Jenyfer Matthews

This week I am thankful that yet another dresser has been successfully restored and is now in service.

It all started when I found this dresser at a garage sale for $10.

The beast weighed a ton and somewhere along the way someone had spray painted it silver, but I liked the curve of the drawers and I decided it was worth $10.

I might have even been able to live with the silver paint if it hadn’t been so badly done in the first place and so chipped up in the second. Take a look at these dribble marks:

I thought – mistakenly as it turned out – that it would be easier to remove the spray paint than regular paint. It would go on in thinner coats, right?

HA! Perhaps that might have been true in theory, but whether it was down to the metallic nature of the color or the person who did the job, removing this paint was a bit like trying to remove old, baked-on duct tape. A goopy, sticky mess.

Under all that messy paint was a layer of what was once probably a decent honey-oak veneer (over chipboard). Unfortunately, the veneer on the body of the dresser was in better shape than the veneer on the drawer fronts so I couldn’t just stop and leave it there.

You might wonder why I went to so much trouble for a cheap dresser I got at a garage sale that wasn’t actually solid wood anyway.

Check out this furniture maker stamp inside the top drawer. I don’t know that maker specifically but the font would suggest that the dresser is c.1960-70s. Though much of the body of the dresser is chip-board it is also solid. The drawers alone have more wood in them than most of the new dressers I’ve seen for $$$ in stores.

I had half a gallon of white paint left from the first dresser I restored so I decided to go with that. The paint job seemed to go on and on, but in in the end, I think it looks pretty good. I didn’t even need to buy new knobs.

There are already a few scuff marks on the white paint where the drawers slide on that middle bar and on each other, but I am going to just call that my contribution to the shabby chic idea. (And I still have a small jar of paint leftover for touch-ups if necessary!)

Not bad for $10 and a lot of elbow grease.

I seek out the bargains and adopt things from the curbside mall in part because I’m thrifty, but also so we can afford to use our money wisely elsewhere.

We bought this chair sometime in the mid-1990s, at a garage sale (of course!) for $15. At the time we purchased it, the upholstery was still in good condition and it was very comfortable, though the inner foam was beginning to give out. A tag on the bottom frame of the chair labeled it as having been made in Michigan (ha!) in 1959.

By the time we got this chair out of storage in September, the upholstery was still holding up but was very dirty. We might have been able to clean that, but the stuffing had solidified.

I have thought from time to time about learning how to do upholstery but this was not the project I wanted to start with! I took it to a professional instead.

My first thought was do have it done in leather. His quote quickly put that idea out of my head. Ouch! I opted for cloth upholstery instead. I cannot complain about the results. How pretty is this chair now?

I think the fabric suits the style of the chair marvelously. The only problem? Hubby and I are going to be fighting over who gets to sit in it now.

I’m going to make this place a home if it kills me…

I consulted with my woodworking father about the dressers this weekend and did not find his suggestion of contact paper very helpful (though it was mildly amusing). However, I did find a box of Mexican tile at the city-wide garage sale this weekend for $5 and could not resist it. Just look at what I could do with it:

(click image to enlarge)

I love the way the tile looks, and it seems so in keeping with the look of the rest of the piece. What do you think?

I’m sure there is more to tiling than I think there is – even if it might be marginally “easier” than doing a faux granite finish which is my runner-up option. But when I do something I want to do it *well*. I don’t want huge grout lines because the tiles don’t actually fit properly and I would need some sort of trim to finish the edge since none of these tiles have curved edges.

I suppose could always practice my tiling on the side table I got for free. It has a chunky Spanish style the would only be enhanced by the Mexican tile.

The “problem” with the tile is that it has so much personality that it would make the item to which I applied it lovely but much less neutral. I both like a bold statement but also to keep my options open.

One idea would be to apply the tiles to a foundation that could be removed from the dresser top at some later date. That would also make the dresser easier to move of course! Another idea would be to just refinish the dresser top in a more attractive way with either stain or paint and use the tiles on a mirror surround instead. Decisions decisions…

In any event, I think I’ll start with the stripping of both dressers and the painting of the taller one and decide as I go along!

My creativity to date has run in quilts, writing, and some dabbling in pottery. My father’s creativity has pretty consistently come out in woodwork. One of the items I had in my time capsule storage room was a carving he had done, inspired by M. C. Escher. He gave me this wall hanging on my 21st birthday and though I packed it away carefully, I was very afraid that it would have warped all those long years in a not-climate-controlled storage room!

It’s as lovely today as it was when I packed it, and hardly dusty at all since I wrapped it in a towel, sandwiched it between two boards, and put it in a box!

(Click any image to enlarge)

Believe it or not, he carved this from ONE piece of wood. See for yourself:

He even made me matching magnets.

He does sell some of his work, but he couldn’t sell these because they aren’t his design. He does have some of his own lovely designs, like this one. Once I am all settled in, I would love to start an Etsy site for my quilts and some of his smaller pieces. Just look how lovely his more recent work is:

Right now I wish that I could apprentice under him to learn more about wood and refinishing because I acquired a couple of projects this week.

We need a couple of dressers for the children’s rooms and I’ve been keeping a lookout at garage sales. It’s amazing how many ugly and badly constructed dressers are out there – and how much people want for them! We got lucky today though. Just look what I found for $20/each. They need some love but they have good bones.

This one currently has a pretty bad paint job but is well made. I can see it painted pale green, perhaps with ceramic knobs. Someone painted the insides of the drawers too, unfortunately, in alternating royal blue and brown no less! It means a bit more work for me to paint over that to make them all white, but I think it will be worth it.

The second one has one loose board and one missing board on the back. Otherwise, I want to strip the odd paint off the top (why??) and see what is under the not-so-attractive mocha colored paint. If the wood it is okay, I might just strip the whole thing and then stain/varnish it. If the top is a mess, I’ll leave the bottom as is and repaint the top a bit nicer. Either way, what a find for $20!

I’d love for them to come out beautifully but at the price we got them I won’t even feel too bad if I mess them up

(What am I saying – of course I will!)

This weekend is the city-wide garage sale. I’m all a-tingle just thinking about it! Though I’m not even sure why the city bothers to have a “day” because it seems like every day is garage sale day here…

The time capsule, aka our storage unit in North Carolina, has been opened and loaded into a truck.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to be there in person to supervise (some might say “interfere”), but I had a friend who stood-in for me who said that other than dust and cobwebs, it all looked pretty good. Even our mattress set seemed okay! It’s all on a truck now, so now we will wait and see how long it will take it to get here. It is scheduled to be here FRIDAY MORNING but I’ll believe that when I see them roll up in the driveway!

We didn’t have children when we packed up and went abroad and while we were away we lived in furnished housing so we don’t really have much furniture coming. I’m willing to get things slowly, but we really need a couple of dressers for the children’s rooms. I haven’t been hugely impressed with the quality or the prices of new furniture I’ve seen so my husband and I decided to take a look at a local antique mall. Once furniture ends up in an antique mall, it isn’t always such a bargain, but it might at least be made of real, solid wood.

Sadly, we didn’t see anything that tempting at the antique mall. You win some, you lose some. We decided to drop in at a Goodwill we passed on our way home. We didn’t find a dresser, but I did find a cute sewing table for $5.

I’m not actually planning to use it as a sewing table though – I thought I might try it out as a bedside table. If it seems too high, I will put it in the living room as a side table. It is a solid little table with the top closed.

The question I have now is whether to try and paint it or not. The finish isn’t great, as you can see, and it already has a couple of paint splats on it. Would it look better or worse if I tried to do a “shabby chic” finish on it in white or pale green? Hubby thinks that painting furniture makes it look cheap but I think he’s crazy. Besides, it’s not as if this particular piece was ever such high quality wood anyway!

Also found another treasure while out looking for work shoes for hubby. Aren’t they beautiful?

I’m in love. I have always wanted red cowboy boots and now I have some. They were on sale for the same price the faux leather boots cost and are so so so much softer. Just have to make sure I don’t end up stepping in a snow drift / slush puddle with them!

My gift for you: from now until December 31, 2010, purchase SEPARATION ANXIETY from Smashwords.com for only $2.99 using coupon code QP37A at check-out.

One of my favorite things to do is haunt thrift / consignment shops – 1) because I love a good deal, and 2) because you just never know what you’ll find. It’s just lucky that even the tiny little town that my mother lives in has two thrift stores.

I didn’t have as much time to browse as I would have ideally liked and I had to keep my limited remaining packing space in mind, but I still managed to find some fun things. Unpacking was that much more fun for gloating over my goodies.

One of the thrift stores is attached to the local recycling center and it isn’t very particular about what people donate, but since it is conveniently located they are always getting new things. Because of the never ending donations, things are priced to sell. I found:

A “vintage” Corning stainless steel pie spatula with serrated edge – $0.35 (made in the USA so you know it’s old!)
A girls tennis trophy – $0.35
A pair of denim shorts for my son – $0.50
A pair of stone colored chinos for my son – $0.50

Limited Too reversible windbreaker my son chose
St. John’s Bay cotton blouse with 3/4 sleeves in scarlet (me)
a wine purple cotton blouse from The Gap (me)
an Adidas tshirt in lime for my daughter
a pumpkin orange Cherokee golf shirt for my son
ALL OF THE ABOVE FOR $3 on “bag day”

A linen skirt in variegated red / purple tones (me)
A pair of red leather NEW Aerosole sandals (me)
Sponge Bob t-shirt for my son
Underarmor sport shirt in coral for my daughter
A big, floppy stuffed dog for my son
ALL OF THE ABOVE FOR $1 on “bag day”

I love the red sandals because they are comfortable and fun, but even more because they only cost me $0.20! Who could not love a deal like that??

And I can’t wait to use my new pie spatula