Inertia

Do your projects ever teach you lessons?  Mine do.  This particular project taught me how not to load furniture in a truck!

Back in June we decided to replace my husband’s 10-year-old Volkswagen Jetta with a little truck.  (It was his idea to replace the car.  It was MY idea to replace it with a truck!)  I was tickled at the prospect of having a truck to cart around my furniture projects!  So shortly after we bought the truck, my oldest daughter and I took it garage-sale-ing.

We hit pay dirt.  We purchased a cedar chest and a little maple buffet for a grand total of $60 at the same garage sale!  I was cool and collected outside, but giggling delightedly inside.

There was just enough room to put both pieces in the truck (it’s not a very big truck).  How shall we put them in?  Why, back-to-back, of course!  That way the wood won’t get scratched!  We didn’t own any tie-downs yet, but we had sprung for the bed-liner.  I was sure we would be fine on the short drive home.

And truly, all was well!  At first.  I drove slow.  I was careful!  But there came a time when I had to make a right-hand turn, and I heard a big CRASH!

My heart stopped.

Quickly I pulled over and jumped out to survey the damage.

Remember your high school physics class?  What was it Newton said…

An object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same velocity and in the same direction…

Inertia.  It’ll get you every time.

What inertia got was the drawer for the buffet.  The truck went right; the drawer wanted to keep going straight…and it did, right into the street!  <sigh>

One of the handles on the drawer broke, and one of the corners snapped off.  There were various other abrasions and contusions, but we came out pretty lucky, all things considered!

I am lacking a proper “before” picture of this little maple buffet.  I only found one “in progress” shot.

I decided to give this piece on of my favorite stained-top-painted-base treatments, and some brand-new hardware.

Note to self:  When you decide to use one set of the original holes for the hardware, make sure you use the SAME SET on both sides of the drawer.  Failing to do so may result in harsh words.

I used two coats of Minwax Antique Walnut stain on the top, and finished it with the Hand-rubbed Polyurethane.  I *love* how it turned out.

I fixed the bottom corner of the drawer with a little wood glue, and sanded out the other scrapes.  You can’t tell that she took a header onto the street now!

She’s just a small little buffet—only 36” wide, so she’s perfect for a small space.

“Inertia.”  It may  not be the most feminine of names, but somehow it suits her, don’t you think?

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Linking up here.

Gradient Dressers, revisited

AtticMag  has featured a great collection of Gradient Dressers, included the one I created!

Go see them all here!

Lady Gray

I like gray, but it doesn’t always like me.

It’s just not fair. I see gray walls, cupboards, and furniture everywhere, and they look so pretty. So last week I picked up a sample pot of Martha Stewart “Fossil” paint (a pretty pale gray/green color on the paint chip), and painted a swathe on my front room walls.

Bleaaahhhh.

Yes, it’s really that bad. I just can’t pick ‘em.

Let me interrupt myself here to say that on the positive side, this is the first time I was SMART enough to buy a sample pot. I still have about 2 gallons of paint left from my last painting disaster!

However, I’ve *really* wanted to try painting a piece of furniture gray again. My last try was a disaster, and I ended up with blue instead. But I was ready to give it a shot again on this $15 DI piece I picked up a few weeks ago:

As luck would have it, I happened to have part of an “oops” quart of gray paint leftover from last summer. It was getting old and rather thick, and there wasn’t much left anyway. So I dumped in a healthy dollop of creamy white, a fair amount of water, and mixed it all up.

I loved this color. It was gray, but not a “cool” gray…a healthy hint of brown made it a warm color. In the twilight, it looked almost taupe. Gorgeous.

I didn’t want to alter the color too much, so I glazed very lightly with black. Mostly I just hit the edges and the indentations on the cupboard doors.

The pulls are the ones it came with, but they are not original to the piece. In fact, if you look at the “before” picture above, you can see where extra holes were drilled for this “new” hardware.

All the pulls used to be that brassy color, so I painted them with ORB spray paint.

It was hard to take a decent picture of this buffet, because it goes with nothing in my house!

I probably should have had a photo shoot in the yard for this one!

I’m thinking I may have to take my paint stick in to be color-matched so I can have more of this lovely gray.

I call her “Lady Gray-the-Buffet” in my head I know it’s silly, but that’s the name she’s stuck with!

Are there any colors you love, but just can’t seem to make work in your house?

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Linking up here.

A little more pizzazz

Once upon a time, there was a cabinet at the top of the stairs.

This cabinet served the Very Important Purpose of holding yarn and knitting needles (for the winter months when the furnishing-refinishing business is slow). It was a good cabinet, but it wasn’t well-liked. The fact that it was brown against a brown wall probably had something to do with it.

So one day in the dead of winter, it got painted!

…and there was much rejoicing!

Although it looked much better, and it still continued to fulfill its Very Important Purpose most admirably, the fickle owner (yes, that’s me) was not completely satisfied. I envisioned something with a little more style…a little more panache…a little more pizzazz…to fulfill the Very Important Purpose. However, besides being fickle, I also happen to be incredibly cheap <ahem>, I mean frugal. So I settled back to wait until the furniture fates would conspire to give me what I wanted.

When this little chest appeared in the classified ads, and it happened to coincide with a trip to the airport, I knew my day had arrived! The seller told me this chest used to belong to her grandmother. She sold it to me for $48!

I painted this little chest in my favorite off-white…

…distressed it lightly, and glazed it to “age” the color. There was no changing the hardware on this piece...the knobs are a carved part of the drawer fronts! There were no visible bolts or screws.

Being not only fickle and frugal, but also impatient, I hauled it up to the top of the stairs all by myself to see how it would look!

I think…I like it!

It now serves the Very Important Purpose of holding yarn and knitting needles…and looking pretty.

The former cabinet is serving some other Very Important Purpose for some Other Person now. I sold it for $160, and since I use paint and glaze I had on hand, I maintain that I made $112 on this deal!

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Linking up here.

One for me, one for you! (revisited)

First a great big THANK YOU to all who left birthday wishes and shared birthday memories with me during this past week! I am feeling much better, thank you…still not completely over whatever summer germ I picked up, but at least functioning again!

I loved reading the birthday memories. Some were sweet, some were tender, some were funny…and they all made me feel immeasurably better!

Virtual friends are wonderful friends!

Another thing that made me feel better this week was receiving the most wonderful package from Tina at What We Keep! I mentioned here that I was lucky enough to win a giveaway she sponsored. She had promised an apron and a gift card, but there was much, much more!

I opened the box and saw something red! I was confused…I was sure the apron was supposed to be of brown linen! I pulled it out, and what did I see?

What a cute bag! A sturdy red canvas bag, embroidered with "red hen home” over chicken wire!

That wasn’t the end of the treasures… I pulled out 1, 2, 3…

…4, 5, 6 fluffy little chicks! Inspired, I know, by my own six chicklets! Plus there was a cute blue bird with a tag that says, “It’s the smallest birds who sing the sweetest songs.”

Then there was this darling red-and-white striped dishtowel embroidered with my initial…

…And this beautiful apron embroidered with a fancy red hen just for me! I love it! Sorry about the blurry picture in the mirror…I sent the chicklets (my surrogate photographers) to bed!

Thank you, Tina! You really made my day!

Now I have the chance to return the favor! The winner of my birthday giveaway for the custom beadboard sign is:

Laura from I’m So Vintage!

Laura has a lovely etsy shop that just happens to be where I purchased the wooden shoe last that appears next to several of the beadboard signs in this collage! That coincidence tickles my fancy

So Laura, I hope you’ve been thinking about what you’d like on a beadboard sign.

I’m thinking something along these lines, maybe?