The Hutch Makeover

If you follow along on Facebook or Instagram, you know I've been painting this week - along with my clothes, hands, knees, and feet, this hutch got a fresh makeover! 

I found this "adobe" coral colored hutch at a second hand shop a few weeks ago. It had belonged to one of the volunteer's mother and she said it was in their house when she was growing up. They had done some minor repairs to it and painted it adobe, but decided they just didn't have room for it anymore. I debated about getting it and always say "where am I going to store more furniture?" But as a contemplated it, I got visions of turquoise and brown being layered over the coral and I quickly paid them and loaded it in my truck!  

Fast forward a couple weeks and I brought that vision to life! This week has been relatively mild for June in Texas (mostly in the 80's without the extreme humidity) so I decided it was time to get outside and paint. 

Like I said. I painted more than the hutch and judging by my inquiry on Instagram, I'm not the only messy painter among my friends! 

I truly don't have room in my house for this hutch, but how I wish I did! So today we loaded her up and took her to our booth at Uniques and Antiques in Mineola, Texas, but first a few pictures in the pasture!

Isn't she pretty with the dishes and vintage farmhouse items?

I bought the Mikasa Sunny Side dishes several years ago, although I don't think we ever used them. I thought they were so pretty, but we have our ever day dishes that we use and don't entertain at our home, so I decided they would also go to our booth. There's a 4 piece place setting along with several serving dishes. I believe a total of 26 pieces (when you count a couple lids).

According to the former owners of the hutch - it is solid maple. It is a two piece hutch with the top shelves coming off and is easy to handle (I can move the top by myself, while its best for two people to carry the bottom portion.) It is about 5 foot tall, so its not a real large cabinet.

Angea and I delivered the new pieces to our booth today and rearranged several things. We also have a sale on all the patriotic things in our booth, if you stop by in the next week or so.  Thanks to all of you have stopped by this month and shown our new booth space some love and compliments! We appreciate you and have fun bringing new items in for you.

The Farmer's Almanac Desk

It's just three days till we set out with Miss Gussie the glamper and set up at the fair! I'm getting excited and just a tad bit nervous! I've been working overtime getting everything ready and have just a few more things to mark off the to do list this week. Here's a picture of just a few things I've been working on this week. 

This desk, it makes me happy and I love how it turned out! 

There are pages from a 1953 Farmer's Almanac on the top and fronts of the desk drawers. 

Now let me tell ya a story about this desk! I found it at a moving sale last year and it's been in my shed ever since, waiting on its time to shine. It was dirty white and had floral paper lined drawers and knobs. I saw through that and knew it was real wood and well made and even had dove tail joints. It's sturdy and heavy, a classy desk, with some pretty lines. 

Jeff helped me unload it last year and move it out of the shed to work on it. It wasn't until he came along and saw me painting it, that he really saw it's value and this is the point where he said "you shouldn't sell it, I need that in my office." 

"Ummm, no, it's going in my booth next week."

I painted it ivory lace all over and stopped for the evening. At this point, I wasn't sure how I was going to finish her up. I thought about book pages, sheet music, graphics transfer... I went to a few garage sales and the clothes closet (second hand store) and looked for old books or music pages and didn't find anything I liked. I came home and got to rummaging around and found these almanacs in my file cabinet! That was it! But first, I had to make sure they didn't belong to Jeff. You DO NOT tear up one of his books! He admitted it was not his and I went to work on the desk. It makes him sad to see books torn apart for projects. One time I bought an old book at a garage sale for a project. When Jeff saw  it, he confiscated it and it went to his library. 

So now he says he hopes no one falls in love with it and it gets to come back home. Although, I hope y'all fall in love with her, just as much as we like it! There's all kinds of vintage advertising, helpful hints, zodiac signs, and articles all over the desk and let me tell you, the farmers almanac had some racy and perculier adds in it for 1953! I omitted some of the adds, since I didn't know where she would eventually call home. I know she would look fabulous in your farmhouse, rustic home office or can even be used as a dresser or vanity table. The previous owners were using it as a dresser in a girls bedroom. 

The desk will be available in our Yamboree booth, this Thursday through Saturday. Jeff pointed out that his birthday is this week, so if she gets to come back home, I guess she will be his birthday present! ;) 

New Paint and a Gussied Up Ceiling

Gussie the Glamper is getting lots of attention lately! She's got a big date in October and she's trying to get all gussied up in time for her public debut! You may have noticed, I've never really showed the ceiling. It was the one big thing that I hadn't tackled. I've had all sorts of ideas about covering it's ugly spots. I've been on the look out for tin ceiling tiles at garage sales or anything cool to repurpose and I've found nothing. 

Also, the kitchen cabinets had remained original, till last night. I decided they needed a couple coats of ivory lace (that's the paint color). Last year, I had debated whether to paint them or leave them in their original state. Still not sure about the green counter and the two sliding doors. I'm liking the cabinets so much better with fresh paint and I think I'll leave the doors green. What's your thoughts? 

This afternoon, I put the second coat of paint on the cabinets and pondered the ceiling again. Then I remembered I had the burlap coffee sacks and knew they would be attached to the ceiling, but how? 

I grabbed my spray adhesive and mod podge, thinking I would glue it up there. Although, when it came down to it, the staple gun got the workout! If I do find something I like better, (although, I'm really loving this), it will be easy to change it out. 

 I've accumulated several doilies with stains and tatters and felt they should have a place on the patchwork ceiling. Because Miss Gussie is perfectly imperfect and she doesn't mind a few imperfections and we both love her mason jar lights! 

It came a crazy thunderstorm while I was out there stapling away and then I redid my chalkboard sign. 

I peeked out the door to catch the sunset after the rain! The rain and wind blew my awning around, but it survived. Better weights are definetly on my list of things to find. 

So, do you follow the adventures of Gussie the glamper and me on social media? If not, we'd love for you to travel along with us and watch for our upcoming news! 

When the Sun Shines!

This spring has been dominated by rain, so much so that lots of outdoor projects have been put on hold, so when the sun shines, you:

Wash and sand on the camper! 

Nearly forget that you have to water the flowers outside, because it's been raining so much, watering isn't required! 

Work on orders and new brooch bouquets (to be listed soon.) 

Enjoy the May flowers! 

Prime and paint the camper white. I thought I would be content when I got her painted a solid color. Just to have her looking better for the time being, but no! I've debated about how I was going to paint the glamper for a long time. As I washed and scrubbed her down, the vision came to me. 

Here's a sneak peek! I've got one side painted with the design, but now it's raining again and forecasted everyday for the next week.

I practiced my set up for the Junk in the Trunk show last Saturday. I wanted an idea of how everything would be placed, before I got there. 

And then we got sunburned at the parking lot sale, but oh how gorgeous and nice it was to be outside and visiting with shoppers and fellow vendors! 

Several pieces of painted furniture and home decor items sold. I was tickled with the outcome of the market.

Cows have been worked and new babies discovered. 

It was an absolutely gorgeous 7 days of sunshine and I enjoyed ever minute of it! Thankfully the spring rains have eliminated the drought classification for almost all of Texas, but I'm ready for the next sunny day to paint outside again! 

A French Country Bench Makeover

This last weekend, I finally was inspired to paint and makeover this bench. I had visited a few participants in the Funky Junk Interiors link up party and saw graphic transfers on furniture and decided to dive in and do it! I got this bench at a garage sale (over a year ago) and it was waiting for a makeover. I had always envisioned a graphic on it, I just didn't know what to do. 

After spending lots of time on the Graphics Fairy website, I finally decided on a French advertising logo that would look good on my bench. It had a dog and chicken on it - very country and "us". I read a few how to's and got busy. 

This is a before picture. I decided to paint out in the greenhouse, so excuse the background mess. 

I used Ivory Lace by The Plaster Paint Company - its my favorite paint and I just love the color name and that I can by it locally. It's cheaper than some of the name brand chalk paints as well.

 So here came the technical part that made me think! This was the image I decided on. There were a few more images I loved, although they wouldn't fit correctly on my skinny bench. I decided on the wax paper image transfer method, described here. You print on wax paper and then it transfers your image to your project.

 I had to save the image to my computer, reverse the image and then needed to resize it. I read about an option to resize using BlockPoster.com and then tried it out, only problem was it was going to print on three pages and I was going to have to piece it together. With wet ink and wax paper, I didn't think that would work for me and having to line up three separate images sounded like more precision than I cared to get into.

I opened my image in Microsoft Word and figured out how to resize my page setup to 22 x 8.5 and stretched my image to fit the page. I cut my wax paper neatly and tried feeding it through my printer. After it wrinkled up three times, I broke out the spray adhesive! I glued scrap paper to the wax paper and it fed trough the printer fabulously. Now on to getting my image on the bench!

Insert tiny squeal of excitement here! It worked! 

Now on to waxing. I waited until the next day and took the bench back to the greenhouse for better ventilation and fresh air. I get ask about waxing all the time. I use the paste wax from the Plaster Paint Co and tint it to give the piece an aged and distressed look. Scoop out a helping of wax on a paper plate and a squirt of stain. Think lumpy mash potatoes with some BBQ sauce mixed in. Take an old sock and wax the furniture.This was all it took to give it two coats of wax.  One tip when using stain - go with the wood grain or you might get a look you don't like.

The wax can have an odor problem that bothers some (not me), so out of respect for the Mr. and the pets, I left it out in the greenhouse a couple more days before it came back indoors. 

 I had fun rearranging furniture and staging my living room for a photo shoot. I also printed out the French typography sign on a piece of drop cloth and framed it. (Next week, I'll share more about it.)

 Now, I'll admit, our living room is really crowded and our furniture is really close together. I refer to it as layered or #smallhouseproblems.

I was excited how it all turned out and I'll definitely be adding graphics to more furniture pieces. It was so easy, once I figured out the sizing issue and gluing the papers together. I never really thought of our house as French Country, but I'm loving the look!