A beautiful antique desk

A friend of a friend was recently doing some housecleaning. She was moving from a house into a condo and she needed to get rid of a few pieces of furniture. I was more than happy to help her out. LOL

Here's one of the pieces that I purchased:

The desk needed some work and it had to be a quick turn around. I was in Kansas City visiting and I wanted to get the desk finished right away and put into my shop before I returned home, which is a 3 hour drive from Kansas City. I'm so lucky to have such great friends to let me paint my furniture at their houses and even help me as I work. Here I am in a friend's rec room painting this desk. Said friend decided to snap a few pictures to show that redoing furniture really does take some work.

One of my friends was even nice enough to help me lug the heavy desk down to the store and get it all set up! Thank you, thank you!!

Here's the finish product. Displayed in at Le Fou Flea in the West Bottoms district of Kansas City MO.

Retro Design on a Dresser

I've been admiring furniture pieces on other people's blogs lately where they've transferred designs onto their furniture. I did my research to find out just how they were getting the designs transferred onto the furniture, and I've been keeping my eyes open for just the right piece of furniture to try this technique. So, finally, on a local for sale site through Face Book, I found a suitable piece of furniture. It had a pretty plain front and wooden handles that I figure I could paint right over. The dresser (well chest of drawers really), is about 4 feet tall and when I found it, it was painted black and the paint was peeling. My first step was to do a little scraping and sanding. Then I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint in old white to cover over the black.

I found a graphic that I liked at the Graphic Fairy website. I bet if your reading this blog, you are familiar with that site. It's just full of wonderful graphics that the blog owner, Karen, offers for free! I made a transparency of that graphic and then used a projector to project it onto the front of the dresser. From there I just traced over the lines. I used acrylic black paint and two artist brushes. I used a large liner brush and a flat shader brush. Believe me, there were times I had to improvise on the lines. The hardest part was getting the lines to look right over the uneven molding on the sides and the handles. It took several hours of painting to get the design completed.

Here is the image partially completed:

Yep, she's bald at this point. LOL

Finally, she has hair.

The chest of drawers isn't quite finished yet. I'm letting the paint dry overnight and then I'll put a polycrylic sealer over the paint for protection. I might paint the inside of the drawers too. I'll just have to see how energetic I'm feeling. This will be headed to my booth at Le Fou Flea for the February First Friday Sales, Feb. 7 - 9 in Kansas City.

Having Fun With Chairs

Yes, it's true.... I really like to reupholster chairs. They are actually getting much easier for me. Horray! It's taken a lot of practice to get to this point. Here is the latest set of chairs I've reupholstered.

I started with some nice sturdy chairs that I picked up at a garage sale.

One of them had very good springs but the other had to be extensively repaired.

After all the repairs and restuffing comes the fun part, applying the fabric.

I found this great French print fabric. Just in case you were wondering; in English this means, "Make Yourself At Home".

These chairs didn't even make it into the store. They sold right away to a friend of a friend and I couldn't be happier! It's nice to think that other people like your work.

A Pretty Little Bench

A bench is such a useful piece of furniture. It is small enough that it can fit in so many spaces. I recently bought a bench at an auction that I knew I was going to update, never a doubt in my mind. I brought it home and sat it in the garage until I could get around to fixing it up. Of course my husband saw it there and commented that he'd like to use the bench at the foot of our bed. I thought.... oooh, that bench is so ugly. Besides, unknown to my husband, I had another bench stashed away that I dearly loved. It's next on my list for a "redo".

I didn't get a before of this bench but I did take a picture of the ugly cushion that was originally on the bench. It was just plain wood prior to the redo. Here's the original cushion:

I had to strip the orange velvet off the bench, which included removing all those buttons. Then I stuffed the holes left behind from the buttons with some polyfil. After that, I wrapped the foam in muslin, then added a layer of 1 inch foam and then wrapped that in muslin and then batting before recovering with the decorator fabric. I just LOVE this fabric. I had a hard time finding it online after I saw it on a blog and then at an upscale decorator shop, at a price I didn't want to pay. Once I located the fabric at an online source I ordered some; this bench is my second upholstery project with this lovely yellow and gray fabric.

I also painted the frame of the bench with Annie Sloan Old Ochre, and used Miss Mustard Seed's clear wax, followed by her Antiquing wax as a finish after some distressing. I just LOVE the MMS waxes; especially the antiquing wax. Now, I think the bench is quite attractive.

Here's a picture of the finished bench.

I added the bench to my booth at Le Fou Flea in Kansas City and it sold right away. I'd call that a success!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas in "The Kottage"

There are so many people who blog and share so much about their homes and lives. I certainly enjoy reading all of it. I've been able to view some very beautiful homes this way and get inspired from some lovely Christmas decorations. So, I debated whether to share some photos of my home decorated for Christmas. I guess just for the fun of it.... I'm certainly not a professional decorator. After some self conflict, I decided why not. So I hope you enjoy taking a quick look around my house that's decorated for Christmas. I went very natural with the outside decorations this year. Most of the greenery was cut off of a farm by myself and my nephews. Not only is it natural but we all had a great time doing the gathering.

Come on in and take a look around. I have trees in the living room, dining room, staircase landing, family room, and kitchen. They are all "skinny" trees though, so they are easy to put up.

This is the smallest tree, and it's decorated with snowman ornaments.

And, this is my favorite tree.... with Longaberger baskets, beaded silverware, creamers, and burlap ribbon.

This tree has some family ornaments on it and a lot of special teacher ornaments I've accumulated over the years.

This handmade sign in the entryway reminds us of the real importance of Christmas.

Thanks so much for stopping by to take a look at some of my Christmas decorations. Hope you each have a blessed Christmas.

Chevron Chair

Boy, I have been a negligent blogger as of late. I have certainly made a lot of projects but I've been doing the easy thing and just putting them up on Face Book and not blogging about them. So here I am, trying to make restitution. LOL

I REALLY like to reupholster chairs. I say chairs because I haven't gotten good enough to anything bigger. Ok, well, I have reupholstered a bench before. I am looking forward to the day when I can figure out how to tackle a sofa. Maybe someday.... But for now it's chairs, chairs, chairs.... Here's my most recent:

Here's the original chair: