DuBarry French Provincial Dresser

Hello and happy spring! It's been awhile since I have completed a piece and posted about it. Hope everyone is doing well!

2018 has been an exciting year so far. In the process of selling my condo, moved in with the boyfriend, celebrated the big 3-0 in Clearwater Beach with family and finally finished this huge dresser! This was by far one of my top stories for how I acquired a piece and my heart was racing when I finally picked it up.

So my friend/hair stylist texted me this dresser from Facebook marketplace since it was only listed for $50! She said she was out of town, so wouldn't be getting it, so I messaged the seller. I love anything French Provincial and was so excited to finally find a nine drawer dresser that did not have the ugly whiteish paint from the 70's.  Luckily it was on a Saturday afternoon, so I messaged him and said I could pick up ASAP. He said ok.. and then never responded. Just my luck. So, I sent him a few more messages asking for his address and he finally said someone was coming to look at it and if they didn't take it I would be next. No way could I let this happen. So I messaged him that I would give him $75 for it. He said that was enticing.. but still never gave me his address. So then I offered $100 and he said here is my address, I will make this FCFS, whoever gets to my house the fastest. I am so shocked I did not get pulled over on my way. I got to his house and immediately opened my tailgate and told him let's start loading it in. He was shocked that I didn't want to check it out first. I knew from the pictures it was a good quality piece and I just wanted to get it in my car. Sure enough, as we had it half in my car the other group showed up. Luckily, they were pretty cool about it. And in the end, the seller said he paid $100 for it so he was just happy to get his money back on it. Win win for both of us!

So I took it home and it sat for quite some time. Then I finally got to working on it a month or two ago. My first steps were to get all the hardware off and get it cleaned with some TSP and hot water. I acquired some super cute helpers for this. Here are some pictures:

They also helped me get the first coat of paint on a few of the drawers.

I went with Spun Cotton from Behr using the Behr Premium Plus Ultra line with primer already in the paint. Mixed it up with my Plaster of Paris and water recipe. 3 parts paint, 1 part water and 1 part Plaster of Paris. Here she is after the first coat of white. It's a love/hate relationship with painting pieces white!

The sea of drawers in my workshop.

Starting to come together.

Action shot of me painting, I decided to hand paint this piece instead of spraying it.

Putting the drawers in after sanding, clean up and two wax coats. I used Miss Mustard Seed's clear wax on this piece. 

And here she is all finished up!

Little helper in the picture, think he likes it!

Thanks for reading!

-Shayla 

Whitewash Side Table

Over the weekend, I stopped in o Roost to start looking for some fall items. I saw this beautiful white washed buffet there and immediately wanted to try that technique myself. 

This little side table found it's way into my car at Goodwill one day a few weeks ago. Immediately, I fell in love with it's petite size and all the great detail. Not to mention, it was almost in mint condition. 

It had that bright orange oak look, so I was curious how the whitewash would look with that. I started looking on Pinterest for blogs that go over how to whitewash. I stumbled upon Orphan with Makeup's blog post and started from there. From my coffee table project, I had some left over Velvet Finishes paint in Rococo. I mixed this three parts water and one part paint. 

I started applying it with a brush and then wiping it off with a wet rag. This literally wiped off all the paint. So after that trial and error, I applied it with a paint brush very lightly. One section would dry pretty quickly and I would move onto the next section.

Here is how it looked after one coat. I love how it toned down the bright orange oak color and gave it such a pretty color. Also love how the wood grain still shows through.

Once I brought it upstairs into natural light, I fell in love! 

Now, I am trying to figure out what bigger piece I can try whitewashing on next, stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, hope you are having a great week so far!

-Shayla

Farmhouse Bookshelf

With painting furniture, I tend to look a lot of places for inspiration and ideas. One of those places being Instagram and I found NAK Home pretty early on in my painting hobby. I just loved all the unique pieces she found and her style. She also happens to be one of the sweetest and nicest fellow furniture painters that I have met on there. She would paint some pretty unique bookcases and I loved every single one of them. 

So, for a few years here, I have been on the hunt for one. Not having much luck, mind you. I find mostly pieces here in Wisconsin that are from an entertainment center or meant for a big tube TV. Well my friends, I finally found one! I couldn't believe it when I found it at GW and the price tag was still on there. If there was a prank TV show for furniture finders like myself, I swear I was on it with this piece. For the price and quality of the piece, I was on my furniture high for the rest of the day. Next step was getting it home. I didn't even bother to measure it because I knew I was going to get it home, one way (my SUV) or another (my dad's F150). 

Turns out, it did fit into my SUV, if my front seats are almost all the way forward. We got pretty close on the way home. 

Here is a full view before I did anything:

First, I took off the hardware and the cleaned the entire piece with TSP and some hot water. I was envisioning white for this piece, so I wanted to not have to spray the entire piece with primer. 

I cleaned up the hardware with Bar Keeper's Friend and took a picture this time. Check out this transformation:

This truly amazes me every time. All the tarnish literally just wipes off with a rag and some elbow grease. 

After cleaning, I lightly sanded the bookshelf and then shop-vac'ed it to get the dust off. 

At the ReStore, I found SW Dover White paint in satin, so I decided to mix this up to make some chalk paint for this piece. Think I paid $1 or $2 for an almost full quart of paint. Such a great deal for such an amazing color. I used my HomeRight Finish Max sprayer in my garage to paint.

After the first coat:

One tip for using this sprayer: definitely make sure to do a few test sprays first. Then determine if you need to adjust the amount of paint with the spray control that it is spraying. This will really help you avoid the dreadful drips that magically seem to appear!

Between each coat, I lightly sand with 150-220 grit paper and dust off before the next coat of paint. This will really help you get that smooth finish.

Here it is after about 2.5 coats of paint and some distressing:

I then sprayed on 2 coats of General Finishes HPTC in Satin. I lightly sand after applying this as well. 

Definitely one of my favorite pieces this year!

Thanks so much for reading!

-Shayla

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Chic on a Shoestring

Farmhouse Side Table

You've probably noticed that I haven't posted in a few months on here. 

I have still been finding pieces and projects, but have not had much motivation to actually work on them. For this, I am attributing it to my new real-world job that I started last November. It has certainly been keeping me busy, but for the rest of the year, I am making a dedicated effort to work on projects for the rest of the year. When I was really working on this, I couldn't wait to get out of work to go home to work on this. I missed that little bit of excitement in my nights and now it is back!

Anyways, so with this table, found it as a local Goodwill. Like I do with all my projects, I fall in line with all the details, original hardware and great lines. It was also marked as solid mahogany. It was pretty scratched up, had collected quite a few dust bunnies and looked like some sort of liquid has been dropped on it. 

So to start, I started with my Shop-Vac (Christmas gift from my dad from 2014, thank you Dad!) and go rid of the bunnies and spider webs. Next, I used mixed TSP and hot water to wash it down. I was really hoping this would clean whatever liquid had dropped on this table so I wouldn't get any bleed through in the paint. Then, I lightly sanded with 150 grit sand paper and gave it one final sweep with the Shop-Vac. Here she was before I started painting. 

My eye usually only sees in neutral colors, so of course I wanted to go white for this table. I decided to use Behr's New House White. For my projects, I have been using Behr paint for quite some time. Behr Premium Plus Ultra has always been my preference for the specific product, in hopes that it will really block stains. For this project, I wanted chalk paint so I could distress it. I used the same recipe that I have always used, one part water and one part Plaster of Paris mixed first, then three parts paint. Works like a charm every time.

So I start spraying with my Home Right Finish Max sprayer and get the first coat on. Within a few minutes, I could already see the bleed through [insert sad face here]. From my experience, there are just some stains that come through no matter what. That is when I go to Zinsser Shellac primer in the spray can form. I have used this on multiple projects and it has blocked every single stain, absolutely love it and highly recommend. They occasionally go on sale at Home Depot, so I usually try to get quite a few when they do. 

Then, the table just needed two more coats of paint to get full coverage. Here is a sneak peak after I did some slight distressing:

One part of this table that I did not take pictures of before/during/after that I am sad about is the hardware. It was so tarnished, but had such great character. So one morning as I was getting ready for work, I put the pieces in a bowl and sprayed on the liquid form of Barkeepers Friend. It sat for probably about 20 minutes. Then I washed it all off with a scrubby and couldn't believe how the hardware looked brand new again. Pictures next time for sure. 

Then to seal the table, I sprayed on General Finish HPTC in Satin. Here is the final table, I absolutely love it. Can't wait to start on some more projects again. 

What do you all think? 

Thanks so much for reading, hope everyone is enjoying 2017 so far!

-Shayla

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains