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 

Dark Grey Bassett Dresser

Happy November! Sorry I have been a little MIA, been busy getting ready for the holidays and I took my mom on a trip to Palm Springs, CA. We both had never been to that area of California and I would highly recommend it. We had beautiful weather and spent most of the time at the pool. The nice shuttle driver for the resort was convinced we must not have pools in Wisconsin. Ummmm... we do, but we only get to use them about two months out of the year! We stayed at the Westin Mission Hills and here is a view from there. My favorite picture I took while we were there.

OK, now back to the snow, cold weather and talking about this grey dresser. I had found this on CL quite some time ago. Ok.. like back in March. Ugh that sounds horrible, anyways. I finally got around to it in October. I thought it would be a good candidate to try spraying on since it was small in size and if I ruined it, I wouldn't be heartbroken. So, I took all the drawers out and lightly sanded everything. The color I used for this dresser was a custom mix with Behr's Orion Grey and Downpour. Now that I have been getting more familiar with how certain colors change with other main colors, I have really been enjoying making custom colors. That also means the color is very original then too, which I love. 

I forgot to take a complete before picture, so this is the best that I have. Next I got to spraying. With this, I learned that I definitely need to make some drawer skirts (inpired by The Resplendent Crow). I sprayed two coats of grey and the one coat of General Finishes high performance top coat in matte. 

Here was one of the drawers as it was drying.

Here, I was almost done with it. Just doing some little touch-ups on it. And you can see my other inventory/mess/workshop/garage. See anything you like?

And there she is, all done!

Thanks so much for reading,

Shayla

Linked up to: Thirty Eighth Street | A Stroll Thru Life

Painting with a Sprayer

Well, it finally happened. I bought this sprayer from Amazon a few weeks ago and finally got it out and painted this past weekend. It is amazing, I wish I would have done it so much sooner. My favorite furniture bloggers all spray their furniture for the most part and I finally decided to get it a try myself. 

I started testing it out first with cardboard and water to get a feel for how it sprayed and the different settings. 

Once I thought I had a feel for it, I thinned out some eggshell black Behr paint I have had for awhile from the Home Depot oops rack. It suggested to thin it down about 10-15%. with water. Once I had the paint thinned down, I poured it in the container and got my garage and the piece ready.

I was so nervous at first and I don't know why. Once the first coat was finished I waited a bit to see how it started drying and it looked amazing. It was so great not to see any brush strokes and I think it took me about 8 minutes to get the first coat on. 

I let this dry overnight and then did another coat early on Sunday and then staged it late in the afternoon while the sun was still out for pictures. I am still learning, but overall the first piece went well. I also did a chair since I had mixed way too much black paint, The set/up and cleaning take the most time, I am still trying to master the cleaning process. I thought I had it all cleaned out and then some black paint still dripped out of it an hour later. And I even bought the cleaner that attaches to the sink/hose as well. Hmmmm. Anyways, I would highly recommend this product. It saves time and creates a flawless finish on furniture. 

Anyone have any tips for cleaning?

Thanks for reading,

Shayla

Linked up to: AKA Design | 58 Water Street | A Stroll Thru Life

Grey Bamboo Desk

It has been almost a year since I picked up the desk that started my passion to give old furniture new life. As I reflect on the last year and look at old pictures and pieces, it's interesting to see how my pieces and style have changed over time. There are two major points that I have learned over the last year that I think would be helpful to anyone looking to refinish furniture:

1. Be very selective with your pieces. I used to buy anything just because it was a good deal when I first started. This led to two problems. One, it loaded up my one car garage because I was buying faster than I was finishing/selling and I lost the ability to work in my garage. And 2. my boyfriend thought I was crazy because it started overflowing into my condo. Then, I got sick of items and lost interest in them over time because I realized they weren't that great of quality from the start. That led to a few (about 7) trips to Goodwill to give back a lot of what I had bought from them. Good thing they didn't have to re-tag everything.

2. My style and quality has changed. When I first started, I just loved the idea of fixing something up and reselling it. Now I spend more time really working on pieces (cleaning them, fixing up dents, scratches, taking off veneer, etc). I feel better when I finish the pieces. I also used to love to refinish big dressers, but I just don't have the manpower to do that and I was killing the interior of my car doing that as well. So now my focus is on smaller pieces that I can lift myself, unless I get a custom order.

Anyways, onto my next piece. I have found it interesting that the furniture bloggers I follow and love from the west coast (The Weathered Door, Phoenix Restoration and NAK Home) really find a lot of different styles of furniture compared to what I find. One for example, would be bamboo style furniture. I have rarely come across any here in Wisconsin in my year of doing this, but one day (probably four months ago) I came across this amazing antique bamboo desk at a local Goodwill.

It sat in my garage for awhile (drawer included), and I recently brought it up to work on it. When I took the drawer out, I tried looking for a label or date since this piece was so unique compared to the usual furniture I find. On the bottom of the drawer, I found this inspection stamp from 1916. I couldn't believe it, this piece of furniture it almost 100 years old. It is always amazing to me to think about where these old pieces have been and the story they carry with them.

For this piece, I was inspired The Weathered Door with her amazing bamboo nightstand she recently finished. Lately, the cooling Wisconsin weather has me liking the greys  lately and finally off my white kick from summer. I am trying to be good and use up most of my paint before I go and buy more (I have a lot). When I was going through my Behr deck of colors, I came across Double Click and tried to match it. I made chalk paint with Plaster of Paris and water. I used 5 parts Down Pour from Behr and 1 part Seagull Grey from Behr, all from previous projects.

Then I started hand painting. It took a decent amount of time to make sure the bamboo shapes of the desk were fully covered with paint. I did about two/three coats on the desk. Here is how it looked after one coat.

When I was done painting, I wanted to add something to the desk to emphasize the ornate trim the desk came with. I bought a gold paint marker from Jo-Ann's and used it to fill it in. I then used General Finishes high performance top coat in Flat (a very nice birthday gift from my furniture friend Kim back in April). Here is how she looked when she was done.

What do you all think?

Thanks for reading, hope everyone is having a great week!

-Shayla

PS - I finally bought a paint sprayer! Can't wait to try it and give you all a review soon.

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Thirty Eighth Street | The Painted Drawer | The Crowned Goat | A Stroll Thru Life | Chic on a Shoestring

Grey Cabinet

Meet my favorite little cabinet! I picked up this beauty from St Vincent De Paul in Milwaukee. When I saw it, I instantly fell in love with all the lines and detail on it, as well as how narrow it is. Then, I opened it and it has this amazing shelf inside. Here is a picture of it in the parking lot after I bought it. Love love love the cute little legs on it as well.

I have been having somewhat of a color block lately, or maybe just a block in general in life. I just feel like summer has been so busy with things other than furniture, that I lost my creative vision when I look at an old piece of furniture and what color I should go with. Of course my first vision was a wood top. So I sanded down the wood top and did one coat of dark walnut stain. I wasn't super thrilled with it and then I got the vision to just paint all of it and bring out the great detail.

I love to post pictures on my Instagram and I generally tag the company of products I use. General Finishes, creator of the beloved Java gel stain, has featured a few of my pieces on their IG page. Every time they do, I tend to get a few new followers, that I love. I posted this picture asking for some color advice and after a few followers gave me ideas, I decided to go grey with it.

One of my absolute favorite furniture pages on IG is nakhome out of California. She does absolutely beautiful work. She mixes a lot of custom colors for her furniture, so I decided to give this a try for this cabinet with some grey paint I have left over from Behr. I mixed 2 parts Flint Smoke and one part Orion Grey. Then I added Plaster of Paris and water to make it chalk paint.

For cabinets, I take the hinges off so I can fully paint everything. I also tried out Frog Tape for the bottom of the cabinet to get a straight line. It helped tremendously. 

This cabinet took about 2.5 coats of paint and then I sealed it in furniture wax. Once I had it completed and staged, I fell in love with it. Now I just have to find a good spot for it in my furniture loaded condo.

Now, as a little side note, other than just Instagram, I also love to look at and read other blogs to get some inspiration ideas as well. Since I have started blogging, it has been so fun to connect with other bloggers with similar interests. These are a few of my favorites that I would highly recommend you read as well.

The Weathered Door | Phoenix Restoration | The Crowned Goat | Love Grows Wild

Linked up to: AKA Design | Thirty Eighth Street | A Stroll Thru Life | The Painted Drawer | The Curators Collection | Huckleberry Love

Thanks for reading!
Shayla

Table & Chairs Round Two

When I first moved into my condo, I never would have thought about re-doing a dining room set for myself. That changed quickly after I did my first desk for my place and found this love for furniture. I have a small dining room area that has become even smaller due to my buffet/dresser that I am determined to keep even though I do not have a ton of room for it. That buffet/dresser will be another blog post. Here is a little preview of it.

My first goal for this table set was ideally to find an entire set for a good price. I had been looking for about 2-3 months and was not finding anything I liked. Then, one day my furniture friend Kim had texted me that she was at Goodwill and they had a set of four matching chairs. That was a start. I was having a hard time finding a good set of four all matching chairs. Here they are!

I loved all the great character they had and wide seat base. Then my next step was the table. I did a little searching and found one from a friend that she had already painted, but never completed. It was a very cute oak pedestal table that would fit great in my little dining room. I didn't take too many pictures. but I basically sanded off all the paint for the top wood part in anticipation of Java gel stain, my favorite! I used my Ryobi orbital sander a lot. Here it is after one coat. 

I was hoping it would take darker, so I did two coats. It just was not getting as dark as I hoped, but I knew the polyurethane would darken it a bit as well. It all just really depends on the wood itself for exactly how dark it will go with Java gel stain. I did three coats in my favorite polyurethane in gloss to protect the table. I then had this fabric from Jo Ann's for the chairs. I hand painted the base of the table and all the chairs. Still need to get that sprayer, the chairs just take so much time and have so much detail. I used my favorite charcoal grey color I have found, orion grey by Behr. I used the same grey & fabric in this desk here. I absolutely love the combination.

I had used this table once for Easter and then determined it would be nice to have the ability to fit six people. So pretty soon after I finished this table, I was on the hunt for a similar table with the ability to have a leaf. You can see how packed it was with all the chairs in my tight little dining room space here. 

I just finally finished up the final touches on this table and sold it this past weekend. I did find an amazing table with leaf and a set of six matching chairs with two captain chairs that I will be redoing for myself very soon. Stay tuned for that posted!

Thanks so much for reading!

Shayla

Linked up to: House of Hipsters | Huckleberry Love | Sand & Sissal | The Crowned Goat