.  While they were at it, I also asked them to take down the pear tree in my front yard.  It didn’t do well over last winter and was looking pretty sad (you can just see it to the left in the photo above).  I had been thinking about having that one cut down anyway.

They had both trees down, everything hauled away, and my entire yard cleaned up by 9 a.m.

So although our front yard feels a little barren now, and we feel a little more exposed,  we’re definitely going to have fewer leaves to rake this fall.  Overall we are counting our blessings because this certainly could have been much worse.

  OK, on with today’s normally scheduled programming.  We are heading inside to tour a branch of a different kind, the q branch.

This room is directly off the piano room and I have no idea what purpose it was originally meant to serve.  Possibly it was just small sitting room all along, or it could have been a very small main floor bedroom at one time.

We’ve tried a number of different looks for this room.  It once housed my dollhouse, which basically took up the entire space.  Then we turned it into a small dining room, which we never actually used.

Now it is the q branch, or my study, and it gets more use than it ever did before.  I last redecorated this room back in January 2015 (oh my gosh, can you believe that was over four years ago!).  Mr. Q is the one who thought it should be called the q branch.  If you’re not a James Bond fan, the q branch is the fictional research and development segment of the British Secret Service in the Bond movies.  Clearly it was the perfect name for the room where I write this blog.

The biggest change to this room since I originally finished it in 2015 was the addition of my giant English cupboard.  I purchased this via Craigslist back in August 2017.

When I brought it home the inside was completely empty, but handyman/neighbor Ken kitted it out with shelves for me and then I painted the inside.

I was on the fence about whether or not to paint the exterior at the time, but now I’m really glad I didn’t.  I love the patina of the bare wood.

I only recently moved my stack of vintage suitcases into this room (and clearly I need to move my paint brushes up a bit on the wall).

They used to be in the dining room.  I think they fit better here though.  Some of them house my vintage Christmas ornaments, and some of them are just empty.

The opposite side of the room contains my rooster cupboard.  It is painted in Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in a coat of Flow Blue over a coat of Artissimo then finished with her antiquing (dark) wax.

This cupboard is one of my favorite pieces.  I love the chippy paint and that fabulous rooster grain sack that I used to line the glass doors.

The room does feel a bit ‘cupboard heavy’ though, with two cupboards in a fairly small space.  They are really great for storage though.  Some of you ask how I can bear to part with some of my pieces, well, this is one that I just can’t seem to let go of.  I do wish I had a better spot for it though.

My giant ‘q’ still hangs on the wall above my desk.

My sister gave this to me for Christmas several years ago and I gave it a chippy paint job.  I think I’m going to re-do it soon though, I have another idea in mind for it.

I’m realizing now that I could have done a much better job staging this room for these photos.  A professional would have hidden all of those cords coming down behind the desk, and straightened out the lambs wool throw on the chair.  Maybe found a cuter mouse pad too.

But this is real life guys.  This is where I sit in the early morning hours writing my blog posts and editing my photos.  There are cords, and messes, and usually a cup of coffee next to that unattractive mouse pad.

I hope you enjoyed today’s tour.  Be sure to check back next Wednesday to see what Ken and I were up to in the piano room!

the traders market.

Published on by Quandie16 Comments

Happy Labor Day to those of you in the U.S. … or maybe other countries too, I don’t know.  Do you celebrate Labor Day (or some similar holiday) where you are?  This year it truly does feel like the long Labor Day weekend is signaling the end of summer.  We’ve had cool, somewhat cloudy weather all weekend.

But that ended up being perfect weather for the Traders’ Market in Elko, MN.

I had heard about this event over the years but had never actually gone to it.  My friend/picker Sue gave me a heads up that it was taking place this past weekend and it’s only about 30 minutes or so south of the Twin Cities, so my sister and I decided to check it out this past Saturday.

I would say that this event is a scaled down (more manageable?) version of Oronoco Gold Rush.   We were able to see the entire thing in about 3 hours.  There were your typical ‘antique’ dealers with piles of old stuff thrown on tables.  Plus a handful of artisans with things made out of metal or wood.

But there also was a smattering of booths that really appealed to me.

I’m afraid I didn’t get names to go with the vendors who had most of the booths.  I mentioned to my sister that it seemed odd that many booths seemed to be unmanned.  I’m sure the vendors were around somewhere, but they weren’t hovering.  I generally like to ask permission before taking photos, but I wasn’t able to for some of these.

There were a couple of stand out displays, like this one …

I love the way they used the colors of the book jackets to play off the colors on the toy trucks.

These next two photos are also from the same booth.

Gotta love the old books.

This next booth was my favorite of the day though …

Their display was gorgeous.  I loved the creamy white color scheme.

I debated purchasing these grain sack pumpkins, but I rarely decorate much for Fall.

Check out the stems on those pumpkins.  It’s hard to tell in my photo, but they are made out of old tools.  How fun is that?

They had a lot of vintage tarnished silver mixed in with the creamy white too.

This wreath made out of old silver trays reminded me of a similar one that was at the 2011 Bachman’s Holiday Idea house.  That was one of my favorite versions of the Idea House, if you’ve never heard of it or want to see more of it, check out Linda’s tour at Itsy Bits and Pieces here.

If you have a large dining room, this would be an incredible statement piece for the wall.

I did manage to pick up a card and chat with the vendors at this booth and it turned out they were from Urban Revival, a shop in Farmington, MN.  Their shop had been recommended to me by several people in the past but I’d never made a trip out there, so since it was just a little bit out of our way Debbie and I decided to stop off there on the way home.

Farmington was a bit of a ghost town when we got there.

Maybe because it was a holiday weekend and everyone was out of town.  And I suppose those that weren’t out of town were at the Traders’ Market at Elko!

The shop was adorable, I love the way they had everything displayed by color … much like their booth at Elko.

They had a few fun items made with some Funky Junk stencils.

By the way, they also carried both Dixie Belle paint and Miss Mustard Seed milk paint, so for any of you locals on the south side of the cities this is a great spot to pick up those products.

You might be wondering if I purchased anything on Saturday.  I have to confess, being an avid garage saler has pretty much ruined me for these events/shops.  I’m so used to finding things for a couple of dollars, so I cringe at real price tags.  I mainly go to these places to get ideas and to see what other people are doing.

However, I did pick up an adorable set of ‘days of the week’ dish towels at the market.

I had initially looked at a vintage set that was $45, but that was a bit steep for me.  Plus, I buy these towels to use them not to just display them somewhere.  Ultimately they get worn and stained and … well … used.  So I passed on the vintage set and later found this set for $35.  The lovely older woman (gosh, I hope she’s not a blog reader of mine, she was clearly in her 70’s at least, but nobody likes to be called ‘older’) who was selling these made them herself.  Kudos to her for her fine stitching skills!

Before we left the market, Debbie and I posed for a selfie with a new friend.

We had a great time exploring the Traders’ Market and Urban Revival.  The Traders’ Market is held three times a year on the summer holiday weekends; Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day.  We’d definitely go back again next year!

the midas touch.

Published on by Quandie11 Comments

I purchased this mid mod piece at a garage sale earlier this season.

It had been lingering out in the workshop all summer because it’s so huge.  I felt worn out just looking at it.  Plus the top is laminate, so I knew that would require some extra steps.  So I procrastinated a bit.

But much like painting my baby grand piano, I am now wondering what in the world I was waiting for.

In fact, this is the perfect sort of project for a working gal like me.  Each step only took about an hour or so and then needed dry time in between.  Perfect for fitting in after work each evening.  By Friday you suddenly realize that you’ve finished the piece and it didn’t take long at all.

I started by removing the drawer pulls and sanding everything a little more thoroughly than usual.  Then I cleaned the entire piece using TSP substitute.  I was extra diligent with these two steps because I wanted to make sure I would get good adhesion with my paint.  Next I added a coat of Fusion’s Ultra Grip to the laminate top of the piece.  The directions on the Ultra Grip say to let it dry for 12 hours for best results, and since I wanted the best result, that’s what I did.

While that was drying, I painted the drawer fronts and the base of the piece with Fusion’s Park Bench.

The next evening I added a 2nd coat of green on the bottom and the first coat of Park Bench to the top.  I then let that dry for 24 hours before adding a 2nd coat to the top the next evening.

Again, I wanted to allow for maximum durability of the paint over that laminate.  It’s always a good idea to do two light coats of paint rather than one heavy coat, and to make sure the first coat is totally dry before adding the 2nd.

Next I washed the drawer pulls using Dawn dishwashing soap.  Once they were dry I ‘golded’ them up a bit using Prima Marketing re.design’s Decor Wax in Eternal.

To apply the wax to pieces like this I just put on some latex gloves and rub the wax on with my finger.  Somehow I just can’t seem to stop the theme to Goldfinger from running through my head while I’m doing this.  Goldfinger.  He’s the man, the man with the Midas touch.

I like to give the wax a couple of hours to harden and then I buff the pulls lightly with a soft cloth to bring out a little more shine.

The paint totally updates the look of this credenza.  I think it simplifies some of the detail that is going on with those raised panels on the drawer fronts and makes them look less ‘busy’.

You’ll remember the pair of quail I purchased at the Mac-Grove sales last weekend, here they are again with their new paint job.  They tie in nicely with the gold hardware.

I think they look a bit more fresh and updated now.  I used the same RustOleum spray paint in gold that I used on my living room lamp and the hardware on the cobalt blue dresser.  I seem to be getting a ton of use out of that one can of spray paint.

In the past these Park Bench green pieces have sold really well for me so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this trend continues.

Thank you to Prima Marketing for providing the Decor wax and to Fusion for providing the Ultra Grip.

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Decor Wax, check out Prima’s ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy the Fusion products, check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

And finally, if you happen to be local (Twin Cities, MN) and in need of a fabulous green credenza, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page to see if this one is still available.

the photo cottage.

Published on by Quandie27 Comments

Today I’m continuing the Wednesday tour of our home.  Today’s stop, the photo cottage.

This is a little building that’s out in our backyard.  I feel like it would be selling it a bit short to call it a shed, but it’s a little overkill to call it a summer house.  The people who owned the house before we did used it as a playhouse for their kids.

It has undergone several transformations since we’ve lived here.  It went from a storage area to a potting shed to a summer house, all of which were sadly underutilized.

Then in 2014 I decided to put it to use as a photo staging area.  I started by painting the interior walls and ceiling white, then painting a white & grey checkered pattern on the floor.

I have a cupboard out in the photo cottage that came with the house.  It’s a great spot for storing some of my photo props.

Although that chair stayed out there for a little while, I’m actually using it inside the house now.

I did quite a few furniture photo shoots in here originally.

But I really struggled with the lighting, and with getting the white balance right.  At certain times of the day the sun reflected off my red carriage house next door and turned everything pink.

Plus, the photo cottage isn’t really big enough to get shots from every angle.

Also, over time the painted floor started to really show its age.

I realized last summer that I needed to repaint it if I was going to continue to use it for photo shoots.  But time ran out and I never got it done.  Then I planned to paint it this summer.  And guess what?  It’s the end of summer and once again I still haven’t done it.  At this point, I’m giving up trying to accomplish it this year.  Also, I’m just not sure it’s worth the effort for a building that isn’t optimal for photo shoots anyway.

So the truth of the matter is that this little outbuilding has reverted back to its original purpose, as a storage area.  We’ll probably store our deck furniture out there this winter.  Maybe next Spring I can refresh this space once again.  Honestly, I give it a 50/50 chance of getting done.

I’m curious, what would you do with this little cottage if you had it in your backyard?