Since I last posted I've been really busy creating. This last week end I was a vendor at a vintage Flea Market in Overland Park Kansas. I took an entire UHaul trailer full of furniture and other vintage pieces. A while back, on a local for sale site through Face Book, I saw a lovely 3 drawer dresser posted. By the time I inquired about the dresser sombody had beat me to it. Well, a day or so goes by before I hear from the seller that the other interested parties didn't want the chest. So I went to look at it. The chest was cracked across the back, that's why the other people weren't interested. It didn't scare me away, I went ahead a bought the chest. Then got busy repairing it. Here's the finished product:

Here is what the dresser looked like during repairs:

You can see that I did have to hammer the back together, then I glued it and let that set. I also added a patch on the back just to be sure that it stayed together.

Here are the drawers, on these you can see the original color of the wood. I did strip and stain the top and left it natural wood. The drawers were painted with Duck Egg Blue Annie Sloan's chalk paint, and glazed with Valspar mixing glaze and stain.

More projects to come...

Dressed Up

This project has taken me way too much time. Most of that time was spent trying to decide exactly what to do with this chest of drawers. Do any of you do that too? Just think and think and think about what you should do to transform a piece of furniture? I had a solid wood dresser with dove-tailed drawers and what I thought were some pretty fine details to work with. It had a maple finish on it.... blaaa. Here's what I ended up with: After completing the chest of drawers I was inspired to sturdy up a library table and strip the horrible varnish off. It should be ready to paint tomorrow night, after a little more sanding. After that I started on a cabinet. I took off some peeling veneer, patched some holes and added some legs. I'll be showing more on those transformations if they turn out to be "blog worthy." LOL Have a good rest of the week!

My Latest Vintage Booth

For more than 2 years now, I've had a booth where I sell redesigned and original vintage furniture and other items I've found or created. I've had so much fun doing this and I would have been very happy to keep my booth at the original store where I started, but they lost their lease; so I moved to another store owned by the same person. Three weeks after that move, I got word that the store had been sold and we were given a few weeks to move our items out. So, that's why I moved the booth again!!! What a lot of work. The owner of the store where I am now located told me, "well, we won't be closing". That was SO good to hear, and hopefull will be the case.

So, I thought I'd share a few photos of my new booth space. I really like the store, and all the people I've met there. I'm hoping this will be a good move for me. If you are in the Kansas City area, go take a look. There is 6000 square feet of antique and vintage to enjoy. With several more similar stores nearby.

The new address is:

La Bottega

173 English Landing Drive

Parkville, Missouri 64152

The buffet redo revealed

I think at my rate of blogging I'm never going to get any followers. I need to start posting more often but my crazy life gets in the way.

I do want to show how the buffet I mentioned in my last post turned out. I stripped the top and restained it, then put 3 coats of polycrylic on it. The bottom is painted in a CeCe Caldwell paint, two coats of that, then waxed with Annie Sloan wax, and finally finished with CeCe Caldwell Chestnut mixed into a Valspar glaze. Geez, I managed to used a lot of products on this.

Just so you remember here is the before: Here are some after photos: The picture feature on blogger has changed since I last made a post. I'll have to figure out how to make the pictures big again and how to arrange them. Anybody have any tips on that?

Snow Day!

Well, I figured it was high time that I make use of that lovely metal ladder that I ordered from Decor Steals. It's been sitting in my entryway for a few weeks now. I'm a school teacher and we had a snow day today. Perfect time to move the ladder and hang some quilts off of it! Of course, I did some other projects too.

I decided to put the ladder with the quilts on it in a bedroom that used to belong to our oldest daughter. It's still where she stays when she comes to visit. I had been storing the quilts in this room on a shelf anyway. This is just a nicer way to display them. All the quilts on the ladder have been handmade by family members. A couple from feed sacks and old clothing during the depression. There are also a couple on the bottom rung that are children's quilts. One is totally hand stitched and falling apart, it belonged to my dad when he was a baby and toddler, made by my grandmother. The other child's quilt on the bottom belonged to my husband and was made by his mom. Each quilt has a story and each has been hand quilted, one is a tied quilt. I still have quite a stack on the shelf. Guess I should have bought two of these ladders. LOL

At a fairly recent auction, I bought a vintage buffet. I just love the lines of this piece of furniture. It needs some help, so that will be one of my next projects. And, just in case my oldest daughter happens to read this.... yes, I plan to make your roman shades first! I'm glad that I always have plenty of projects to occupy my time. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Here's a few shots of the buffet with potential. One of these days I plan to post the "after" shots.

I've ordered some CeCe Caldwell's paint for this project. I usually use Annie Sloan's chalk paint but she just didn't have the colors I was looking for for the buffet. I'm anxious to give this new paint a try.

A Complicated Order

About 2 months ago I ordered a metal display ladder from an internet company called Decor Steals. The ladder was a Miss Mustard Seed pick. Here's the ladder I ordered:

I thought this would be great to display wreaths, pictures, or quilts. I could hardly wait for it to arrive. I waited, and waited, and waited. I was thinking it must be taking so long because it was ordered before the holidays or maybe it was on back order. Finally, one day when I got home from work, my husband said that he had hauled in a large package that had been left on the front porch. Sure enough, the ladder had arrived!

When I saw that box, I suspected that there was a problem. The top of the box had been taped ... A LOT... And, the rungs of the ladder were sticking out of the bottom of the box. Plus, the box was pretty short for the size of the ladder. But I though ... maybe the ladder was in two pieces. So I cut open the box and took a look. Oh, my, the ladder was a mess! Take a look:

Well, the box had been delivered by the United States Postal Service so I gave them a call the following day (on a Saturday) to report the damage. The lady at the post office had a very interesting story to tell me. Right away, she said, "oh yes I remember that box, it came in that way". And she proceeded to tell me more... well, in our town, the USPS has a contract with Fed Ex. Fed Ex drops off boxes at the post office and USPS delivers the boxes as a part of their normal delivery route. Well about 2 weeks before I got my box, a tall box had been brought in by Fed Ex for USPS to deliver to me. But, that tall box didn't meet the size limitations of the Fed Ex contract with the postal service. So the post office refused the box. Then, the day before I got my delivery, this taped box was dropped off by FedEx... at the post office... to deliver to me. The people at the post office realized there was a problem, but it fit the size requirement, so they delivered the box.

My next move was to find out how to contact customer service at Decor Steals. It's an internet company so all I could find was an comment section for e-mails. I was very pleased when I was contacted within 24 hours by the company (they sent me a reply e-mail on a Sunday). The person at Decor Steals asked that I send some pictures of the damaged ladder. I heard back from him quickly, he couldn't believe that ladder ended up like that! It was made of heavy metal... how could this happen? I shared the FedEx story with him. Is it possible that someone at FedEx had intentionally bent the ladder just to get the postal service to deliver it???? Well, I guess we'll never know that.

On Monday, the owner of Decor Steals gave me a call. She was extremely nice and even laughed about the entire incident. She said they had another ladder in the warehouse and would get it delivered to me right away. Sure enough, it came today (Saturday). And, it's PERFECT!

It came in this nice tall box:

And it's in perfect shape:

I'll have to say that the people at Decor Steals were wonderful to work with. They were efficient and friendly and certainly corrected the situation. I'll sure order from them again! I'm very happy with the metal ladder!

A special little table....

I have some fabulous friends. A few of them keep me in mind when they go to garage sales or find freebies in soembody's trash heap. A while back one of these special friends stopped by my house with a small wobbly table that she had "scored" at a garage sale. I agreed that it was indeed special and that I could surely do something with it! Here's the table in it's "before" state.

This table proved to be more of a challenge than I imagined. It needed repaired in a strange place; where the spindle attached to the base. So to begin I took it apart and reglued it. It seemed pretty sturdy after that. Then I painted it with Annie Sloan's Graphite paint. While it was sitting on a cloth drying, I tripped on the drop cloth and knocked over the table. Crash, it was broken again. I figured that was a good thing as I didn't want it to break later after I had sold it out of my booth space. So I repaired it again! Which meant I had to wait for the glue to dry.

As I was waiting, I did some thinking about what treatment I could use on that triangular shaped top. I had an idea! A while back I bought some old record books from a church that was closing it's doors. I loved the old handwriting and aged and tattered pages in the book. These were written throughtout the years. I chose some pages that were written in 1904. Nobody writes like that anymore! Some of the script was even in German! (We live in a town that had German settlers.)

So, I cut those beautiful 1904 pages to fit the top of the table, and decopauged them on. I just love it! But..... oops, the base is still al little wobbly. So after the top dried I pulled the bottom apart again. This time I got out the big guns. I drilled a hole in each side that joins together and put a wooden chopstick in the hole. Yes, a girl has to get creative with repairs sometimes. LOL I put some of that foaming Gorilla glue around the hole. After that dried, it was PERFECTLY sturdy. Of course I had to paint over the patch. Then I waxed the painted part with dark wax. And the table turned out beautifully I think.

I took the little table, along with a whole lot of other things, into the store today. I wrote the story about the 1904 paper on the tag. I already had people commenting on the table and the neat little story that accompanied it. So THANK YOU Lona, for this great find! I hope you keep finding unique items for me to redo!

Linked to:

Well, the table didn't last in the store very long.... that's because I pulled it out. LOL A local art group asked for a donation for their art auction and this piece seemed to fit what they were wanting. So, I donated the table. Tonight at the auction, I was very pleased with the amount the table brought for the art cooperative. A big thanks to the special lady who bought the table.