Moody Blue Dresser

This piece was inspired by this picture here.  I love the colour and the texture of the wall and the romantic yet sense of  abandon feel that it gives.  I was going to go for the same colour on this piece, but in the end I swapped out dark blue for the green, promising myself that I will use green next time.

 

It was a bit of a drive to pick her up, I've been having to wander further from home in order to find any good furniture as we have a drought on at the moment.  I brought my cat and side kick - Miss Do-as-I-please, along for the trip as she loves car trips, she climbs up on my shoulders and wedges herself between my neck and head rest and happily gazes out the window.  I tied her to a post while we loaded the piece into the Mazda, Im sure the gentlemen I purchased from thought I was a right eccentric!

 

 

 

I'm noticing that the colour is a lot brighter in these pictures posted to blogger than in my saved pictures in my editing software.  I read recently in a post by Reeves over at TheWeatheredDoor that she has found away around this, as apparently this happens to pictures in blogger.  In real life the blue is not this bright, it is actually more of a NAVY blue living up to the 'Moody' blue name. I just did a side by side comparison of the blogger pictures with my saved pictures and there is a noticeable difference in the brightness of the blue.  Annoying.  Reeves gives a helpful tutorial on how to upload photos manually in HTML to override this brightening Blogger nuance.

 

 

The piece was large and chunky with a strong oak pattern.  Oak is perfect for painting in these bold colours as their strong grain is visible through the paint.  In this case the oak grain grabbed hold of the black glaze I wiped on perfectly

 

 

I used some paste wax and traced along a few of the strips of oak grain on the top of the piece so that the paint would easily come away later to reveal the grain. I used my critter spray gun to lay down the base coat.  I only needed to do two coats.  Next I did some distressing, and as hoped the waxed parts let go of the paint and gave me 'veined' looking distressing.

 

 

The next step was to do a thick black glaze over the entire piece to help achieve the look that I loved about the wall in the picture above. I wanted it to look old, dark and moody (and in real life it is!)

 

 

Lastly, I added a few flecks of turquoise and a dash or two of yellow to give a little bit of highlighting along all that lovely raised detail along the front.

 

 

 
I used tung oil finish to give everything a pop of sheen and a little extra protection.  My paint was Dulux Diamond in Pearl finish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Before

Fauxing a Verdigris Patina

Hi everyone, sorry for the hiatus, but alas, I was busy holidaying in Cuba with jam-packed days of cocktails, buffets and hours of quality tennis time - and I do mean quality - our resort had fabulous tennis courts that kept me entertained (and frustrated) for hours everyday.  It defies logic, but I actually ended the two week holiday playing worse  tennis than I started.  How does that work exactly?  Mr. Chuckles improved immensely; and was destroying me by the end of the holiday, where at the beginning we were pretty evenly matched.  Who knows, I blame my sore ankles. Restricted my movement you see.

Im not sure how things are faring in other areas of the globe, but here in my parts the availability of quality used furniture seems to have dried up.  There is a serious drought.  I remember years ago I could walk into any second hand store and spot at least one piece I would work on, these days, I frequently do the rounds to 8 different stores and still come up empty handed.  Craigslist and Kijiji have also gone cold.  Its pretty frustrating.  Im hoping when our deep freeze comes to an end that things pick up a bit.

 

But I have had a few things to keep me busy in the two weeks since I have been back home.  This mirror came with a dresser I picked up a while back.  It is certainly  nothing special, just a large and average wood mirror.  I thought about tossing it, but when I happened across some inspiration while trolling though the internet I realized it was the perfect piece to try a new technique out.

 

What happens when you mix copper, bronze or brass with the natural elements? The result is called a verdigris patina (vert-de-gris in French), a layer of oxidation that forms over the metal to form a protective barrier. This patina varies in color from a green to a blue green / turquoise color. Left to age naturally, it will often take many years, but this natural patina results in a richer, deeper and more durable color.

 

Well, I certainly didn't have years to wait for a patina to form, and I also didn't feel like doling out $50+ for the science kit my local paint store was trying to flog to 'achieve the look', so instead I put on my white lab coat and got to mixing up some of my own potions.

 

The result?  pretty interesting and not too unlike an actual verdigris patina.  I haven't got any rustic or agey looking walls in my house, but I could completely envision this piece perched on exactly that kind of wall - old, peeling, weathered, rusty.  The mirror would look very at home there.
 

 

 

 

A New Topcoat Technique and a Lottery win!

I won the lottery today!  It is great timing because Mr. Chuckles and I are about to take off for sunny Cuba in a week's time.  Sure, I only won $26, but hey, that will pay for the cost of the spray tan I will get before we go.  Yes, I get spray tans...not that often, as I find my life isn't exciting enough to need 'tan' skin on a regular basis.  But, I do like to get them before I head off on a vacation to a sunny destination when I have been covered up in layers of clothes for the past five months. I find with the spray tan I am not in such a hurry to play catch-up on my tan in the first two days of being on vacation (which inevitably results in a really bad burn).  By the time the spray tan wears off I am usually starting to get a bit of a natural glow.

 
Speaking of top coats, I used a new technique on this piece, which I must say, is an absolutely stunning piece of furniture!  It is so grand, and was surprisingly manufactured right here in my very own city.  It stands at 36" tall and is 20" deep.  Most of my 9 drawers stand at 36" - but only after I custom add legs to them!  Prior to that they are a dwarfy 31".  I like a short stature on MCM pieces, but on the chunky 70s dressers I find they look way better with extra height.  Personal preference I suppose.
 

 
But obviously this amazon didn't need extra height because she was already so tall! I went to pick her up and realized there was a very good chance she wouldn't fit in the Mazda 3, the gentleman enquired where I live, and by sheer good fortune he was heading to my very street later that same afternoon for a birthday party!  Pretty coincidental in a city of 500,000 people!  So he actually brought her to me. Very kind.

 
The least fun part was the sanding.  Sanding French provincial furniture is the most labor intensive out of all furniture.  So many god darn curves and bevels and lips and ledges.  Urgh.  It took about two hours to sand her down, vacuum and wipe her clean.
 

 
Next step was to prime her up with some tinted primer.  Two coats and a bunch of dry time later I was ready to paint.= (aka the fun part). Oh, and the hardware was giving a dose of Rub-n-Buff in antique gold.
 

 
I used a cobalt colour I love, but I also mixed in some navy blue and black tint to achieve a more navy colour. I painted on about three or four coats in a satin finish.  It turned out really nice, but it was missing that 'pow' sheen that I get when I use wipe on poly.  The problem is, the last time I used WOP I had such a hard time getting an even finish on the top that I ended up doing WAY too many coats.  I just wasn't mentally or physically ready to go through that again so soon.  Still licking the wounds and all...
 

 
I remembered reading in a wood working forum that someone found that tung oil finish gave a less streaky result than  WOP.  I just happened to have a can on the shelf in the basement so I thought Id give it a whirl.  I used an old rag to wipe it on, and then I used a second rag to virtually wipe it all back off, just leaving a tiny hint of the product, but enough to give me the subtle sheen that I wanted.  It took quite a long time to fully dry (despite me wiping almost all of the product back off), but in the end it produced a more high-end result than if I had just left the paint un-topcoated.
 
Anyways, I am really happy and I think I will try this technique on another piece in the future. But for now I would recommend it, particularly on a darkly painted piece of furniture as tung oil finish will amber over time (so DON"T use it on a light coloured piece).

 

The before!

Mint-Turquoise - On a dresser and on a BEACH!

It's a good day when you wake up to yet another blustery haze.  Snow flakes are knocking on your window, the sun is playing hide and seek for the 23rd day in a row, and to top it all off its a Monday!  Yep, those are great days indeed. Why?.. because, you just booked a trip to sunny paradise!!! - and only have eight days left until you board the plane, grab a cerveza and smile and wave at everything in sight for the next two weeks!

 
Its winter vacation time! Woop woop. Mr. Chuckle's and I have picked sunny Cuba for this year's winter hiatus. We will be crisping on the tennis courts and basking on the beach for a full two weeks.  Yay!  We have never been to Cuba, and the crux of all the reviews I have read have said 'great beach, average food'.  But I'm pretty sure I can manage some drudgery in the food department if it means I have a nice beach to frolic on. Can't wait!

 
In honour of the vacation, this will be my last piece of furniture until we get back toward the end of February. I still have to catch up on posting on a few other finished pieces, but this one here is actually the last one I painted before I called game, set, match to get ready for the vacation. Can anyone say 'New bathing suit!'.

 
I finished it in a very heavy distressed 'time-worn, super-weathered look'.  Like I said in the last post, I was pretty keen to relax and do a piece with a bit of creative flair that I didn't need to worry if it got a scratch here and there.  Undistressed pieces can be quite stressful, especially to move around. One false nudge and your uncured paint can scratch, or one drop of falling water onto uncured paint means repainting the entire top.  This happened to me recently.  I opened the garage door to take some photographs of a finished piece, and the condensation caused a drop of water to fall onto the top of the piece (which was dry to touch, but wasn't fully cured), I wiped it off really quickly but you could still see the ring from the drop a day later.  I ended up repainting the top.

 
I used Cottage Paint sold at Benjamin More for this piece.  I bought it in a cream-taupe colour and I added some tint to it to get this bright minty toned turquoise colour.  I had to alter the colour a bit on my monitor because my laptop monitor shows it as blue, when it is most definitely green.  So, more than likely it will appear differently on other monitors.  It isn't a fluorescent type colour, just a nice minty-come-turquoise, but I suspect it is going to look a bit flouro on other monitors.
 

 
I sanded the piece prior to painting despite Cottage Paint's claim that sanding isn't required.  I used a brush and deliberately left some of the nooks and crannies unpainted to tie in with the distressing I was going to do.  After two coats of paint, I used my orbital to distress on the edges and I also did some hand distressing with a coarse grit paper.
 

I used clear wax for protection and I also used a little bit of dark wax on the drawer facings.  The hardware got a buff with some sand paper to bring out a soft gold.

Lastly I added corner brackets so I could add the custom legs.  The piece now stands at 36" tall.  Love it!

A little shout out to all the people in NYC, New Jersey and the Maritimes here in Canada...The news tell me a whopper of a snow storm is headed your way.  Good luck, stay safe, and keep warm.