art deco highboy with nightstand

Happy Halloween everybody!  I hope you had a fun night with the kiddies either trick-or-treating or handing out candy.  As per our tradition, we sat on our rocking chairs on the porch (with our drinky drinks!) handing out candy.  We got a lot of kids this year and it was fun seeing all the adorable wee ones dressed up ;)

So this set was a fun set to paint!  I tried out my newest ASCP colour 'Napoleonic Blue' and love it!  It's such a rich masculine colour.  The dresser was previously painted brown and I thought it would be the perfect colour to show through the distressing.  I picked up some fairly hefty knobs (hefty in price too!) for these two pieces.  I think they were worth the money as the colour of the pieces required some strong looking knobs. 

Here they are ('before' pictures are at the end of each):

Before:

Before:

*SOLD*

Cheers,

xo Tanya

cottage dresser

This cottagy dresser was one of the pieces I reclaimed from our furnished suite once our tenant moved out.  It was hard to put it into the suite when we first purchased it but alas, I have it now!  I've painted it in one of my favorite colours Duck Egg Blue ASCP over Pure White.  I painted a beautiful wardrobe that Matt and I purchased for our entry way (100 year old house = no closets!) exactly the same and I LOVE it.  I'll show you pictures one day.

Here she is:

Before:

*SOLD*

xo Tanya

art deco lowboy

This project was an interesting one.  I've had this dresser for a few years and I always knew there was some fun green paint hiding under the white.  When I got around to working on it I decided to simply sand to reveal the green paint and leave it super distressed looking.  After giving the whole dresser a sand to get the white glossy oil based paint off I found that it was such a thin layer of green that as I was sanding one area, the edges of the sander were taking off the green I'd just revealed in other areas.  Not a big prob though as it was a nice soft yellow underneath the green.  I decided to give the whole dresser a coat of Old White ASCP to get a less patchy look.

Patchy:

Then I sanded off the Old White where I wanted the green to show through.  I lined the drawers and I found these great milky green mint knobs at Lee Valley that match the green paint perfectly.  Honestly, I would have liked more green showing (I'd wanted it to be mostly green) but although it looks a bit different than I originally intended, it turned out to be a fun and unique piece!

*SOLD*

xo Tanya

cottage coffee table

This cute little coffee table (or bench) was a recent estate sale find.  My fiance Matt and I were in the U.S. on a day trip and were heading back for the border when we saw the estate sale sign at the last minute.  Matt screeched (well, almost!) to a stop and made the turn.  He's a real trooper and is actually a great partner in rummaging.  He knows exactly what my taste in junk is and often finds the good stuff before I do!  About a year and a half ago (I'm getting side-tracked here but!) his co-worker's dad moved from his house into an assisted living home. His entire house and garage were being emptied and things were going to friends, donation or to the dump.  Matt helped his buddy out with the sorting/moving and was offered a chance to look through 'the goods'.  He came home with two car fulls of 'rusty gold'!  He brought home crates, old tool boxes with chippy paint, galvanized buckets and watering cans, old gardening tools, tins, old yardsticks...even an anvil!  Let's just say I was squealing like a little kid on Christmas morning!

Okay, back on track.  The table was originally forest green with a beige top - not a fan of the forest green!  I painted it up, distressed and waxed it and now it's fresh and light and a real cutie ;)

Unfortunately I forgot to take a before pic...it would've been a good one, but here she is now:

*SOLD*
 
Have a good one!

xo Tanya

duncan phyfe dining set

Ever have one of those projects?  You get half way through then get frustrated and 'put it on the shelf' to move onto new fun projects - like using chalk paint and wax for the first time!  Well this is one of those projects.  Today's furniture reveal is a beautiful black Duncan Phyfe dining set.  It includes a solid wood drop-leaf table, 1 additional leaf and 4 Duncan Phyfe dining chairs.  I started this set a looong time ago...11 months to be exact and it sat in my workspace and eventually became my work table while the chairs sat in my front room, seat-less, taking up space!

I had originally finished the table top with a water-based varnish.  If any of you have worked with water-based varnish then you know how finicky it can be (Jen!).  When you have a big area to cover, it can be difficult to get the varnish on without bubbles, spots where you've over brushed, or lines where you've started and stopped a stroke.  Well I ended up with start and stop lines.  I sanded and re-varnished, sanded and re-varnished only to end up with the lines still showing through.  Hence the reason I set this aside for so long!

When I finally picked the project back up recently, I had to sand off all the varnish and all the paint so I could start over...this time ditching the varnish and choosing to finish it with clear wax...SO MUCH EASIER to work with on a large surface! Varnish (I use satin finish) has a shinier, harder look to it.  It's a really nice finish but lately I prefer working with wax which has a soft satiny appearance and can be buffed to a shine or left to look more matte.  Any scratches that might occur on a waxed surface can be buffed out.

I'm finally happy with how the table looks and would love to keep it.  The flexibility of a drop leaf table with an additional leaf is great...but alas, I'm still in love with my 7 1/2 foot long 'Last Super' table! (as my friend Jeremy calls it!).

Enough said...here's the set:

*SOLD*

xo Tanya