A lost treasure returns!

July has been busy and the closer we get to August, the more I start dreading going back to work.  Teaching 7th and 8th grade can be very rewarding and I love teaching; but it is also tiresome, frustrating, and it means I have to start getting up and showering again in the mornings.  ugh.

So, I wanted to share a little story in this weeks blog about when my mom came to visit. My mom lives in Mississippi, where I'm originally from, and she came up for 6 days a few weeks ago. It was great having her here, and she even learned some of the furniture refinishing trade and has gone back home and chalk painted her very first table!!

On her last day here, she wanted to stop at Home Goods before we took her to the airport that night.  We'd been in a few days earlier and I saw a little cabinet that I really wanted to go by my door, to replace the one I had there.  It pains me to buy retail furniture, I always so "oh, I'll just do something for myself" but then I never have time to do my own pieces.  So we went back to Home Goods and she insisted on buying the cabinet for me, and I just couldn't say no, it was such a cute piece!

When we got back home, I decided to clean out the junk that was in the cabinet I had there before and put the good stuff in the new one.  As I was digging through the pile of dog sweaters that are way to small for my dogs now and I don't know why I've held on to them (I guess its like a mother keeping her children's baby clothes:-) I found a lost treasure!

Back in the winter, I lost a diamond ring that my fiancee had given me last year for our anniversary (not my engagement ring, but an equally gorgeous ring!) and I cried for days over it. and there, in the pile of dog sweaters, I found my ring!

My new cabinet and my old ring returned!

I was elated because I'd only just recently resolved to myself that it was gone forever and I should stop looking for it, and there it was! Who knows how long it would have been before I found it (if ever) if my mom hadn't have insisted on buying this little cabinet for me at Home Goods!

Aaaand, I used the old cabinet to organize my work room, which is now, for the first time ever, in a somewhat orderly state!

I finally have a place for things!

Flea Market Bust and the Holy Grail

Since its summer, and I've been able to work on pieces during the week a lot more, Saturday mornings has now become "picking time"... My favorite time to go out to flea markets, estate sales, and thrift stores to sift through items!
My fiancee, who is officially part of Furniture Alchemy now (I think I've converted him!) were looking around for flea markets to go to yesterday, and decided to go to the Gaithersburg fairgrounds flea market.  Gaithersburg is quite a hike from Alexandria, but we decided to check it out!

It was definitely a bust. There were maybe 12 vendors, selling mostly baby clothes, socks,  and electronics, not quite what we were looking for.
There was a bright spot, however, I did find this vintage Lemonade clock and have it on sale now in my Etsy shop!

10 minutes later, we were over the Gaithersburg flea market, so we decided to hit up the Habitat for Humanity Resale shop nearby.  There's one in Alexandria, and I've found a few things there, but its always really picked over and kind of hit or miss, but thought we'd check this one out anyway.
This was NOT the case in Gaithersburg! It was like finding the Holy Grail of resale shops! Jammed full of so many items that my poor little eyes could barely take it all in :-)

I got these really Spanish ship bookends:

 
and this darling French Provincial vanity:

So, for today's math lesson:  Bookends + Vanity =  

one happy Sheila!

In other news, I was featured on Furniture Flippin' last week!You can check out the post here, and leave some love: http://furnitureflippin.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-chest-no-less.html

 

Trash to Treasure

Last summer, when I first began refinishing my own furniture, I really had no idea that it would go this far.  It started off with my grandparents dining table, as mentioned in this post, but I intended for it to be more of a fun hobby than a small business.  However, things progressed and I quickly realized that I loved refinishing furniture, so after selling a few pieces off of Craigslist, I decided to open my Etsy shop in October. 

One of the first major refinishing projects that I tackled was this table I picked up off of the curb in my condo complex:

You can't even fully see the awfulness that was this table; but it was structurally sound, and  I had a vision.  Not to mention, I NEEDED a project to keep me busy.

Here is a little side note on why I needed such a project: my boyfriend, who is now my fiance :-), was preparing to head out for a deployment with the Army and I was going a little crazy with how I was going to fill my time. So, about a week before he left, I picked up this table and brought it inside.  He saw it and his first response was "Why is this trash table in the living room?".  I told him that it was going to be my project when he left, so that I could stay busy and keep my mind off of things...and that it did.

The very day he left, I got to work.  I envisioned adding a bottom to the empty space where the drawer was, with a flip open front for storage, and wanted to try out some color layering and distressing techniques I'd been reading about on Pinterest, but had yet to try out.  So, I got my supplies and a few days later, after a lot of trials and re-do's, this is the piece I ended up with:

At first, I decided to keep the piece, and not sell it, just for sentimental reasons.  This piece of furniture got me through a very rough first week, and I almost feel like I owe my sanity to it. So, I held on to it and began picking up other projects to fill my time, which eventually led to the opening of my Etsy shop, and my new small business!
  However, when he returned this year, I decided that I had so much furniture around the house, that I would part with it, and it sold to a local buyer from my Etsy shop in just a few weeks. 

This is still a very special piece to me and today on the 4th of July, I find myself looking back on it and thinking about those terrible months when my fiancee was gone and how  Furniture Alchemy  became a part of my life; a trash turned into a treasure.

Happy Independence Day everyone!

Flowers in a Mason Jar

Whenever I go on my weekly thrift store rounds, I always look around for old jars.  Since Annie Sloan Chalk Paint can be mixed to create custom colors, I like to use old Mason jars to mix and store the paint.
Last week I came across a gorgeous old blue Mason jar, and bought it for $2.00!
 I felt like it was just too pretty to for painting, so I stopped at Safeway and bought a $8.00 bouquet of flowers to go in it.
Using a Mason jar as a vase is definitely not a new idea, but it is a GREAT idea! In addition to having the flowers  sitting on my kitchen counter, I've also used it for a staging for all of my latest pictures.
I have some "go to" props I love to use for photo staging, they are all things that I've found around my house or at thrift stores. My favorites are a straw fedora (swiped from my fiancee, who never gets to wear it anymore because I don't want it to get lost!), vintage bicycle bookends, a crate found at a thrift store that I'm now using for an end table in my living room, and this tiny decorative tobacco stick ladder I bought for $3.00 from a colleague at work!

I'm considering keeping this French Linen secretary...as if I need more furniture :-)

I used the flowers here on my vintage crate end table..I also really want to keep this chair ;-)

Finally, on this French Provincial vanity, they add a classic touch. Although I also wanted to keep this vanity, it has already sold and I'm shipping it out this week to NYC

In other shameless Furniture Alchemy news, you can sign up for my bi-monthly newsletter here! I have a new email coming out this week that will feature some of my favorite blogs around the web, trending items on Etsy, as well as information on some pieces that I have!

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How to un-crackle a paint job!

It's been a while; but I'm back! With my first "how to" blog post!!

So, normally when I'm refinishing a piece of furniture and I run into a problem, my first instinct is to go to Google and find out what others have done to correct it.  This is how I've learned basically everything I know about furniture refinishing, Google and Pintrest! However, I recently ran into an issue when refinishing a custom dresser and couldn't find any info on how to correct it, or even where I went wrong. Yikes!

Here's the rub: When refinishing furniture, particularly antiques, sometimes you don't quite know what's going to happen until after its in process, even until you put the finish coat on; there are always surprises.  Normally easy fixes, but not this one.

I found this Antique 5 drawer dresser at a flea market- bought for $5.00!! Yep. That's what I said, $5.00!!

Gorgeous, right?!

So, I listed it on Etsy for a custom order, and after about a month or so, I got a local buyer for it. 
She wanted it refinished using a specific color of Valspar paint that she already had in her bedroom at her new place, City Storm.  A gorgeous almost charcoal grey color, with the drawers done in white.
Sounded easy enough, so I got started.  I used my "chalk paint recipe" for the Valspar paint, and Annie Sloan "Old White" for the drawers.
My favorite thing about chalk paint, or should I say, ONE of my many favorite things about chalk paint, is that it doesn't require sanding or priming, allowing me to (usually) skip a few steps in the refinishing process. Mistake #1.

 I've learned that skipping the sanding and priming sometimes causes problems with antique pieces, so I normally will coat the piece in a clear shellac before painting, just to seal the wood.  After coating this piece with the shellac, I painted the shell of the dresser in the City Storm, and then did the drawers in Old White.  Leaving it to dry overnight and feeling confident in my work.  Mistake #2. This is what I found in the morning:

crackled drawers. ugh.

Now, many people (myself included) have worked hard to achieve this kind of crackle on a piece of shabby chic furniture and it rarely turns out this nice! Problem is, my client wanted a sleek, modern look with no distressing. Very un-shabby chic. So I took to Google. 
Of course, all i could find after about an hour of research was how to make paint crackle. NOTHING on how to get it to un-crackle. The only thing I could find of any interest at all, were a few reasons why paint could peel and crack (mostly due to an antique piece not being sanded or primed, i.e. Mistake #1).

Then, I remembered, I'd recently done a nightstand with an embossed stencil on the drawer using spackle. Sounds crazy, I know...but I'll do a tutorial on that another time. 

embossed drawer front of nightstand

So, I had the bright idea that since coating the piece with the shellac didn't work, I could use the same concept to cover these cracks in the drawer.  Mistake #3 was that I first used an old jar of spackle that didn't go on smoothly and I ended up doing a trip to Home Depot to purchase a new can.

I used "DryDex" spackle in pink, dries white

with my new jar of spackle and my fingers (it was a VERY messy process), I spread it on as smoothly as possible over all of the drawer fronts.  Once that was done and really dry, I sanded it down as much as I could to try to take out all of the ridges and bumps.  I found that putting it on with my hands was much easier than trying to spread it using any kind of tool, and although messy, the job was accomplished.

Once it was sanded down as best I could, I painted two more coats of Annie Sloan "Old White" over the drawer fronts and finished them off with the clear wax.  The result was amazing!! No more crackles!

clean, sleek, and modern on a vintage piece

It was definitely a learning experience, and I'm sure there's a better way out there to re-do this mistake...I mean, if it's happened to me, it must have happened to others, right? But, this was my fix and it turned out un-crackled and clean. Whew!

Custom orders galore! And I've got steel wool in my poly...

So the past two months have been crazy busy with custom orders. I started this blog with intentions of posting weekly, and have failed immensely. However, the good news is, it's because of the amount of custom orders that have come in lately, keeping me so busy! Not to mention, prepping middle schoolers for impending SOL testing (yikes!).

So one of my favorite custom orders I've done recently was a vintage desk, painted in Paris Grey and Indigo blue. So, Annie Sloan does not make indigo blue chalk paint, so I resolved to mix it myself. And mix I did. Several different batches.
I used a based Napoleonic Blue, then slowly started adding in Primer Red. It was turning out too Navy blue, and I was nervous to overdo it on the red, since I was only using a sample sized jar, and really didn't want to drive all the way back to Falls Church to buy more paint.
But, I got over my hesitation and poured the red in. Still too Navy. Sigh.
Thanks to some googling, and fellow bloggers, I decided I was using The wrong shade of red. So I trekked back to Falls church and got a sample of Annie Sloan Emperors Silk, a slightly brighter red.
Remixed various times and finally came up the perfect shade of midnight indigo. Painted the top and drawer fronts of the desk, then added a little more red for a slightly more purple shade and went back around the edges, and it turned out a beautiful accent color that seemed to change in the light. The rest of the desk got two coats of Paris Grey, then lightly distressed and coated with clear gloss poly. The original hardware was left as is, and I was pretty pleased with the result.

I call it "The Starry Night" desk, because it reminds me so much of my favorite Van Gough painting.

Also, as a side note, if you sand chalk paint using steel wool, it will inevitably get in our polyurethane, causing major hassle and headache.

So, what do you think?

Craigslist wars

All of you work from home furniture refurbishers out there know the game. The ongoing Craigslist war. Maybe it's just me, but here in the metro DC area, I've noticed quite an increase in people re-doing and re-selling furniture on Craigslist since I started last summer.
We scour Craigslist daily, hoping for that ultimate find; the movers, the hoarders, the people who don't know, or see, the real value in what they have and are selling it for way to cheap. That's our holy grail, the ultimate finds!
Then, there's the process of trying to resell on Craigslist. It's tricky. Timing of your posts and pricing is key. For example, I've learned that posting ads around 7pm works best, and also Saturday mornings around 8 or 9. That seems to be when most people are browsing. Also it's important to come up with your bottom line price ahead of time, and then list the item around $20 more than that, to account for the hagglers. However, they still have to be "Craigslist friendly prices" because keep in mind, people search Craigslist for cheap furniture, that's the entire point, so you have to make sure that you're conveying to people what a great find they've made by coming across your piece at that price. Then, you wait. Patiently. It's hard sometimes when you get stuck with pieces for a few months, but in the end, it's luck. Finding the right buyer, at the right time, with the right price.
Along with that comes the inevitable copy cats. Maybe I'm being too egotistical, but on more than one occasion I've had a piece listed for a few months and then, along comes the copycat. Someone who has probably seen your listing because they are Craigslist junkies like you, refurbished a piece almost the exact same way, and listed it for half of the price. It's frustrating to say the least. Though I must ever so humbly say, my pieces are always better....
So, we forge onward in the Craigslist war, while our houses slowly become cluttered with awesome furniture that we have no where else to store. And we wait. And hope for a sale on Etsy and for luck to be on our side.
My first piece, the antique end table, took me over a month to sell. But it did sell, and my war began....