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.

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