The Tale of the New Chairs

May 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

It all started when a patient at the office I work at let me know that he was moving soon, and had a lot of furniture to sell. Seeing as how I’m all about furniture finds, I said “Let’s see what ya got!”.  He scrolled through photos which were conveniently on his iPhone,  when two items struck my fancy. One was a solid wood 100 year old rocking chair, and the other was a vintage Danish modern recliner. The rocking chair was so my style, and the recliner was totally Andrew to boot. The next question, how much? The recliner was priced at 150 (WHICH IS A STEAL!) and the rocking chair was 100 dollars. Knowing Andrew would want to take the recliner home instantly, I figured we would put the rocking chair on the back burner. Since he has let me paint the dining room pink, the hallway orange, and hang a very girly chandelier in the bathroom – I figured it was only fair that he get his manly modern chair.  I had Jon send on over the pictures of the recliner so I could show Andrew, and we set up a time to take a look at it on Saturday.

The moment I showed Andrew the pictures, he was in love. When we headed over to Jon’s house on Saturday, we were so happy to find out that the recliner was in as good condition as the pictures showed. It’s been in his family for years, when it was brought over from Denmark.  He even fought his family tooth and nail for it since the back of the chair was tall enough for him.  But, he’s finally moving to be with his wife, and they have a much smaller place so downsizing was necessary. We took a tour of the other furniture he wanted to get rid of, and I saw the glorious rocking chair. I then sat in rocking chair, and proceeded to fall more in love with rocking chair.

This is when complete and utter magic happened.  Jon offered to sell us both pieces for a mere 100 dollars.

DID THE SKY JUST OPEN AND THE GODS FALL UPON US?

Apparently so.  He was just so thrilled to pass the furniture along to someone who will really love the pieces, and appreciate them.  Especially since they were apart of his family for so long.   (Insert happy day jig here.)

Now with the two chairs in our house, it’s a matter of trying to figure out where to put everything.  As you might have suspected from other posts, we don’t have the largest of house so really try to maximize what we have. First, I thought the recliner should go in the bedroom since the upholstery is a dark gray and will go with the gray blue scheme.  But when we put it in there, there was not enough room to recline.  Hmm, strike one.

We then moved it into the living room, and relocated the two antique chairs we restored. That option really didn’t work out that much better either.  Strike two. We sat on the couch slightly defeated, desperately trying to figure out where to put the recliner so that it was comfy for all parties involved.  Sitting on the couch was the best idea we could have had, because it dawned on us to just move the couch!  And then the coffee table….and then the end table.  Third time was the charm!

Basically the whole house got rearranged because of this recliner.  Can you tell it was completely worth it?

Recliner

Milo Baughman

Furniture

And my beautiful rocking chair has found home in the dining room, since Columbia can’t mess with it too much in there.

Antique

Did you have any amazing finds this weekend?

P.S –  Now with the recliner, I am constantly seeing Andrew in a state of sleep.

Filed Under: Furniture Tagged With: , , ,

The Final Result

March 27, 2012 by 53 Comments

It’s here! The final result of the very long refinishing of our dresser!  I left off yesterday leaving the dehumidifier on to help speed up the drying process of our primer coat.  What I failed to do was take pictures in the painting process. Ooops.  But look at that internet magic!  Voila!  The dresser in painted in this next photo.  Sometimes it is just so hard to document everything via photograph when you are so eager to get the process going.  I have to remind myself constantly to take pictures, because when I’m working…I’m working!  No interruptions, please!

Drawer refinish

So happy with how the paint came out, that’s for sure.   No brush strokes here!  The only thing we did have to contend with is how the roller did add a little texture to the dresser.  But, the more I look at it…the more I like it.  It gives the piece a little more depth than what I would expect.   Or, I could just be saying that to cover up the fact that we probably should have gone with a different type of roller.   Eh…No! I really like it!   Before we coated it with any polycrylic, I wanted to make sure we drilled the holes for the new hardware.  That way, if we made a mistake – it would be easier to patch.

Drawer Pulls

Can I get a “Ooooh” and a “Aahhh”?  I love this hardware!  I thought about going with the clear glass knobs and pulls, but I thought the brushed nickel made much more of a statement against the white.  Plus, it matches our hooks we have behind our door so ya can’t beat that!

Ryobi

To get started on marking the holes, we used the Liberty guide (the same brand as the handles) to help us mark the distance between each side of the pull.   We also used the Ryobi Air Grip Laser Level to ensure the marks we made for placement will all line up.   Using the level made things so much easier to insure things were straight vertically, as well as horizontally.    Once we were sure the holes were properly marked, Andrew went to town with his drill, and his drill bit.

Hole Drilling

Just look at him go!  Drill! I won’t lie. I was pretty nervous during this part, because I was really didn’t feel like going back and patching up any mishaps that may occur.   By the time the drill got going, I knew I had about 4 hours left of me to care about this project.  Yes, that’s right – things like this can be exhausting!  Sure, I know the outcome will be worth it.  But, there are just some weekends where I wish I was on the couch, this was one of them.  Moral of the story?  Andrew didn’t mess up at all and the drilling came out perfect!  No nerves needed!

Dresser refinish

But….this little predicament didn’t help speed up our rehab process.  The screws provided with the knobs were too long for the top drawer.  Andrew tried to trim it down with bolt cutters, but the thread never lined up right with the inside of the knob.   Andrew had to make a quick pit stop at Lowe’s to get four shorter screws once he realized his bolt cutter theory just wasn’t jivin’.

Proper Handles

Also, remember how earlier I mentioned the fact that I’m terrible at taking photos when I’m in the zone?  Well, that strikes again because I failed to keep a photo log of our trials and tribulations of the water-based polycrylic.   The most tedious of tribulations really only stemmed from the fact that our can of polycrylic was about a year and a half old.   It had a wee bit of ick floating on the top.  But, once we took off that first coat of skim – we were good to go!  So now, I present to you what our chest of drawers looked like before…

Wood furniture restoration

And….AFTER!!

Wee! Doesn’t it just look amazing?  I completely adore it in the room.   The room now feels so much more open having the chest of drawers utilizing that wall, rather than having a dresser that takes up too much room.

As you can see, I’ve already dolled it up with a few little accents.  I bought those glass pieces from Ikea as well as that metal try.   The contents in the glass vases are from Target.  Love the mixture of blue, white, and beige.

Dresser

Isn’t the contrast just gorgeous?  Love it.  I can only imagine how amazing it’ll look up against the grey paint I picked out for the room itself.

Get it?

Are you loving the yarn letters?  Especially since put together our initials are JA.  Jonathan Adler much?  Awesome!  I’ll be posting later this week  about how I made those cute little decorations for hardly any money!

So, what do you all think of the new and improved dresser?

Love,

J and A

Filed Under: Furniture, Projects

The Case of the Chest of Drawers

March 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Back in January, I wrote about how I failed miserably at trying to paint a chest of drawers for our bedroom.  Then, in the beginning of March – the project was brought back to life.  To bring you up to speed in case you don’t have the time to go back and relive our mishaps – I’ll break it down for you.

November:  Sand, prime, paint.  End result = terrible.  Brush strokes and a rough surface make Jessica a cranky girl.

January – February:  Pretend like it never happened, and let the dresser rot in the garage.

March:  Bust out orbital sander, and sand away all of my mistakes.

And that’s the readers digest version.

With the sanding all done, it was time to get started on phase two, which is priming.  But, before we could get started on that – we had to get every last saw dust off the furniture.   This is where Andrew’s air compressor came in handy!

Air Compressor

When Andrew said he wanted an air compressor for Christmas, I didn’t really understand why other than to inflate my tire every once in a while.  Using it to remove the dust from the sander completely made me fall in love with this thing.  Sure, its loud – but so is Andrew once he’s got a few beers in him.  Can’t hold him, or the air compressor accountable for noise levels.  Once we had it all cleaned off, we moved it into the house to paint in.   We figured the office was our best bet since there is a fan, two windows, and we can roll the dehumidifier in there to maximize dry time.   I just really hate painting outside too.

Chest of Drawers

Columbia was excited that we brought the project into the house, mostly because she now has a new place to hang out.   (She is currently laying on 36 rolls of toilet paper from Sam’s Club.  She loves new hangs out.  If you have Instagram, follow me to see! The username is vintagemauve. Okay…moving on…) Once she exited the drawer, and moved on to bigger and better things – we got to the final wipe down with a little mineral spirits.

Wipe down

Happy little cleaner.  Note the rags.  They came from CVS after 4th of July last year.  By the time we got them, they were marked down 90% and we got to use his discount.  I honestly think CVS paid us to get them, they were so cheap.   And they are perfect for random little projects like this.   Once the mineral spirits dried, we got to priming.  We used Zissner’s Oil Based Cover Stain.  I did a lot of reading before we got started, and read that Zissner’s was the best in blocking any wood stain that could seep through.   Last time, I made sure to mix in Penetrol to cut the possibility of any brush strokes, but it didn’t help all that much.  This time around, I mixed in a little more Penetrol into the oil based primer and opted to use a foam roller on the flat surfaces.

Front

Furniture Refinish

Feels so good to get that first coat of primer rolled on.  The consistency is smooth, so I know that the rest of the paint will roll on nicely on top.   Now, instead of spending the rest of the day watching paint dry, we rolled the dehumidifier in and set it to continuous.

Bedroom Refinish

Check back tomorrow to see the progress!

Love,

J and A

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