MakeMePrettyAgain: 2015

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Vintage Thomasville Faux Bamboo Desk

This bamboo line from Thomasville was/is very popular. Original paint finish for this guy was the white laminate top with yellowy-green paint finish. Not so popular in this day and age! The desk was part of the entire bedroom set. I know a lot of fellow finishers have done the desk and the dresser.
I've wanted to do one for quite awhile and finally stumbled across this piece online.

I couldn't seem to find any before picture, other than this one I had atop another piece. My hoarder condition in the garage is reaching alarming proportions. You know you have issues when start stacking your inventory three-high!

This is a stock photo I googled. Mine was almost identical in condition.

Everything but the top got a good sanding. The drawers (inside, and all of the wood sides) got

Another Dixie mcm w/a Graphic Paint job!

I just love doing the mid century dressers and credenzas. For this one I used Fine Paints of Europe, Eco line. This is an acrylic/oil hybrid that is water based. The pigments in this paint are so rich and deep, they literally pop! For this piece I picked a gorgeous chartreuse. Now, this isn't a color that everyone can use, but I don't think it overwhelms the piece and will go with any gray, black/white decor. It's an accent piece. When I picked it up, someone had already taken off the legs and built some sort of base for it to sit on. It came to mid thigh level! I asked the owner, "Where's the rest of it??:"

No, no. This base thing had to go!

Luckily, i had some spare peg legs lying around the garage and attached those!

Custom Painting some Front doors!

I was contacted by a local couple who saw my blue hutch and wondered if I could do the same coloring on their front doors. I figured, "why not?"

The two doors are solid mahogany and had a coat of paint on them. I gave them the estimate for stripping off all the current paint and prepping it for paint. Obviously, a ton of work. To keep the cost down, the client asked if her husband could do all the prep work. fine by me!! 'Cause everyone knows just how keen I am on stripping wood. Especially something of this magnitude! I said it had to be completely stripped and sanded smooth. They said ok. Uh, not what happened! lol

I had already started sanding when I ran to get the camera. See the middle portion?? That's what the rest looked like when I got it. I asked what he used and he said, "60 grit sandpaper." That's it??? What about the 150 and 220 and the inside grooves along the glass??? He just stared at me. Hmmmm,,,no.

I told them no way. This needed about 5 more hours of finishing work. 60 grit sandpaper on wood

A little, new mcm cabinet

You ever start something and then it just sort of sits,,,,,for months,,,,,and maybe a few more months,,,,?? Well, yep, that was this guy.

I started off painting this with Sherwin Williams paint. I really don't know why I changed from Advance. Maybe it was the color. I ended up going back to Advance. The SW paint was just horrible. After 2 coats I ended up sanding it all back and redoing it with the Advance glossy. So much better.

Look at this beautiful shine! This was all hand brushed too. You must sand between coats.

Amerasia Pagoda Dresser

Kent Coffey Amerasia Pagoda Dresser. Only one I've come across in four years. Needless to say, this one went quickly. A customer saw this in my inventory off of Etsy and wanted it customized. Since this was being used as a media cabinet, she wanted me to remove the far right drawers in order to contain her electronics.

Hub removed the drawers and other pieces and cut some luan to fill the side and bottom.

Custom Colors on a Vanity-Modern Masters

I know my posts have been few and far between, but not for lack of things to do! I've had many custom order requests and have been very busy! I haven't even been able to touch my inventory or create any designs. A local couple had seen my blog and loved the color of a blue chest I had finished. They asked if I could do the same color on their vanity they just purchased.

They picked the colors of metallic blue on the body and pink on the inside. I did my own personal mix of MM Venetian Blue mixed with some Black Pearl.

The before and after on the drawers. There were quite a few missing pieces of wood that got filled. I also removed this part of the molding to paint. I chose to spray the inside of compartment area and thought I would try a lacquer.

The spray lacquer is Begonia from Amy Howard. It's nice, but towards the end of the can, the glossiness went away! I believe I had to coat the entire part with a clear lacquer top coat!

Stanley Bamboo dresser Finally finished!

Man oh man. The nightmares of all nightmare prep jobs! Behold this classic, vintage Asain style dresser made by Stanley. Originally it was done in that icky yellow.

Like this:

But some genius decided to throw on some black paint. Literally. Was the worst paint job, ever!

I thought with some sanding it would prep up easily enough. Uh, no. The top and sides were ok, but those drawers?? OMG.

This was after applying a stripper and starting to scrape. The "wood" is actually some sort of resin type material that's hard, but crumples if you chip at it. This was beyond horrific. Seriously. Took me about 20 hours before I could even put a brush to it. This is why I don't buy painted pieces~!

But,,,,Totally worth it in the end....

This piece was custom painted for a customer in Chicago. She wanted a Robins Egg Blue.

orchid boxes

I love orchids and have a gazillion of them. Ok, maybe not that many, but a lot. In my front patio I have a vertical wood orchid wall that we built about 5 years ago with iroku wood. It's like ipe. Here's what it looked like when it was first done:

The wood is so nice and new! It doesn't get direct sun and it's like ipe and teak, so it can get wet.

And now:

walking through the front gate, into my courtyard area.

All the wood orchid planter boxes, we made. These two are the recent additions:

Antique Coffee Bar

I picked up this great antique buffet recently and thought it would look cool made into a coffee bar. If someone had one of those old fashioned stores where they served up tea, coffee or drinks, I think this would look cool as an accent piece. I wish I had room for it my kitchen!

Oops. Little late on the before shot. Already started sanding. The drawers needed some stoppers, so I made those little guys (otherwise the drawer pushes in too far. see above?)

I love my turquoise milk paint on antique oak. I also love the ultra-marine blue. So I used both. And I think I may have used some CeCe's turquoise. Layering is the way to go with this paint.

The top got stripped and stained in walnut, and I finished up the top coat with a walnut shaded top-coat. I like that it deepens and enriches the final finish.

Didn't have enough of one of these patterns, so I used all three! Hey, it works for pillows! Oh, did you want to see the final result????? My bad....

I hate how the flash washes out these colors! I'll just post a bunch more ;)

Drexel Campaign Desk, Cerused Custom Top, and a New Paint!

Campaign desks are hard to come by. Good ones by Drexel are really hard to come by,,,at a decent price. I got this one for a steal because it was in such poor shape. It was a nice oak veneer, which you don't usually see in these desks. Legs are solid oak. The hardware was in pretty good shape.

After removing the brass corner and T-plates. Lovely laminate top, eh?

This laminate needed to go. I needed to get some white oak planks and change it up!

Why, yes, this is the same desk! How did I get to this point??? Read on!!!

Another Horrendous Waterfall Piece gets New Life!

Why is it that these waterfall pieces I come across are so messed up?? I want you to see that just because wood seems like it's beyond repair or refinishing, it usually is not.
With some care you can transform the wood back to it's original look.

My very first one was a desk that was deplorable! I refinished it way back when I was first starting out. This horrendous desk has been pinned to the moon and back on Pinterest!

Here is a before pic of that desk and a link to my blog post so you can see the finished result! I know. Sneaky. HERE is the link Seriously. I did not replace the top.

So todays post is about another waterfall piece. A dresser. Same messed up top and almost the same messed up body. Not quite as bad though.

This was another piece that came to me by way of Las Vegas.

So here's the top. Pretty bad. Very rough and stained. Because the body is pine, it had dings and gouges everywhere. The top got a gentle sanding. It's very easy to burn through this walnut veneer. So be careful. Do the curved part by hand, otherwise you will burn through, and there is no fix for that.

Look at how well it cleans up! I think I used an 80 grit and worked up to 220.

After a coat of the stain (i think i used a walnut. I can't remember!) and trying to decide on some colors.

From right to left, the stages of sanding and staining the drawers. But, I realized at least 4 of them had so many chips in the veneer, it would never look good stained.