Friday, November 30, 2012

Trying MMS milk paint on a "Stormy Day Dresser"

UPDATE Pics showing the wreath I just made. Love the colors w/the dresser...


If you've seen my other posts, you know I've done quite a few pieces with the milk paint from the Real Milk Paint Company.  I love their colors and their paint.  
But I'm always on the lookout to try different things. I found this nice old dresser
off of CL (yeah I know, surprise!) and wanted to do a lighter color. 
 First I applied some Real Milk Paint co in "Peacock". Then I used MMS "Shutter Gray" to layer 
over the top. 


Since this was bare wood, the paint really adheres. On places where 

Monday, November 19, 2012

More drip pots.....


I love making these drip pots. I start with plain old terra cotta pots, prime them (the terra
cotta is very porous and soaks up a lot of paint) and then paint. You can use
chalk paint, spray paint, latex or even milk paint.  I prefer the chalk paint and then latex. 
If you look at he "Herbs" pot below, that is a mish-mash of paint. The yellow is latex, 
the gray is CeCe's Vermont Slate and the white is also CeCe's. I like the chalk because
you can smooth it out and distress it. Latex is pretty one dimensional. 

 The red pot with the white dripsv and the black and pink is all latex. 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Beachy-Vibe Little Maple Buffet

I found this piece of, er, um,,,,,piece at a garage sale around the corner. 
It was a sad, sad little water damaged buffet. But the nice thing
about wood is that it's hardy and forgiving! 

Take a gander at this solid maple beaut...

Yes,,,that thing lying in there is the bottom shelf. The top looked just as bad as the rest of it. 
They were asking $30...I offered 20 bucks.  The two girls nearly threw it at me. 
Should have offered 5. Oh well. 

 I had a bit of left over milk paint in turquoise. I brush a bit here and there on top and then painted the whole thing with CeCe Caldwells White.


 Cutting out a new bottom shelf. 
 Filling in the handle holes on the doors
I wrapped the new bottom shelf piece with some leftover fabric
which ended up looking like this:

 I just love the way this top finished. You can see the turquoise milk paint on the raw maple.  I lightly dry brushed the white on top of it and then sanded and distressed until I was happy. The whole top got coats of tung oil and a dark wax and buffed until it was nice and smooth! Kinda has that beachy vibe.


The inside of the drawer was the only thing in decent shape. 

 Mercury glass knobs.  The mirror was my mother's. 

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Something different.....

I actually got another one identical to this,   CL of course!
I came across a roadside rescue of a dresser from artisbeauty.net that I fell in love with! They did a phenomenal job painting their dresser.  
I hate to be a total copy-cat, but I loved everything about it!
Including the color. Karin and Katie, I hope you don't mind!!

I mixed up my own green chalk paint, since I'm up to my eyeballs in paint! 
I just kept adding colors until I liked the shade!

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Printer Cabinet Finally done! RH knock-off!

So if you read the post below this one, you'll have seen that I've been working on this printer cabinet like the one being sold by Restoration Hardware. 
Jen Woodhouse over at House of Wood, had Ana White draw up some plans for her after seeing this cabinet. I liked Jen's so much, and got such inspiration from her, that I decided I wanted one too! My husband was kind enough to humor me and lend a hand. 
Here is Jen's:

Here is my finished version:


There is no sense in me reinventing the wheel, so, for the actual plans, go to Ana's site. 
For the actual step-by-step, go to Jens siteBoth of these women are absolutely amazing!
 I made a few changes and will touch on those. I also made mistakes! 
If I had to build another one, it would be easier!
So please, if you plan on doing one of these, follow closely! I will save your sanity!

Wood: I wanted something different. I didn't want to use pine or douglas fir. I walked around
the lumber yard and found some rustic alder that I liked. But,,,,,They don't make 2X2's, 1X2's and 1X3's.in alder. No problem. If you have a table saw

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Humpty Dumpty!! Rebuilt Antique Buffet using Milk Paint!

I so love working on antiques.
I have been looking for a piece so that I could use the most amazing
color of milk paint! It's actually the most gorgeous shade of turquoise that
I have seen and it comes from the Real Milk Paint Co. More on the color later!
The pics really don't do it justice. I used it on an earlier dresser I did here. 
Anyway. I digress.  So I spotted this piece on CL listed as a dresser.
It's actually a little buffet. They were asking way too much for it because half of it was 
in pieces! The owner said the drawer fell down the stairs. 
uh, yeah.  This is my humpty-dumpty piece. Read on! 

 Quite the mess, eh??! The right door was snapped off at the piece that attaches to the hinge.
Luckily the owner had all the pieces and I was able to sand, glue and clamp. You cant even tell
it was ever broken. Thankyouverymuch. 
The pic below is the middle drawer. All ten pieces of it.  Yikes! 

And here is Humpty all back together! 
 The mirror was in pretty poor shape. I used a stencil and some frosted glass spray to try and 
camouflage the defects. 

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Campaign End Tables


Woo Hoo! I have been on the Campaign look-out trail!
Ya know how you start looking for a certain item/s and you just can't find it?
And then all of a sudden they fall in you lap!  I scored this pair of end tables from one lady
and the campaign bookcase from another.



Check out the cool hardware on top!

This is by far the ugliest yellow I think I've ever seen. 
I went with gray and the trim in black. I will show you in another post! 
or check out a sneak peek below....


                                    However, the end table........sigh....love! 

Now, what I don't love is all that tarnishy hardware. God help me. The table took all of an hour to
paint. The hardware, at least 8. Oh, I'm counting the hardware from the above bookcase.
 I haven't even started on end table #2 yet!!!