round french provincial coffee table

Today I have a very pretty and feminine french provincial coffee table to show you.  I painted her in 'Paris Grey' ASCP, distressed, and finished with clear wax.  She's vintage, very sturdy, a nice substantial size with a pretty scalloped edge, curvy legs and 'swirly' feet.  An elegant table just for the ladies I think...unless your man is tolerant of the feminine touch?!

I refinished the top on this one two times.  Originally I had some fairly heavy distressing on the top in a few places but it just wasn't doing it for me.  I decided to re-paint and add very fine distressing on the top, but there is some heavier distressing on the rest (I needed to have a little fun!). I have a nice heavily distressed piece on my mind right now though so prepare for something oozing with character soon!

Here are the after pics (no before shot on this one unfortunately):

*SOLD*

Cheers,

xo Tanya

'Arles' yellow book tables

These are a couple of vintage book tables I completed a little while ago.  I particularly like the  cute little one with four legs.  Right now I'm using that one in our family room to house books and for our sound dock to sit on.  Both tables are painted in 'Arles' yellow ASCP and finished with clear wax.

Book table no. 1:

Book table no. 2 (I remembered 'before' pics for this one!):

After:

Before:

I'm humming and hawing about whether or not to sell these little guys.  I've grown fond of the one in our family room so I may consider just selling No. 2.  Or, I may do a switcheroo in the room and use both as end tables.  They go nicely with our charcoal grey sofa.  We'll see ;)

xo Tanya

a writing desk

This little writing desk is another piece I refinished to match the Paris Grey girl's bedroom suite (HERE) from a couple of posts ago.  The legs on the desk match those on the dresser so I thought it would fit in nicely with the set.  I also papered the drawer to match the drawers in the bedroom suite.  I lucked out and had some fabric in my stash that matched Paris Grey perfectly so I recovered this pretty vanity chair to go along with the desk (may be purchased separately). Without the chair the desk could also be used as a console table.

I forgot to take before pics (again) but here are the afters:

  

 

  

 

 

 

Click HERE for measurements and pricing. *SOLD*

xo Tanya

my own studio!

After three and a half years (since we moved into our house) our tenant and good friend Zac moved out :(  He moved back to Ontario where he's originally from.  He moved into our suite when he arrived in BC after a drive across Canada.  Snowboarding is what he seeked and what better place than the Vancouver area with it's three local mountains, and Whistler under a two hour drive away.  He turned out to be a really great tenant and a good friend over the past years and we are sad to see him go.

After unsuccessfully finding a good tenant for September 1st or 15th, we got to thinking about my cramped dining room studio/front room storage area.  I can only work on two pieces maximum at a time because of my lack of space.  Due to the need for things to dry for a few hours or overnight, that doesn't add up to a full day's work.  I could be doing much more at a time if I had more space.  So...I'm moving my studio into our suite!  Yay!!!  Come Saturday I'll have a big room for refinishing, a kitchen for clean up/storage, and a bedroom for staging photos and storing finished pieces.  And...that means we reclaim two rooms in our house...which means we get to move our extra sofa out of our cramped family room (our new sofa went on sale for a great price so we had to scoop it up despite not having the space for it).  This will all be on a trial basis for three months to make sure the move pays off but I'm feeling like it will turn out well.

That's my big news of the week!  I hope you all had a great week with maybe a little good news of your own ;)

Stay tuned for the reveal of some new pieces!

xo Tanya

elegant accent table and 'Antionette' deco vanity

How was your end-of-summer-vacation/beginning of the school year?  Without kids there's not much of a transition over here.  It seems like a really busy time for parents though!  Hope all went smoothly and for those of you who sent off a wee one to their first day of school, I hope there weren't too many tears for you!

Today I want to show you a few pieces I've completed in the last little while.  First off is an adorable shabby-chic art deco vanity.  This baby took a lot of work!  The finish was flaking off all over the place and I had to spend a fair amount of time sanding it completely off.  Even Annie Sloan paint couldn't save me from that sanding!  After the first coat of water-based Zinsser 1-2-3 primer that I normally use, I saw that the wood tannin and water marks had seeped through.  For the first time ever I picked up an oil-based primer (Kilz) to do the job.  I prefer working with all water-based products but as a furniture re-finisher you're bound to come across a stubborn piece now and again and sometimes only oil-based can do the job.  If anyone has found another way around using oil-based for these situations, please let me know!  In the end, the work was all worth it though.

Before:

Next is a little side/accent table with elegant splayed legs that I finished about a month ago.  I meant to restyle it with some colour and retake the pics before showing it to you but I haven't gotten around to it!  The table has been packed into my front room with several other finished pieces so it's not really accessible.  That's my excuse ;)

I've been thinking lately of trying out some graphic transfers.  I love the look of them but haven't attempted it yet.  There are so many different methods that I've been thrown off a bit.  Some methods look fairly easy and some not so much!  The final result seems to look good no matter which way it's done though (at least on the computer they do).  I think this table could use a little something extra and it would be the perfect candidate for my experiment don't you think?  I'll keep you posted!

Before:

Elegant Accent Table:  *SOLD*
Antoinette Deco Vanity:  *SOLD*

That's it for today!  Have a good one ;) 

xo Tanya