Weathered Turquoise Night Stands

It felt so good to do these pieces with their wonderful imperfections.  Lately I have been doing so many pieces with no distressing that I really need a perfect finish in order to get the 'look' I'm going for.  So when I picked up this three piece set (9 drawer pictures to follow) I thought,  'Im blowing the dust off the orbital and doing some serious distressing'.

 



 
Its not that distressing pieces is easier...it can take a long time to distress, particularly if you are doing it by hand, but its just a little less worrisome because if there is a little flaw in the finish you don't have to worry and redo it.  I actually just recently finished a nine drawer in that deep blue cobalt colour I have been using a lot lately and I think in total I did 8 coats on the top.  I kept having problems getting a perfect finish, and then I had trouble with my polyurethane topcoat looking streaky and I just wasn't happy with it.  8, maybe 9 coats later I finally nailed it.  Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? 

 
These beauties only took two coats.  Much easier.  I used Cottage Paint chalkpaint I had in a cream colour and I added some tint to get this blue-based turquoise. I painted it on roughly, deliberately missing parts here and there as it would make distressing easier later.

 
I used wax on these because there is a strong oak grain.  I am not a huge fan of wax, I find it really streaky, but as I have mentioned before I don't mind using it on weathered looking pieces, I also don't mind using it on 'oak' furniture as it doesn't look as streaky over the strong oak grain.

 
I did all of my sanding before waxing. I like a good dust storm.  I did wear a protective mask to save the lungs though.  I used the orbital on some parts, and used a piece of coarse sand paper on others and did it by hand.

 
Some of the nice oak grain.

 

 
The before.

Blue and Gold Frenchie

This was such a lovely French piece.  I knew I wanted to go for a bold look with it. I used a cobalt blue combined with gold hardware.  The pictures make the blue look much brighter than it actually is.  I have used this colour several times in previous posts, I don't think I quite captured the settings correctly on my camera for this one.

 

Im feeling a little bit under the weather today..so I am just going to let the pictures speak for themselves.  Happy weekend.

the before

Changing tables..not the baby kind

Sometimes I think Mr. Chuckles wants to kill me.  Not in the Ben Affleck 'Gone Girl' kind of way - which I must say was a fantastic read - and a surprisingly excellent movie too.  I read the book alone late, one weekend last year when Mr. Chuckles was in Las Vegas for a bachelor weekend.  By three am my eyes were drooping and I was fidgety as all heck; jumping at every little sound I could hear in the house - I think I even managed to put the cat on edge.  When the movie came out my BFF and I were both so keen to see it that it didn't occur to us that lots of other people were keen to see it too.  We got to the theatre all casual only to discover something called pre-reserved seating. Long story short we watched it from the first row.  The ride home was a little difficult as neither of us could point our necks in a position suitable for driving.

 

 
But back to Mr. Chuckles, no, he doesn't want to kill me that way, he just wants to kill me in the "stop bringing new/used furniture home you crazy lady don't you realize we live in a townhouse and don't have room for it", kind of way.  This dining table here is the third dining table we have had in the past year.   Its no surprise why I love mcm furniture.  Its really trendy at the moment and it features a lot in my make overs.  So a year ago we had an awesome vintage teak set in excellent condition (see picture below). BUT - I didn't LOVE the chairs, there were six of them (we only have room in the kitchen for four), and they didn't have the iconic mcm wingback look. 

 
So when I found this set below about 8 months ago, I bought it, lugged it home, refinished the top of the table and recovered the chairs (only four of them), and forced Mr. C to love it unconditionally.  He just rolled his head and exhaled through clench teeth.

 

But I didn't stop there, no ma'am, because although I liked that set, I didn't love it as much as the one I was staring at on the Craigslist screen 5 months later. These chairs sat lower, had an even larger curve to the wingback, and had a neat little detail underneath the seat.  'Hey, Chuck,' I called with a nervous chirp 'How would you feel about a new/used dining set?'.   No, just kidding, I didn't even tell him.  He just came home from hockey one night to find it all slumped in the corner of the garage.  'Honey, I have a surprise for you!' I called from the couch wearing nothing but his tie (Pretty Woman may have been a prostitute, but she got a few things right).

 
I'm not going to lie, Chuckles wasn't laughing that day.  He measured his stance, took a deep breath through quivering nostrils, and with clipped tones informed me that in his unprofessional opinion I needed to be institutionalized.  'Oh, calm down.' I retorted, 'we all need to have a hobby!'.

 
I chose not to refinish this set.  It is in decent condition, but there are some dings and scratches.  I may eventually refinish it, but I found with some gel stain touch ups and a good buff with paste wax, it came out decently enough, that if you stand back a few feet it looks great.  I did recover the chairs with black vinyl though.  The old fabric was pretty icky. 

 
For the first chair I recovered over the existing layers of fabric, it seemed like too much work to removed the multitude of staples.  But when I stood back to admire my work, I realized the seat had lost its beautiful little curve and looked decidedly chunky.  Kind of like taking Elle Machpherson and covering her up in 50 sweaters.  So, I grabbed a pair of pliers and stripped back all of the layers of fabric.  There were four in total.  It was extra work, but it was worth it as now the seats are thin and sleek looking and they dip in the middle like they should.

 
It was really the shape of the chairs that sold me on this piece.  They are vintage yet look futuristic.  Little spindly spiders ready to prance around my kitchen.

Mr. Chuckles love them too.  He hasn't told me as much, but I can tell by how happy he looks when he sits on them.

Two MCM side tables with a side of male peacocking

Inspired by the New Year, and chomping with anticipation for the only two weeks away Australian Open Tennis Competition, Mr. Chuckle's and I decided to go have a hit at an indoor tennis facility.  We play religiously on the local outdoor courts during summer, but pull our heads into our turtle shells during the winter months.  So off we jaunted to the bubble court, paid the fee and made our way to court 2.  I couldn't help but notice the two 18ish year-old girls slugging away on the court next to us.  They were really good. They were pretty cute too.  (Cute like these side tables).

 
Having not played for a few months myself,  and perhaps not being as good as I fancy myself - aherm, I seemed to be missing a lot of balls.  At first my mindset was going something like this 'geez, I really suck today, what am I doing wrong'.  After a few more minutes I had a perspective shift.  You see, I realized that Mr. Chuckles seemed to be slugging his heart out at every single ball as though his life was at stake...Apparently he had mistaken our friendly Sunday hit for the Wimbledon men's singles final.  Then the lightbulb moment happened when a throaty grunt came from the ponytail swinging on the court beside us.  Ah. Of course, Chuckle's was showing off for the young strumpets at the sorority next door.  Can someone please explain why men do this?  Do they think we don't notice?  'Two can play this game I thought to myself'.  I took charge with a couple of un-returnable serves. Chuckle's didn't stand a chance, I think I even saw a couple of sisterly nods from the young ladies. 'Ha. Take that Chuckles!'

 
Anyway, I, like a lot of other people, love the mid century renaissance currently going on.  Such a cool fusion of vintage and contemporary.  So when I saw these cute side tables I picked them up straight away.

 

 
When I got them home I immediately sanded the tops back down to the wood as there were quite a few scratches in the original finish.  I cleaned off all of the dust, wiped them with water, let them dry, and than stained them in 'special walnut' gel stain.  I allowed that to dry for a day and than I finished with four coats of satin finish polyurethane, letting each coat dry fully and also using steel wool between coats to get a smooth finish.

 

 
The legs and the rest of the piece were in good condition and in any places where I noticed any little dings I just touched them up with gel stain.  Its like a little magic eraser. 

 

Unfortunately I forgot to snap a before. Until next time. ;)