Two shall become One

In the last days of getting ready for The Barn vintage market last August, I was fighting some serious burn-out!  I still had a list of projects I wanted to do, but I was rapidly approaching the “who cares” point…  Have you ever been there with me??

Here’s one little project that barely squeaked in, and I’m so glad it did!

I came across the parts to an antique treadle sewing machine at a garage sale last spring.  It was disassembled, filthy…and I talked the lady down to $7!

Here’s how it looked after I cleaned it, put it together (you can see that the actual foot pedal part is missing, but I didn’t care…see, there’s a theme going on here), and gave it a coat of some black spray paint.

The plan was to build a new top, like this other treadle table I made here. 

But…then I remembered another table top I had in my “stash.”  It was a Goodwill find from over a year ago that I rescued it off of three spindly legs (the legs I burned). 

Angels sang!  They were a perfect fit.  I refinished the wood top, added a graphic (of course), and put the two together. 

And then…I took a lousy cell-phone picture.

<Sigh.>  Now that…in retrospect…I wish I had cared about!

Round Aqua Table

Shortly after we moved to the Seattle area, a co-worker of my husband’s offered to give us “a table” they were no longer using.  All I knew was that it was FREE, and that definitely caught my interest!  It gave me the courage to drive into Seattle BY MYSELF, and that was a pretty big deal for me!

I have to admit…I wasn’t all that thrilled with it at first sight.  In part that was because in my head, I was expecting a dining table…and it wasn’t that!  Second, it was super big and chunky, and it had some funky white knobs that I didn’t think looked too great against the wood (photo taken after I removed the knobs).

It took me MONTHS to tackle this project—but when I did, I finally fell in love with this little table!

I used some aqua paint leftover from painting my oldest daughter’s room (75% Belize by SW).  Suddenly the table because fun and funky, and the white china knobs (from Japan!) were a perfect fit!

Oh, how I love how paint can transform a piece!  This table has two adjustable side shelves, and then those knobs are on large cupboard doors for hidden storage.

I think round tables are so fun—they are so nice to put in a corner and break up a room of “square,” or this could be such a fun nightstand!

 

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack

Gold-dipped Chair & Table

It has been a while since I posted a furniture project again, so I thought I’d give you a two-for-one project!

This cute little bamboo-style chair and table came out of my neighbor’s garage.  She has a little bit of a thrift store addiction herself, and I still remember the day I got to Savers just after she did…and she walked away with these!  I was very jealous.

Well, several months later they ended up coming to me anyways.  HER husband decided it was time to clean out the garage!  Mine was already so full that a few more pieces of furniture didn’t matter  ;-)
The first thing I had to do was replace the caning on the seat back.  For a more detailed description of how you can replace chair cane with kitchen utensils, look here.   
 
I painted the chair and table in a creamy white, but I thought they needed a little more pizzazz!
So I got out some gold acrylic paint to dress up the bottom of the legs for a “dipped” look.  I also added some gold to the finials on the table and the banding on the arms of the chair.  What did I learn from this project??  Don’t use acrylic paint on furniture!  It took about a million coats of paint to cover!

I found this fabric at JoAnn’s.  I’m not normally a “blue” person, but it was perfect with the white and the gold.  And it had a bird on it!  I’m a sucker for birds.

So there you have it.  A little gold-dipped “glam” for a corner somewhere…I think these would be so fun in a bedroom for a little reading corner!

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Linking up here:

Domestically Speaking	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	The CSI Project
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Beyond the Picket Fence	Someday Crafts
Knick of Time	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Simply Klassic Sundays	My rRepurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	It’s So Very Cheri
Cowgirl Up!	{aka} design Coastal Charm

Plugging away

It may seem as if my furniture projects have ground to a halt lately, but that’s not exactly true! There are actually a few I’ve been working on, but for various reasons they aren’t quite ready to show off yet. I have slowed down, though—while most of the summer has been unusually mild, the last couple of weeks have been unseasonably HOT! Blechh. I don’t like to sweat! Then I managed to catch a summer cold (that’s got to be an oxymoron), so I’m moving slowly.

One project that went home to a new owner this week was this little table. I’m not certain when this finish was wildly popular, but it wasn’t that long ago!

The owner wanted the dark-top-white-bottom look instead, and I was happy to oblige.

The top was stained with Minwax Antique Walnut stain (3 coats). The base is Behr Ultra paint (color-matched to Sherwin-Williams Creamy), and it is glazed with Minwax Jacobean stain mixed with Martha Stewart glaze.

I really did intend to “stage” the table and take prettier pictures! It turned out getting my hair highlighted (a first for me) took much longer than I anticipated, so there wasn’t time before the owner came to get the table!

So just a couple of shots in my mostly-bare front room.

Thank you

to all of you who have offered constructive ideas for what to do with that bare room! I do think I’m going to attempt the “library-feel” one more time. It probably wasn’t clear that my front door really does open directly into this room—there’s no entry way, and no way to section it off, so a craft room or game room is not an option for me. And I’m afraid knocking out the wall between the front room and our main living area is out of the question—it’s a load-bearing wall, and my construction-minded friends tell me I don’t want to go there!

A couple of you reminded me of the beautiful tiny library space at Maillardville Manor:

…sigh…

I love it. I think this is the kind of look I want to create! I envision the low bookcases and two comfortable chairs on the wall opposite the front door. Next to the front door is the one and only window in the room, and I think a squashy loveseat would be nice there, facing the chairs.

So to begin with, I am scouring the classifieds for a loveseat and chairs! Wish me luck!

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Linking up here.

Spring Market, part 2

Here are a few more pictures from the Spring Market show I participated in this weekend! If you missed part 1, it's here.

Remember my painted signs? I made a few more!

"Frosty Malts" is for my dad...he passed on his love of malt to me!

The "Homemade Ice Cream" sign was another favorite....that one is for my mother, who engendered a love of homemade ice cream in all of her children!

But this sign is also a favorite...I don't suppose you can guess why??

The next sign was made from a bench seat--it's huge! I used an idea from somewhere in blog-land to turn the bottom of a cheese dome into a button! I drilled four holes through the wood, and then threaded twine for the "thread."

This next little table was a real find. It wasn't in too bad of shape, either...there were a few paint splatters on the upholstery and the bench legs. But don't you just LOVE the idea of the two benches that slide in under the table?? What a great way to have extra seating when you need it! I would have loved to have kept this piece, but it was more formal than my home is.

I had been dying to make a clock table, in the style of those Pottery-Barn distressed wall clocks. I found a table with iron legs and a wood top that was perfect for my experiment.

And yes...there are actual metal clock hands on the top! I told a friend of mine what I was doing, and she told me she had seen some huge metal hands at a local consignment shop. I hurried over, and they were PERFECT! I didn't actually attach them to the table; I didn't want them to interfere with dining or game playing...but they look so cool.

I also finished another Farmhouse-style table (you can see others here and here) and four chairs. There are two chairs of each style, but I think they complement each other nicely. The table also has a leaf. Love the claw feet!





Here's a fun little corner. In the back there is a cute pine table I found for $3 at Savers. I finished it with a stained top and a painted bottom like the Pottery-Barn-esque side table. The cute little magazine rack got painted red with a black glaze. I never can get enough red!


Some projects I didn't have to do too much to...the wood on this next little chair was so pretty that I just cleaned it and polished it, and I replaced the seat fabric (it's the same fabric I used for this bench).


Same with this little vanity bench. I cleaned up the wood and re-glued the joints, and then bought a new piece of 3" foam for the cushion (I love the look of the super high seat). It's covered with leftover fabric from my living room curtains!

...and that's not all! Part 3 still to come!

Pottery-Barn-esque Side Table

I picked up this little side table at Deseret Industries a couple of weeks ago. It is solid wood, but the details on the front and back are what really caught my eye.

See?

I put my right-hand-boy to work sanding the top down to bare wood. I like my children to be useful as well as ornamental!

I pulled out the spray paint for this project...it was just handier. The bottom got coated in Rustoleum's Heirloom White. The top got multiple coats of stain and sealer...first I used Minwax English Chestnut, because although I wanted a darker top, I think walnut on pine wood goes kind of....flat. It's just bleeaaaahhhh! But if I use the English Chestnut first, it seems to warm up the color a little...then I put on a coat of walnut stain. For good measure, I then sealed it with Minwax Polyshades, also in Antique Walnut. It's still not my most-favorite product, but it has its uses, like on this table.

So it's better, right? But obviously it needs a little sumpin' to make those details pop...

...So I glazed it with the Polyshades. Never tried that before, but it worked great!

Look at me now!

Love how the top turned out!

I think it looks very Pottery-Barn-esque...what do you think?