Sunday 24 March 2013

Braving the Blizzards!!

It's been a really cold week here, but despite the snow, I fired up the heater in the conservatory, braved the blizzards, and headed down to the shed to get my next pieces for transformation. Grabbed the last of the chunky pine chairs,  a tall chest of 5 drawers, and a lovely wee magazine table I bought absolutely ages ago. I am slowly working my way through all the stuff I have down there, and think I still have a welsh dresser, large sideboard, round table with 4 chairs, and various mirrors and shelves.

Awaiting transformation
I started first with the wee table. It was quite tricky to paint as it has sections at each side to put magazines in. I decided to paint all 3 items in the same colour - French Linen. This is now one of my favourite Annie Sloan colours. It reminds me of old french furniture and looks great once waxed and buffed to a soft sheen.

I turned it upside down and put it on the dining table to get started. It is so heavy I had to ask Russell to lift it for me, a really solid old piece of furniture (the best kind!). I decided to leave the little bun feet unpainted as the wood is such a lovely colour and matches well with the French Linen colour.

First coat

Masked off the interior

Waiting for second coat

Going to give this one 2 coats, and leave the interior unpainted also. I will pop some magazines in the sides to take the pics for ebay.

The drawer unit only needed one coat of paint. This colour on pine is nice when you can see some of the wood showing through, so I also distressed it a bit and left it with the pine handles, just gave them a coat of wax before putting them back on.


I bought this piece on ebay, I always check with the seller to make sure the drawers are solid wood and not the flimsy hardboard that a lot of the modern ones are made of. They don't last long before the bottoms fall out!

Solid wood drawers

The wax darkens the colour when you apply it as you may be able to see in this next pic. Annie Sloan advises applying the wax with a brush, but I prefer to use a soft cloth so I can rub it into the surface.


The farmhouse chair also only needed one coat and I then quite heavily distressed it before waxing.
I didn't manage to get any of these three pieces finished in time to photograph before sunset, so I will either try to do that after work one day this week, or leave till next weekend.

WET PAINT

Distressed and waxed ready for buffing

close up of distressing

Last week I promised you I would post the pics of the dressing table and uphostered chair, so here they are. They are both listed on ebay now and have around 10 watchers on each.





The bright red farmhouse chair I listed recently doesn't seem to have been as popular as they other colours as I have only one person watching it, but you never know, it only takes one person to fall in love with it! The two fruity frames I listed didn't sell.


So I removed those pics, replaced them with some weird animal ones and listed them seperately.


They are identical frames, but the cat one has 2 watchers, while there are none for the rabbit one!
The dressing table mirror sold to a company that stages room sets for filming etc! They absolutely loved it, so hoping they will buy more in the future from me.


Next weekend is Easter Weekend and we are heading up to Scotland to visit family (weather permitting). We have this Friday/Monday off so will travel up on Friday morning. Staying with the in-laws Crieff (near Perth) on Friday then have a hotel booked in Edinburgh for Saturday. We should get home late afternoon on Easter Sunday so not sure if I will manage a blog post that day, but will try and do one on Monday to tell you about our trip.

Hope you have a wonderful Easter!



2 comments:

  1. Nice ones Julie! French Linen looks lovely - dying to see how they turn out when waxed...guess that will change the colour a bit. So now you are making furniture for the film industry? Brilliant! What is the blue masking tape? Is it an artists tape, or frog tape, I wonder?
    So great to see your weekly posts, and especially the stories behind everything. Hope the weather improves for your trip North. XX

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  2. Hi Jo! The wax does darken the shade a little, even the clear wax.
    The blue tape is 3M decorators masking tape. It's better quality than the cheaper stuff and is easier to remove, slightly less tacky.
    Looking forward to Scotland this weekend and meeting up for lunch :0) xx

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