q is for quandie

Remember this dresser that I painted last fall?

It simply wasn’t selling.

I’m not sure if it was the color, or the floral transfer, or the mirror, or simply a combination of all three.  But after six months of watching it gather dust in my dining room I was ready to give it a makeover.

I mentioned it in front of my niece one day and she said ‘nooooo … I love that one.’  Then she asked if I’d be willing to trade her for the dresser that I painted for her a couple of years ago instead.

I thought about it for about a second and then said ‘sure, why not?’  As much as my niece loved the Miss Mustard Seed’s Luckett’s Green paired with purple flowers, I didn’t think that combo would be a big seller in my market at large.  But I was going to be repainting a piece either way, so why not repaint this one?

So we traded.

The teal blue dresser went to my niece’s house, and the green one came home with me.  To prep this piece for a fresh paint job I sanded it fairly heavily to make sure I’d get good adhesion.  Then I cleaned it and painted it with two coats of Fusion’s Park Bench.

I’ve had great success selling mid-mod pieces painted in this color.  Although this dresser isn’t classically mid-century modern, I knew I could pump up the modern quotient a bit with new hardware.

These knobs are all from Hobby Lobby.  I’ve used them before on pieces painted in this gorgeous shade of green, so I knew they’d be perfect on this one too.

I staged this piece super simply with some postcards that I bought in Montenegro when we were there last November, my green Collier’s World Atlas and some vibrant impatiens.

Now don’t tell my niece, but I think I just may have gotten the better end of the bargain in this trade.

What do you think?

So, here’s the deal.  As I’ve mentioned many times, my blog is not monetized.  I prefer not having any ads to bog you guys down.  To fund the blog (ie. my hobby), I sell my furniture.  My main goal is to not lose money, and my secondary goal is to have enough left over to fund our travel habit too.

But that means, I have to actually be able to sell my furniture.

That can sometimes be the tricky part.

I frequently find myself torn between painting something in a unique, artistic way, perhaps using a new technique or product that I can share here on the blog, or painting something in a way that I know will sell.

The first option is always more fun.  Who doesn’t love getting creative and trying new things, especially pretty paint colors?

Or trying a new technique with a transfer?

I also think sharing a new color or technique here makes my blog more interesting and gives you guys a reason to keep following me.

The problem is that these pieces tend to take much longer to sell for me.  I’m in the mid-west.  In general people here tend to be a bit on the conservative side when it comes to decorating.  They don’t embrace loud florals, bright colors or lots of frou frou details.

Note that I specified ‘in general’.  I’m not saying that nobody here likes those things, just that the market for those things is smaller and thus they take longer to sell.  Maybe that’s true everywhere, I don’t know.  If you’re in another part of the country, or even the world, you tell me.  What sells in your market?

I have to admit, I was relieved when my latest milk painted washstand sold right away because no matter how much I loved it, I was worried the color was going to make it a tough sell.

Of course there are always exceptions to every rule.  The mid-mod pieces I’ve painted in Fusion’s Park Bench have all sold like hotcakes too.

However, typically it’s the pieces in neutral colors that sell quickly for me.  In other words, white …

Or black.

Both of which tend to sell almost instantly.

I also have pretty good luck with dark grey …

And navy …

So I’m always trying to finding some balance between getting a little more daring with my color choices or new techniques and falling back on tried and true styles and colors.

I had a real dry spell over the past six months when it comes to selling furniture.  Things are starting to pick up, but are still somewhat slow.  As a result, I’m feeling the need to go back to my time tested neutrals.  Hence the Laundry Co dresser painted in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth from a week or two ago.

Later this week I’ll be sharing another piece painted in the Park Bench green, and then the following week I’ve got some more Dixie Belle Midnight Sky black pieces.  I hope I won’t be boring you guys with repeats and neutrals, but I’m feeling the need to stick with what sells for a bit.  Here’s hoping you’ll stay tuned!

Recently my bff, Vonda, and her husband downsized.  They moved out of their huge four bedroom home into a two-bedroom place.  As a result, they had to downsize their belongings as well.  I’d always admired this vintage dresser, so when Vonda offered it to me I jumped on it.

I have to say, that is a terrible ‘before’ photo.  I don’t always follow my own outside photo taking rules when doing a ‘before’ photo, and this one is particularly bad.  You can barely tell that the dresser was green.  Well, mostly green with some drips of white here and there.  I thought the floral decals were pretty sweet though.  Funny enough, it wasn’t until I sanded them down a little that I realized the decals were covering up key holes as well as extra holes where there were once drawer pulls with two screws instead of knobs.  Now that I know that, when I look at the ‘before’ photo I think ‘duh, of course they were.’  Just look back at that photo, see what I mean?

Anyway, when I brought this piece home the top of the dresser had split at a seam and a couple of the drawers had seen better days.  My handyman Ken made quick work of repairing those problems.  He removed the top, glued it back together and then re-attached it with dowel pins which makes the entire piece much sturdier.

He also re-glued both of the bottom drawers.

Once that was done, I sanded the piece well and then painted it with two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, which is a warm, creamy white.  When the paint was dry, I sanded the edges to distress.  I wanted to allow some of that pale green to show through, as well as some of the light blue that was under the green.

There’s nothing like layers of color to lend a sense of age to a piece.  In this case, the layers … and the age … are genuine.

Next I added a coat of Dixie Belle’s flat clear coat.  Once that was dry, I added Prima Marketing’s Laundry transfer.

Once that was in place I felt like the bottom half of the dresser looked really plain, so I pulled out a leftover bit from the Seeds transfer and added that to the bottom drawer.

Over time this dresser had gotten a little beat up, been a bit neglected and thus had lost some of its original charm, but I think I brought it back (what do you say bff?).

It would be a great piece for a laundry room (if you are blessed enough to have a size-able laundry room that is pretty, mine is a dingy corner in my cellar-like basement).

But it could just as easily work in a bedroom.

Or really anywhere!

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

If you’re wondering where to buy the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth or flat clear coat, 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 an adorable cottage style dresser, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details.

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles recently about the mental health benefits of spending a little time communing with nature.  I don’t know about you, but I’m 100% on board with that idea.  I always feel more centered after a walk in the woods.

Mr. Q and I are lucky to have a beautiful wooded park just a few blocks away.  It is 200+ wooded acres and has a couple of miles of walking trails.  We try to get out there at least 4 or 5 days per week.  We made a special effort to stick with it this past winter and with the help of some good long underwear, an ankle length down coat and some great Sorel boots I made it through most of the winter (until I fell on the ice in February and we decided we should wait until the ice on the paths melted to return).

I have to say it is kind of magical to be out there when there is a full moon and some snow cover to reflect it.  Our park has some Great Horned Owls in residence and we would hear them calling to each other while we walked.  One evening we even saw one perched in a tree just over our heads.

I wish I could claim taking that photo, but no, I grabbed it from allaboutbirds.org.  Plus it was dark and we couldn’t really see him in much detail, but I’m sure he looked pretty much like that 😉

I will admit that it’s much easier to get out walking now that the days are getting longer, the snow is gone and I don’t have to wear four layers of clothing though!

At this point you might be wondering how I’m going to segue this into a post about painted furniture.

Well, the Fusion paint I used on today’s piece is in a color called Lichen and the Prima Marketing transfer is called Fern Woods.  So it definitely has a woodsy theme.

Here is the ‘before’ version of the table.

It’s just your basic 60’s end table.

It’s another piece that I picked up last summer at a garage sale on the cheap.  After I brought it out to work on it, I decided that the finish on it was really in pretty good shape and it might be fun to leave the tops alone and just paint the rest.

So I sanded the sides and legs lightly, cleaned them and then painted them with two coats of Lichen.

Then I pulled out the Fern Woods transfer.

You could use this transfer as one solid design, but instead I randomly cut out various leaves and applied them to the table wherever I thought they looked best.

I also swapped out the knob on the little drawer.  The original knob seemed a bit small to me.  I happened to have a wood knob that matched the table top perfectly.

I think the size works much better than that dinky original knob.

I couldn’t help nestling the table in my blooming Scilla to get some woodsy looking photos.  The Scilla is always the first thing up and blooming in my garden in the spring.  I have the white version shown above, and also the gorgeous deep blue version that you saw last week in my post about white washed clay pots.

Anyway, I think this is the perfect little side table for someone’s cabin.  It makes a great spot to stash your bird watching paraphernalia.

What do you think?

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

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

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

The craziest thing happened last week when I went to pick up some furniture I was purchasing via Facebook Marketplace.

When Mr. Q and I arrived at the seller’s home I was mainly focused on taking a look at the pieces I was planning to buy.  The seller led us back to the bedroom and I looked over the set, which included a gorgeous spoon carved bed, washstand and dresser.  I checked the pieces over, handed the seller my cash, and then Mr. Q and I each grabbed an end of the headboard and headed back out to our van.

It wasn’t until we were almost out the door that I looked over, and what did I see?

Yep, that bench!  I swear my brain took a couple of seconds to register what I was looking at.  It was kind of surreal seeing a piece of my furniture in an expected place.  Then I thought, ‘no wonder this woman seems familiar!’  I’d sold her this bench last summer.

How crazy!  What are the chances?  Sometimes it really is just a small world.

I was happy to hear that she still loves the bench, she gets tons of compliments on it and all of her friends want to know where she got it.

The rest of the story is that after I got over my amazement at seeing one of my own pieces, Mr. Q and I finished hauling the headboard out to our van only to find that it wouldn’t fit.  It was just a couple of inches too big.  Argh.  So we hauled it back into the seller’s house and made arrangements to come back another day with a truck to get the headboard.  We were able to load up the washstand, dresser and foot board though.

All of this by way of saying that I never got an opportunity to take a ‘before’ photo of the complete set, but here is the first piece I worked on …

I love these washstand sized pieces, they are perfect to use as a bedside table, and the spoon carving on this one is totally charming.  See how each bunch of flowers has one stem that is broken?  That’s why I’m calling this the broken flower washstand.

I did my usual prep, a light sanding followed by a good cleaning.  As soon as I touched the sandpaper to this finish I could see that it was very old and dried out.  Sometimes when you start sanding an old finish like this it simply turns to dust at the lightest touch.

Although I immediately knew I wanted to use milk paint on this piece, I debated the color.  I really wanted to try a gorgeous custom mixed color that Jane Dawson recently shared on the Move Mountains with Miss Mustard Seed’s Milkpaint Facebook page.  Part of me felt like I should stick with a more neutral color that would help the piece sell faster though.

But I threw caution to the wind and used Jane’s recipe, 1/3 Boxwood to 2/3 Kitchen Scale.

As is often the case, the color looks entirely different on my piece than it did on Jane’s piece.  I think there are a few reasons for that.  For one thing, the beginning color of my piece was probably a bit different.  Second, I waxed my piece and Jane used a poly top coat on her piece.  Different topcoats can really change the color of milk paint.  And finally, as per the MMS website, there can be as much as a 15% variation in the color of milk paint from one batch to the next. If you are expecting to get exactly the same look every time with a particular color you might be surprised by this, so fair warning.

In the end, even though this wasn’t exactly the color I was going for, I think my piece turned out beautifully.  I got just the right amount of chipping.  Not too much, not too little.

I had mixed up 1/4 c of Boxwood, 1/2 c of Kitchen Scale and 3/4 c of water to make my paint. In case you’re wondering approximately how far 1.5 cups of mixed milk paint will go, I did two coats on this piece and had about 1/3 c of mixed paint left over.

I painted this bucket with some of the extra paint and then added a transfer from the Prima Marketing Everyday Farmhouse set.

There is a city near me that has a Trash to Treasure clean up each spring.  Residents put anything they want to get rid of at the curb and people can drive around and snatch things up.  This year it was slim pickings, but I did get both the bucket and the chair that it’s sitting on.

I love the sort of scalloped edge on the piece at the back of the washstand.

I always end up calling that piece a ‘back splash’ although I don’t know if that’s the right name for it.  I suppose since this was originally a washstand with a bowl and pitcher for washing on it, maybe back splash is the right name.

All three of the pieces in this set have the most fabulous metal casters.

I scrubbed the drawer pulls with soap and a toothbrush to clean them up a bit and then put them back on.

I didn’t polish them with metal cleaner because I wanted to retain that aged patina.

I lined drawers of the washstand with some really pretty wrapping paper that I picked up last year at a shop in St. Paul.

I forgot to mention that I finished this piece with Miss Mustard Seed’s clear furniture wax.  The thing about spoon carving is that it tends to create drips.  Paint or a more liquid topcoat like the MMS Tough Coat pools in the carved areas and then drips down after you’ve walked away.  Since I struggle with drips anyway, I decided wax was a better bet for me on this piece.

So.  There you have it.  The broken flower washstand painted in a color I think I’ll call Dawson Green.  Or should it be Dawson Blue?  What do you think?

Thank you to Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint for providing the paint and wax, and to Prima Marketing for providing the transfer for the bucket.

If you’re wondering where to purchase the Prima Marketing re.design Everyday Farmhouse transfers, check out their ‘where to buy’ page.

If you’re wondering where to buy Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint or wax, here is where you can ‘buy online.’

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