A dining room buffet makeover

I've recently done a few pieces of furniture that I have for sale in a beautiful antique blue colour that I absolutely love. 
My buffet and shutters in my dining room needed a makeover so I mixed up a batch of my homemade chalk paint and got busy.

 

The shutters had been painted in a green that matches my backsplash but that needs a makeover as well .
My wonderful daughter in law gave me the buffet recently,  but it was dated and in desperate need of a pick me up.








 
I use this area for storage and a coffee bar to save space in my tiny kitchen.

First I got some help from hubby to lift  the buffet onto my work table and  remove all the drawers and doors. I had no intentions of being  belly to floor with a paint brush in hand trying to paint the bottom edges.

After a good wash to remove any grease and cleaning agents I got busy painting.  This is the outside after the first coat. It only needed 2 coats because this paint has awesome coverage.

I wanted to paint the inside as well. I will be using this piece a lot and the lighter colour will make it easier to find things.   And to be honest it will inspire me to keep it tidier as well :)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 Much better.

 

 

 

 

I took the handles off the doors and raised them off the work surface by setting them on a few plastic bowls.  I painted the hinges because I didn't want them to stand out.

 

 

I painted the body  with a lighter shad of the blue, by adding 1 part blue to 3 parts white.  I used the full  blue for the top of the buffet, the door fronts and the shutters and shelf.

 

I got the mirror at a yard sale a few weeks ago and thought it would look good here. 

 




I only reused one set of shutters instead of the solid shutter wall I had before.

 

Here's the buffet all finished. After painting I gave it two coats of paste wax to protect it.

 I really want to get new  handles, but can't find ones I like so for now I will use the originals.

 

 I've decorated with a few of the items I had on the shutters and shelf from before.  

 

I don't quite think I'm done with this yet. 

 

 

 

I love these little glass jars I got at a yard sale.   And of course a chocolate and a vanilla candle will make everything smell awesome as well.

 

 

Just a bit of what's on the top shelf.  The tins were my grandmothers. The dark blue tin always had buttons in it and the light blue one still has a little label on the lid that says ribbons and bows.  Memories of grandma's sewing room at the end of her hallway linger with the tins

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And of course I love the old mason jars, one is a Ball and the smallest is a Crown .











I have a small collection of old wooden rolling pins and a few pieces of old style kitchen tools.  I'm considering the shutters as a display area if I can find a new home for the old family photos. And maybe a nice large piece of subway art between the shutters. What do you think?









WOW!   I'm not even done with this project and I'm already trying to figure out how to change it up. Oh well. It's really a lot better than it was.  I'm really happy with the buffet and that was my main goal here. I love having the extra storage space too.  All in all  I think it was a well spent weekend.



Bye for now ... and have a good day everyone.
 

Little desk and message center.

I can't wait to show you the  message center in the corner of my kitchen .. It didn't start out as a planned project,  but for some reason it just ended up as the perfect pairing.  Does that happen to you too?  Things just seem to go together naturally.

First I fell in love with this little yard sale desk set.  It's very petite by todays standards, but it's the regular height of a modern desk and chair. It was made in the early 1900's long before we needed extra space for all of our electronics. Back then people still wrote letters .





It had some little scratches  on the desk top and the chair was broken at the top cross bar.  A little Gorilla glue fixed up the chair and the hole was filled with some wood filler and sanded.

 
 
 
Just look at this seat,  its hideous.  It is definitely going to need an update.

I painted this set in my favorite (right now) colour, and after a little distressing and wax I thought  it was looking quite beautiful. 

 

 

And the damage on the chair? Can't even tell where it was.

 

 

Isn't this a pretty colour? It's no wonder I'm hooked on it right now.  :)  It's such an improvement over the dark brown finish and those horrible harvest gold flowers. 

 

 

Take a look at this stash of stuff again. Do you see those rectangle shaped trays piled on the desk. There are four of them and they are truly ugly, and cheaply made. 

 

 

 

A coat of blackboard paint and some paint on the boarder to match the desk set and look at them now. It's cool how you can turn almost anything into a blackboard now.

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
There were four of them so I labeled them according to what I needed most.  I actually missed  a shower invite on the weekend which inspired one of the labels. I won't forget another invite again.

 

And here they are in their new space, doing a wonderful job of keeping me organized ...... If that's possible. Just enough room inside for my daycare schedule and a phone book.

 

Of course all my pieces are for sale, but I won't be too sad if this one doesn't go for a long time.

 

 

Bye for now.... and have a great day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Giving an end table new life.

Last weeks treasures post had a picture of this really great mid century, barrel shaped end table. It was one of the reasons I was so thrilled about my finds. Every thing I picked up that day was really good but this was a perfect jewel. Except for the finish.

 

 

It had such beautiful details on the bottom edge and on the legs, as well as such pretty little feet.

 

 

 

The door has this great chicken wire detail along with just the perfect hardware.  I absolutely fell in love.  It went straight to my work room from the truck. All it needed was the perfect colour.

 

 

I started by removing the hardware and giving the whole piece inside and out a good wash with some vinegar and water.

I mixed one part blue paint with three parts of white and made up my chalk paint mixture.

Then I painted the inside with the lightened blue. Have I said how much I love this colour of blue.  Once the inside was dry I gave the outside, including the chicken wire, a coat of this lightened blue mixture.  It's easy to paint the wire but you must use very little paint on the brush to keep it from clumping up.

Once it was completely dry, about an hour, I gave it a second coat of paint.  The main part was the light blue mix, and the door and top were painted with the original blue. The finishing touch was a coat of natural paste wax. And of course the hardware.

 

 What do you think?  Isn't she beautiful? 

 

Using 3 parts white with one part of the original colour makes it easy to do any piece in a two tone like this.  There is never any worry of the two colours not going together.

 Because the chalk paint mixture is porous it takes the paste wax really well and buffs up to a nice soft shine.

 













Bye for now... and have a great day.

Cabinet makeover

 

Sometimes things  just come together, even when there isn't a plan.  That's what happened with these two pieces.

A few years ago my hubby was given this cabinet from someone remodeling a cottage. 
I used it for toy storage in the playroom for quite a while, but since we moved here its just been in the office collecting dust. 
Its really solid so I couldn't part with it.




It was pretty beat up but would make a fabulous liquor  cabinet  change table   games storage  well you get the idea.  
See the  beautiful grey plush lining.
I finally decided to just go ahead and paint it.  






I dug it out of the office and cleaned it up with some water and vinegar. 
I gave it two coats of my home made chalk paint. 
Its a nice grey/blue that I think goes well with the lining.  
I think it makes a  nice liquor cabinet.  But... its just nice.






Then last week I found this book case at a yard sale.  It had long been forgotten, was covered in dust and grime, but had both the shelves and a really nice shape. 
After a good clean up and patching a few missing bits with wood filler, I decided it needed the same paint as the cabinet. 









Even before I was done painting I new both pieces were going to go together perfectly. 

So was I right?    I think so.













Now  I have to  decide what to put in it. :)


Bye for now... and have a good day everyone.

Yard Sale Love

Last  weekend I realized  I haven't been out  to a single yard sale this  year.  I love yard sales but I usually come home with stuff I don't really need.   After doing  my dresser over with chalk paint, and  loving the finished project, I thought  I'd look  for  some other  things  I could do over. I'd give  myself  a spending limit of $20 and  see  what I could come up with. So  here are the finds from  my first two trips out.

Here's the first batch from last weekend.  I picked up a crib head and foot board plus a stack of bar trays at   one stop, then just when I  thought I was done for the day, I turned onto our  road and found  this perfect little writing  desk  at  a neighbours  yard sale .  Considering my  $20 weekly spending budget I think I did pretty darn good on this  trip.

So far I've turned one of the crib pieces into  a nice chalkboard. and I'm  almost done the desk set,  though the chair still  needs to have   the seat covered.   I'll show  that on another  post when it's finished.


This long weekend has been fabulous so far.  Lovely weather, not too hot or too cold.  A bit of rain, but the garden wants it so that's good.  And a ton of  yard sales. 

This is my haul..  Two plant stands, a ladder back chair, a child's rocker, and a bookshelf. That's the shelves leaning inside.  All solid wood pieces with great potential.. I can't wait to see how they turn out.  And.. I only spent $18.   I'm wondering, does that mean I get to add  the change to  next weeks budget.  hmmm.

I can't wait to transform these into something that can be loved again so I went to the paint store  and got some ooops paint. These  are paints that have been mixed wrong and the customer didn't want so they are on sale. You can get them very cheap. 

I   put the colours  I got onto the  paint stick here.

So  its on to the next step.. deciding what colour to use :) The childs rocker is screaming little girl peach. Lets see what happens.

Bye for now and have a great day everyone.

Little round table

I picked a little round table up at a fundraiser  sale recently and had no idea what to do with it.  I went to the sale because it was for the Minden flood relief fund.  See the flood here. 

I thought it was kinda cute and I could imagine it having been a little accent table in someone's farm house for many years.  I hated to see it go to the dumpster, which was the fate of whatever didn't go at this particular sale. At a loss for what I was going to do with it, it just sat in the back room  at home for about a month.

Then last weekend I did the dresser makeover in my last post. Now feeling like a pro, I decided I could fix up this little gem with what I had on hand.


Here  she is with the top missing when I first pulled it out of the back room.
Notice that the vinyl is still intact on the bottom shelf. I actually think it was the aqua colour on the legs that attracted me in the first place.






I tore off the vinyl on the bottom shelf and painted the legs and metal trim with my homemade chalk paint. The colour is called Cucumber Lift.  It's a very pretty green. The lighting in the picture doesn't show it really well. The chalk paint covered the metal as well.

I sat the table aside to dry for  a bit and cut a few pieces of this wallpaper to fit. It's got a vinyl finish, so it will wipe clean and not be ruined if something spills on it. You can't see it in this picture but the paper has a thin blue stripe in the mix that is almost the same colour as the paint.



I glued the paper to the table with some gorilla glue. I wanted to make sure there would be no curling up at the edges.  Then I gave the whole thing a couple of coats of paste wax.

And here is the finished table.  I think she is really sweet, considering how bad she looked before.  I intend to use it as a night table in my guest room.  It's big enough to hold a lamp, clock and a book.  A nice little basket on the bottom shelf would be the perfect place to keep a few things people might forget at home. 

It makes me happy to know I saved her from the dumpster and now she can last another lifetime here in her new home.


Bye for now, and have a good day everyone.



 

Chalk paint Dresser

This weekend I decided to try my hand at something new.  I've had this old dresser for about six months now that I bought really cheap at a local shop  that carries everything used. When I say everything I mean everything.  It's my first stop whenever I need something because I think reusing someones previously loved item is always better  than going new .

This is what the dresser looked like before I started working on it. The top was completely scratched and banged up. It had different colours of paint spilled on it and it actually looked like it had been used as a worktable in someones garage.

It was a well made wood piece and was really solid. All the drawers worked good with little sticking. It was the perfect piece of furniture for a makeover.

I've been seeing a ton of before and afters recently that were done with chalk paint that looked really nice.  I decided to make my own chalk paint because one..it's really expensive and two... I just had to see if it would work. 
I had a part can of latex paint leftover from a previous project and to this I added  some plaster of paris mixed with water. I shook it all together in a large jar and I had my own chalk paint. Too easy.

I started by taking out all the drawers and washing everything down with some vinegar and water. Then I used a palm sander to remove a little of the flaking varnish that was on the top and the fronts of the drawers. Apparently you don't need to sand or prime when you use chalk paint but this dresser actually had loose flaking bits. I only sanded where it was absolutely necessary.


Once it was cleaned up I  painted all the pieces.  I was really surprised at how good the paint covered. The whole thing only needed a couple of coats and it dried really fast so I could keep working without waiting for pieces to dry.




I decided to paint the back as well so it wouldn't always have to be pushed tight against the wall. 







The piece needed some distressing to get the pretty shabby chic look I was going for so I got the sandpaper and started taking off   some of the paint on the drawer fronts and a few spots on the top. 





Once I was  happy with it I added a finishing coat.  For this I used Minwax finishing paste wax.  There are 2 coats overall and a third coat on the top. It added a really nice soft shiny look.

Next I couldn't decide what to do with the hardware.  I looked at some new handles but couldn't find anything like the original ones so I bought some spray paint and thought I'd refinish them. 
I started cleaning them up  with some sandpaper and realized they were really pretty brass. No way was I painting over them.

 
 
 
 
 
This picture shows what the handles looked like before and then after I spent a good amount of time with a sandpaper sponge taking off all the gunge.  What a transformation. I was well worth the effort though, nothing else would have looked this good.

I love how the dresser looks now that it is all finished, and now that I'm done I don't know why I was afraid to try this before. I rate this a complete success, in fact I think the chalk paint is my new favorite thing.

 

 

 

Bye for now and have a great day everyone.