A Not So "Easy" Chair

Have you ever bought a piece that you thought would be a quick easy flip, only to find you were so, so wrong?  This chair had a great finish, and seemed to be pretty sturdy except for maybe needing a couple of new corner blocks.  I figured after the corner blocks were fixed all I would need to do was apply a coat of Howard's Restor-a-Finish and throw some new fabric on the seat. Ha!  I walked into the shop to find this:

Hubby wasn't to happy, he said every piece was loose and needed re-glued, so my easy flip turned into a royal pain.  The finish got ruined in the process of re-gluing.  The beautiful detail on the back is what drew me to it in the first place, but that and the spindles would have stopped me in my tracks if I knew that I would have to refinish it.

 

Stripping and sanding all that detail almost had me wanting to throw it in the burn pile.  Oh well, it's done and I think it turned out nice, what do you think?

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From Big Bird to Chicken Wire

Have you ever seen a piece at a garage sale and knew exactly what it would look like when you were done with it?  This was my ah ha piece.

Saving an Empire

My sister-in-law traded me an empire dresser for revamping a couple things for her.  I've seen quite a few painted empires that turned out beautiful, but I like to restore pieces if they warrant it.  This is how it turned out.

Sleek Little Cabinet

I picked up this little cabinet at our local thrift store.  Someone had done a lot of work on it in the '80s, but it really needed some work to bring it into this century.

Sweet Waterfall Style Bedroom Set

Last summer I found this cute bedroom set for $40 at a garage sale.  Well I just couldn't pass that up!

It's a waterfall style with these great handles.  My husband says they look like Poirot's mustache.  The only problem with it is that the bed is a full, and it was this ugly 1980's blond wood.

Painters Prison Vanity

Have you ever bought a piece that you thought would be an easy turn around, but found out it was a disaster?  That's what happened with this vanity.  

Re-vamped Stereo Bar

Boy it's been a long time since I posted anything!  I guess with the holidays, and all of the pieces I've been working on, blogging just got left behind.  I found this stereo last summer at an estate sale.  Now I know that some people like to hit up sales the very first thing on the first day to get the best stuff.  I'm more of of the type that gets there later in the afternoon of the last day to get the best bargains.  This stereo was one of those late in the game purchases and only cost me $15.  I knew right away that it would be a great bar, and a good puzzle for my husband to work on this winter.  

Mid-Century Beauty

I LOVE mid-century modern furniture.  It doesn't fit in my decorating scheme at home, so that is why I love revamping different pieces to sell.

Chick in Chicagoland

I haven't posted anything for a long time because I spent three weeks in Chicago with these beautiful ladies; my daughter and granddaughters.  They just transferred to Chicago this summer, barely got moved in, and my son-in-law had to leave for training for a month.  It was great to just hang out, shop (a lot!), eat great food and explore new places with my daughter.  Of course there was some junking, and revamping going on too.

Fancy Farm Girls 2014

I can't believe it's been almost a month since the Fancy Farm Girls show in Moses Lake WA.  It was so much fun getting ready for it, setting it all up, and enjoying the time with family.  

There were four couples involved in our space, my husband and I, my sister & brother-in-law, my brother and sister-in-law, and my nephew and his wife.  Three out of the four couples did great, me not so much.  I thought I had a great mix of stuff, but the things I thought would fly out the door ended up coming home with me, and some things I just threw in on a lark sold.  Go figure!  Oh well, I had a great time and am already stockpiling stuff for next year.

 

I think it was actually a blessing in disguise that I came home with a lot of pieces.  I will be so busy with my daughter & her family coming to stay for three weeks, and having 50 people camping for our Christmas in July weekend, that I really don't have time to work on furniture.  

Thank you Shannon for a great show.  Can't wait for next year!

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Rustic Fancy Farm Girls

One week and counting for the Fancy Farm Girls Vintage Market!!!!!!!!  My last post showed some things that will be in our Shabby French section, this time I thought I'd show you a few things that will be in our rustic section.

Sorry about the lighting but the sun was out and we actually hit 70 this week so I just had to do an outdoor shot.  As I said in my last post, there will be four of us (plus our spouses) representing Paris Antiques at the show.  Our space is going to be 30x12 which we thought might be too big until we all started getting our stuff ready.  We're doing three different sections; garden, manly/rustic, and shabby French.  I think I've had the most fun with the rustic stuff, maybe because it's not really my norm.  See that wonderfully rusty metal in the back?  I found it last year for $3 at a yard sale.  My husband welded some of the spare pieces on the upright one, but other than that they are just like I bought them.  Won't they be great in a garden?
I had fun with the two tool boxes and the chair experimenting with vinegar stain.  If you've never done this you should try it.  Just take a piece of steel wool and soak it in some white vinegar over night, then use the vinegar to splash (yep no need to be neat with this) on some bare wood.  It will deepen and stain differently on each piece, but generally it makes them look rustically aged.  One bonus with the covered tool box was that the vinegar took away the musty, moldy smell.  I splashed on a wood preservative over the stain on the chair to help protect it outside. 
The upholstery on the chair and footstool are coffee sacks my nephew picked up for me from his roaster.  These are great except for the mess of burlap all over when you are done.

Oh, I'm getting so anxious for the show.  Please stop by if you are in Moses Lake WA. May 10th.  We'll see you at the fairgrounds.
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Hand-Me-Downs & Fancy Farm Girl

In just a little less then two weeks I will be having a blast as part of the Fancy Farm Girl Vintage Market in Moses Lake WA May 10th.  My sister, brother, nephew, all of their spouses, and myself will be showing as Paris Antiques.  We've all been working like crazy to get ready.  This is a brand new show and we're not sure what to expect, so we are doing three separate looks.  These pieces will go in our shabby French side, there will also be a garden section and a man cave/rusty goodness section.

The three main pieces in this picture were all given to me by different family members.  I really want to thank all of them for not only these, but all of the great stuff they have given me to revamp and sell.  It is so nice to be given something that someone you know once enjoyed, and be able to make it into something different for someone else to like for awhile.  

I don't have a before picture of the bench, it was a dark veneer with a cream seat. My brother-in-law said he was tired of putting it back together and gave it to me.  A little gluing, wood filler, paint and upholstery and voila!  The chair was my brother and sister-in-law's, here is the before:

The bones were really good, but the upholstery was shot, and a little update wouldn't hurt.  It took me two days to pull off the old upholstery, with a few choice words along the way.   Have I said yet how much I hate upholstering?  It is really not my niche.  I even have a hard time with a simple dining chair seat.  Well, next was painting.  I had bought a bunch of Rust-oleum universal that I didn't use on another project.  This paint should stick to anything so I thought it would be good for this.  Well, the first coat went on great, but when I sprayed on the second coat a few days later it started to alligator and bubble.  A few more choice words and I was just about ready to give up.  Thank goodness for Mr. in the styx!   He started sanding back everything that had bubbled, and was about to re-spray it, when he showed me.  It looked great!  I couldn't have distressed it that well.  So a little polyurathane, a few days of upholstering and voila 2! 

The last piece in the picture is the plant stand.  It was a little wobbly but it just needed tightened up and voila 3!  This last piece came from my husband's brother and his wife.  They gave us so much stuff when they remodeled their family room, I can't thank them enough.
If you are anywhere around Moses Lake on the 10th of May, stop by and have a great time at the Fancy Farm Girls Vintage Market.
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Fold Over Table & A Lesson in Resin

 "What is a fold over table?" you might ask.  Well I didn't know either until I came across this little gem.  I picked it up at a garage sale for $10.  I thought it was a great deal, that is until I went to refinish it.  A fold over table is a table that can be converted to either a coffee table or a dining table by this ingenious mechanism.  You just pull it up, slide it over, and fold over the top.  Pretty cool huh?

   

 

 Then the headache started.  I thought I would just refinish the top on this and then use some Howard's Restore a Finish on the base.  So on a nice hot day last summer my husband removed the top and I slathered on some heavy duty stripper to it.  I let the stripper work it's magic for 15min. and tested it. Nothing!  So I left it on for another 15min.  Still Nothing!  I tried a different stripper. STILL NOTHING!  When I say nothing, I mean it didn't even faze it.  Then my husband took over.  He started with the quarter sander.  Nope nada.  Then he got out the belt sander.  This finally started taking off some stuff. We finally figured out that the finish was probably resin. I forgot to say that the reason the top needed redone was because the finish was all cracked and alligatored.  So after days of sanding and a few heavy duty sanding belts we were finally down to veneer.  Yep, this beautiful wood was veneer over press board.  By this time neither of us wanted to look at it for awhile, so off to the storage shed until winter.

Fast forward to February - After two wonderful weeks in Maui, and with the island attitude of "no worries" still in my heart, I decided to take on this beast again.  Now I know I should have just used some ASCP to paint it, but I wanted to use up some of my old paint.  So I primed it with some Zinsser, custom mixed some dark grey latex, mixed in my homemade chalk solution and painted away.  Three coats later, a little Martha Stewart coffee glaze and some polyurethane and it was ready to put back together.  My husband rebuilt the soss  hinges that hold the two pieces together because these are really expensive and hard to find.  I also painted two chairs I found to match and used fabric from an old pillow to cover the seats (you can see the remaining pillows on the sofa).  

So here it is, both down as a coffee table, and lifted as a dining table.  Great thing is that it sold in a few weeks and now I don't have to think about it anymore!

 

 

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Our Playroom

Our shop is where my husband and I hang out and play.  We play at fixing and revamping furniture, creating stuff and things, and working on our cars (OK the last is really "Mr. in the Styx's" thing).  We just got done adding some decorations to it, totally my husband's idea, so I thought it would be a good time to show it off.

Revamped Bookcase for a New Home

My sister and brother-in-law just moved into their brand new house.  It is beautiful and just right for them.  They downsized from a four story home to a rancher, so they needed to also downsize their furniture.  This bookcase caused a little bit of contention.  He said is was a piece of junk (and should just give it to me to revamp & sell), she loved it and new just where it would fit in the new house.  Well you know who won this one, of course.  I held on to it through the summer until she decided how she wanted it refinished.  Her new decor is leaning toward the peacock blue & green tones, and she also has a large brown leather sectional.  She wanted this painted an aqua or teal to go with everything.  I suggested that we leave the gorgeous front pieces and the top stained to tie in with the couch.  I didn't get the before shot, but here is some during pics.

Halloween Table

Happy Halloween!  

I'm already into my first big bag of candy and am sure I will need to get a second before the 31st.  Of course Halloween is just an excuse to have candy around the house since we don't get any trick-or-treaters up here in the styxs. 

 

A couple of months ago I revamped a great mid-century modern table, you can see it here two very different tables.  I mixed up some homemade chalk paint in Behr's "glowing firelight" and finished it with a satin poly.  My husband thought I was nuts and didn't think it would sell.  Boy was he wrong!  Not only did it sell fast, but I had quite a few people in afterward wanting to buy it, so I new I had to find another MCM table to paint orange.  I picked up this little cutie at a garage sale for cheap.  Sorry, I didn't get any before pictures, but the table tops were in that 60's veneer that looked more like wood grained contact paper, and the legs and spacers were pretty scratched up.  I started sanding it and realized the legs and spacers weren't veneered and the wood was pretty cool, so I refinished them with Minwax Jacobean.  I primed and painted the tops and then finished the whole thing with a gloss polyurethane.  I don't usually use a gloss finish, but everyone loved the finish of the other table even though the shine was the glass tops.  So what do you think?  Sorry about the fuzzy picture, you're probably wondering what the little sign says.  It says "You say I'm a witch like it's a bad thing".  Cute huh.

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Wood Pilates and a Desk

Wood Pilates?  I'll get to that, but first let me show you my little desk.  Last February I revamped this desk chair that you can see here the rusty leopard.  I brought it in to sell and it is still sitting there, so I thought maybe if I could bundle it with a desk it might go.  I found the desk at a garage sale for $10.  It needed some re-gluing, one of the drawer spacers was completely off, and it was missing a pull.  It had a kind of weird paint-stain job on it that needed redone (sorry no before pictures).  I thought maybe I would paint everything but the top, but my hubby got to the sander before me and ground down a little to much on top.  What he did reveal were these great drawers.  See the dark detailing and distressing, I didn't do any of that, it was already there.  All we did on the drawers was wipe them down with about 3 coats of MMS hemp oil.  The rest of the base I finished the same as the chair with a soft black paint, and Martha Stewart dark coffee glaze.  Oh yeah, I also put some casters on the chair (probably why it hasn't sold).  I think they look pretty good together, I have them marked as a set, not sold separately so hopefully someone will love them.

Now for the wood Pilates:

Who needs a gym when God gives you all this!

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Bunny's Bling

My mother-in-law Bunny, is in an assisted living facility awaiting a hip replacement.  The public areas are beautifully decorated but they leave the residents rooms pretty simple so they can add their own touch.  Bunny had already changed out the bedding to a happier floral print, and added a few other bright accessories.  Her space is pretty cramped, and there has to be room to move around with a wheel chair, so she was using the bed table for all of her makeup which gave her no room for her kindle or snacks or anything else.   My sister-in-law Carmen found this school desk that she thought would work in the corner, the only problem was that it was really ugly.

Little White Cabinet

I almost drove by the yard sale where I found this great little cabinet.  It looked like it was going to be one of those sales that is all toys and clothes, which is great for moms with young children, but not usually so good for a picker like me.  I'm not sure what it was supposed to be used for originally, the guy I bought it from said his mom used it in Japan as her sewing cabinet, but I thought it would make a great little kitchen cabinet. 

Reading to Olivia

My sister-in-law and her husband are getting ready to move into a new house, and in the process they are getting rid of some of their furniture.  She made me a great deal - she gave me a really big old dresser in exchange for painting this bookcase for her granddaughter Olivia, and refinishing another bookcase for herself.  She wanted a gloss white for the main part and then do whatever else I wanted to it.