My mama's dining room

Saturday mornings in my household are usually hoppin' we have somewhere to be, something to clean up, something to paint, a birthday to celebrate, something to set up or just something. period.  But once in a very blue moon we are free.  So I woke up one Saturday on such a blue moon and me and the hubs went to a garage sale and found a sweet dining room set just for us.  It is THE EXACT same set my mama has had for 25 plus years.  Thomasville shiny cherry wood table with 2 extensions and foam covering, china hutch, and wet bar.  SCORE!!!! Now this might not be your idea of a fantastic dreamy Saturday but for me it was SUCCESS!  Although this set is pretty nice as is, the seat cushions had been left out in the rain and were all mil-dewy and stained.  Apparently there was an ugly divorce and some furniture ended up outside in the rain.. People can be so childish but the silver lining is that I got a sweet set to redo. 

Another one bites the dust!

 

A man was once walking on the beach when he noticed a young child picking up starfish and casting them back into the ocean.  There were hundreds upon the shores and the man thought the effort futile.  He approached the child and said you'll never be able to save them all, there are simply too many.  You can't possibly make a difference.  The young child picked up another starfish and simply said. It made a difference to that one.

So I paraphrased, from memory that fable about everything we do matters to someone. Every effort we make can change something.  Here is my futile effort to change all the depressing brown chunks of furniture into illuminating and inspiring pieces of home! One Brown hutch/armoire/dresser/table at a time!

 

 

 

 

 

Lighten up the bedroom

The 80's orangey oaky furniture strikes again, but we've got it's number.  A little ( okay  A LOT ) of sanding, some stain a can of paint and a can of black spray paint.  This bedroom felt a little small with all of this solid wood chunky furniture.  Just changing the color lightened and brightened and expanded the whole room.   We cleaned up the pulls and sprayed them black and the rest we just painted with Sherwin Williams Creamy white color and used the sander to distress random areas.  The client loves this bedroom set all over again.  Like she did 35 years ago when she first bought it.  So glad it gets an extended life.

Table Remix for a friend

I like working with a client that's also a friend.  In some ways all of my "client" become my friends.  We bond over furniture.  We really do.  This client was a friend first and a client second so we bonded over other things, but then came the remix and now we have new things to bond over.  Okay enough here is the remix.
 Another orangey oak 80's table.  I actually love these.  Ya wanna know why?  Because they turn into the BEST remixes of all.  They have such pretty grainy tops and solid wood.  No dinky sleek hollow legs on the table or chairs. No pressed wood either.  I'm so glad the 80's gave us hairspray legging's great music and orangey oaky tables and chairs.. Here's to you 80's! This friend turned client had a specific set of rules for remixin' which I'm good with.  No floral, and nothing too Poppy  going on with the seat covers.  We went with a cool geometric design and warm colors.  After sanding completely down the top we used a minwax dark walnut stain, personally my very very favorite for table tops and the chairs were a Sherwin Williams black.  I think it turned out beautifully what do you think?

FACE LIFT

Oh honey.  Who did your work?  Veneer is like the furniture 80's version of a bad botched botox job, am I right or am I right?  I mean I think I'm pretty spot on.  By a raise of hands who actually sees veneer and is like "Oh baby I wanna get witcha and take yo pictcha"?  Nobody that's who.  So when me and the hubs were on the hunt and spotted this furniture version of Joan Rivers, we decided to open our hearts and our tool box and give this bad boy a facelift.  First we popped, peeled and scraped that veneer right off.  The tricky part was the leftover glue on the wood.  That was a pain.  We actually couldn't get it all off no matter how much we sanded and no matter how low the grit on the paper was.  But we filed it down so it was pretty smooth.  Next we sanded it.  The top of the dresser was GORGEOUS, once we started sanding the old nasty paint off.

              THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

Okay I just found out, as I was blogging that this MARVELOUS piece of furniture was custom built and the glass piece on top was filled with the lady's grandbabies pictures.  How do I know this?  My dear friend saw this on facebook and messaged me asking where I bought this piece from.  When I told her she proceeded to tell me all about this piece and how it was specially built for her grandma in Hickory, NC in 1968.  So then of course I felt terrible about calling it Joan Rivers, but she said that I could so I kept it in the opening line.  It was a good lesson though.  If you're going to make fun of furniture on social media make sure it's not your friend's grandma's specialty piece.  A lesson I doubt I'll ever have to face again, but I digress.  LOOK again at that wood.  It is so beautiful I can't even stand it.  It's like a zebra.

We used mixwax dark walnut (surprise) it is my favorite and looks good on every single piece. Then covered it with polyurethane and brought out such a beautiful warmth to the top.  I mean just look at that.  Is it not unreal?  The color is a Sherwin Williams sample color and I thought it was emerald green, but when we got home it looked more like Kelly green or a lily pad color, but I still really liked it. I thought about drilling holes and putting gold knobs on the drawers but I decided to leave it as is.

I sure hope it finds a great home after all the hard work that went into this statement piece, but also because knowing the history of it makes it that much more special.

Aging with beauty

This BROYHILL thrift store table, was OVER the HILL.  Probably late 80's early 90's and boring.  Nicely built but blah.  Solid wood but same old same.  Meaning pretty much every single middle class person has had this in their home, their best friends home or their grandmas home... Why?  Because they were beautifully made and solid wood.  There wasn't and isn't anything wrong with this table, other than what I just stated.  

  They're everywhere.  I, myself have redone quite a few of these Broyhill bad boys.  Decorating has come a long way in the sense that it's much more unique than it used to be.  Our parents generation and beyond worked really hard and put their hard earned money into things that were meant to last, like homes, furniture and their children.  Those tables, like those houses were well built and solid, but they were also ALL THE SAME!  So new generations that admire and are humbled by past generations ideals and work ethic pay homage by not chucking that stuff but reimagining it.  We shouldn't keep it just to keep it if it's not "speaking to your style or personality" just to please parents.  If they want us to have it then they should let us also LOVE it.  Here is how I LOVE IT!

After sanding and sanding and then sanding we stained the table top and leaf with minwax dark walnut.  Iooked GAWGEOUS.  We sanded and sanded and sanded the 6 chairs until our hearts content.  Then i got to painting.  And I must say I painted, and painted and painted.  Much more than normal.  I think that because we sanded so much the wood was extremely thirsty and just kept soaking up all of the paint.  So after many many coats and strokes of paint we were happy, then onto reupholstering those beautiful formal chairs. Again they're beautiful, but so formal that most homes can't quite cosmetically accommodate the look and quality of our homes' decorations nowadays. After all the sanding, staining, painting, reupholstering we still had the AGING WITH BEAUTY part to do, which means a little bit more sanding and then finally the makeup... ie: the waxing.  An important part of any beauty regimen is WAXING. I began to wax, and wax and wax. This table was a labor of labor.  Seriously it was hard work but it paid off because it went to a beautiful family of 5 that I just know will enjoy it and let it live on for years to come!

 

 

 

Mismatched.com

This REMIX should be named mismatched.com because they really come from 2 different worlds.  One is a small wooden kitchen table, meant for a nook or sun room.  The chairs are metal and look like they could be sitting outside of a metal looking camper... see what I mean?

But with this table being so tiny these chairs were PERFECT for them to become a great match.  A match made in my garage.  The chairs were dainty enough to go with a dinette and this table had chalk paint on the top so we had to sand the crap out of it to get it back to a blank slate.

I had leftover fabric from one of my chair redo's. SCORE!  I love when I get to reuse a fabric.  I feel so thrifty and economic.  I decided since it was a dinette set to go a little funky with the colors and design.  Hoping for an apartment or condo type place for this beaut.... and that's exactly what I got.  A gal purchased this who moves quite a bit and lives Downtown Charleston and has limited spaced.  A perfect match.

The fabric came from Jo-Ann's and the paint is the Annie Sloan knock of that Lowes sells.  So since I brought it up I'm going to rate it.  NOT WORTH IT.  Great colors, but WAY overpriced and it didn't save me any time at all.  In fact I probably did more layers of paint than usual.  I don't particularly care for chalk paint anyways but I really won't be buying it again.

BlazeRate

Have you ever been on a vacation and googled, or yelped or binged a place to eat?  Well I have and what about buying a new vacuum, or swing set, or gaming device or whatever and before you purchase the item you read the reviews.  Before you stay at a hotel you see the reviews.  But I've often thought to myself.  Most people MOST, only leave reviews when they're ticked, disappointed, or all out for revenge.  That goes for suitcases, cars, restaurants, hotels, etc... we all read reviews.  But if you're a business owner check your company's online presence and you may be surprised about the lack of reviews you have.  No reviews are almost as bad as negative reviews.  This is a new company hitting the online world that will help you not only have more reviews, but also to have online positive presence.  Check out www.blazerate.com

When life mimicks art!.... or PINTEREST

So I have 3 armoires just camping out in my garage, so I thought to myself hmmm maybe I should do something with 1 of these.  So I did a little pinteresting and found something I thought would look great.  Here is my inspiration.

Pretty huh! I thought so. So I mimicked it.  They say that mimickery is the highest form of flattery. This color has been quite the theme for me lately, but it's so bold, masculine, yet neutral.  I'm just basically obsessed with it. The buyers seem to be as well. And the bloggers who made the first one from EMILYCLARK.COM

Here is my version.

I'll be the first to admit the first one looks better, but in my defense the pictures were taken in poor lighting with a camera phone.  So although it's not quite as sharp I still really love it.

 

Never give up on an ugly duck!

 

Never give up on an UGLY DUCK, that's what I always say!  Okay I just made that up but perhaps I should start saying it more often.  I bought this lovely piece from a guy who had a whole junk yard of treasured troves, what's a trove?  I'll look it up

trove

trōv/

noun

noun: trove; plural noun: troves

1. a store of valuable or delightful things.

   "the museum's trove of antique treasure"

 

So apparently I used it correctly.  I purchased this but had no way to get it home.  Keep in mind this fella was about 6ft2 and 250lbs and 50 years old.  He offered to follow me home and deliver it for me.  So.... being impulsive and impatient I said, not reluctantly whatsoever, SURE!  Then my youngest rolled down the window and hollers to the guy. "Hey wanna come over and play xbox wif me?"

Later I realized that this was not a very safe idea, but it's been quite a while and he hasn't come back to kill me so I think I'm in the clear.  This actually sat in my garage for quite some time awaiting my attention which I couldn't find time to give it.  Then after one very long day I pulled into the garage and one of my boys swings open the car door with all his might and cracked the beveled window.  It was okay though, because after I whimpered and moaned about it, I realized it was a fiber glass anyways and wasn't very slightly.  So I just popped it out and guess what, CHICKEN BUTT... Nope, but close CHICKEN WIRE. Yes chicken wire.  Made this look uhmazin' if I do say so myself.

 

 

Pottery Barn desk turned Pottery Barn inspired desk

 

Has anyone else noticed that if you buy anything on Etsy.com or Jane.com or any other outlets the sellers always and I mean ALWAYS say "Anthropology inspired" or "Kate Spade inspired" etc.

So this is an ACTUAL Pottery Barn desk but it's boring and dull and lost an interest it once held in a room.  So we thought we would go and get some inspiration from some of it's cousins, see this desk probably used to be the cool, confident older cousin that occasionally showed up to family functions and when it did everyone would swoon, but then after a while and everyone else got their own identity and rooms to fill with delight this one just couldn't get out of the glory days.  So I talked to a few of it's family members and we decided it was time to go on to bigger and better things and that it was okay to change and evolve.  So here it is, This original Pottery Barn desk reinspired!  Whatya think?  I think it's ready for the family reunion!

 

 

 

Greek Key lime pie, I mean Greek key design

Short story here.  12$ for this pair of office looking chairs.  I thought they could be more of a patio look so I went Jo'anne's and purchased this glorious fabric with the Greek Key design. I think it was actually called Ladybug Key design, which makes little sense to me.  You know what else makes little sense... is when you work your rear off trying to make sure your remix is perfect and then the buyer shows up and says... this is going to be a great project piece for me, I'm going to redo the fabric!!! OH, YAY, WAIT WHAT???? That was the majority of my cost lady?  Oh well, I made money on it but wowzas whata waste of my efforts.