Finished and Out the Door: The Grey Dining Hutch

This grey dining hutch was hanging around our house since early last year.  I bought it at Goodwill.  It was filthy and reeked of cigarette smoke, but it was in good condition otherwise ... perfect for a makeover and a quick resale ... or so I thought.

Dorothy and Alice think that they're helping.

The filth and stink was remedied with a good scrubbing and sitting it in the sunshine for a few days.

I discovered while I was working on the hutch last winter (in my dining room, using the dining table as a workbench, because it was too cold at the time to paint in my basement workshop), that it is a perfect match for our Blue Buffet ... except the hutch is oak and the buffet is maple.

The  hutch and buffet were both made by Cochrane.

The body of the hutch is Annie Sloan's 'Paris Grey', and the inside is 'Old White' ... very lightly distressed and clear waxed.  I stripped the oak top and refinished it with clear oil-based polyurethane for durability, and replaced the colonial-style fake brass hardware with brushed nickel knobs and bin-pull handles.

This hutch was one of the stars of my booth at the Lucketts Fair last May.  I wish I had kept count of how many people were lured into the booth and ooohed and aahhhed over it ... saying that the hutch was beautiful, my price was fantastic, then walking away.  My husband is an expert salesman, and even HE couldn't convince anyone to take it home with them.  At the end the weekend, the hutch came back home with us.  (To be fair, I wasn't the only one with this problem.  There was very little actual buying going on at last year's fair, according to the other vendors that I talked with, and a lot of us took home pieces that we had been certain would sell quickly.  Live and learn.)

That little vanity with the Bakelite handles is still available, too.

The hutch was stored in the living room before the Fair, and it returned to the same spot afterward ... and there it sat for months and months ... and I went on to other things.

Last month, in the spirit of continuing to work on finishing what I start, I listed the hutch on Craigslist to see what would happen.  In about a week, I received an email from a nice lady who was very interested in buying it.  Bad weather and scheduling conflicts got in the way for a while, but we remained in contact via email and telephone and we finally worked out a day when she could come by.  She loved it, of course, and she told me that it is exactly what she has been looking for!  It's a small world, because this little hutch now lives in the same neighborhood as my parents, around the corner and about two blocks away.

I still have a lot of leftover stuff in the basement and garage from when I was painting and selling.  Getting a large item like this hutch out of the house is an accomplishment ... baby steps, one thing at a time, finish what I start ... I'm working on it.

How Did It Go at Lucketts?

My battle cry for the past week has been, "Is it Monday yet?"  Preparations to vend at the Lucketts Spring Market, packing and setting up the booth and merchandise, and two very long days at the market itself took over my life.  (Monday represented the day when I would be finished with the market and back to whatever normal is.)  With the market behind me now, and a couple of good nights of sleep, I am ready for things to get back to normal.  Let's put Lucketts in the rear-view mirror and I will tell you all about it.

This was how the space looked when the Market opened.  The area under the canopy and the open space on the right are mine.

This year, I had to rent a small U-Haul truck to transport merchandise to the show ... picked up the truck on Thursday afternoon, and I borrowed the young man from next door to help me load the largest and heaviest pieces.  The rest of Thursday was spent consolidating smaller items and continuing to load things into the truck.  I was feeling good about my progress and I was confident that Friday (set up day) would go smoothly.

The first thing to sell was this black coffee table.  The rattan daybed in the background got a lot of attention, and it sold on Saturday afternoon.  None of the pillows did, though.

On Friday morning, I saw that I had missed a call and then received a text message from the person who was supposed to share the space and work the booth with me on Saturday.  She was unable to get things together and she was having to cancel, and she apologized profusely for the late notice.

Customers loved the bags and my husband's paintings, but none of them sold.

I tried hard not to panic.  My carefully laid plan had fallen completely apart, and I had to do what I could to put together a new plan.  Called my husband, who had already made arrangements to take an earlier flight home from his business trip in Phoenix ... new flight arrived at 3pm, instead of the original 9:30pm ... he would come straight to Lucketts from the airport to help me unload and set up.  I also would need him to help me run the booth during the show.  For this to happen, I had to arrange for someone to come to the house to let our dogs out in the afternoon ... my mom volunteered.  New plan in place, all I had to do was get to it.

This hutch didn't sell either.  Again, lots of comments and compliments, but no takers.

Friday afternoon set up at Lucketts was hectic, but fairly well organized.  The area had received an enormous amount of rain overnight, with floods and roads closed in the area.  Many of the vendors at the market were unable to drive their vehicles to their booth space to unload.  Mine was in a spot that was higher and dryer, thank goodness.  Pretty much as soon as I had parked the truck and set up the canopy over the space, my husband arrived and the rest of the unloading and set up went perfectly.

How could someone resist this vanity desk with its original Bakelite handles?  It came home with me.

Saturday morning, we arrived early to tweak the arrangement of merchandise and price the last few items before the show opened.  The sale day itself was very busy, with beautiful weather, steady traffic of customers, and brisk sales.  Both of us were so tired at the end of the day, but pleased with how it went.  The only hitch in the day was that Winnie doesn't know my mom too well yet, and she hid in her crate and quivered and wouldn't come out.  Mom did the right thing by reaching in and dragging Winnie out when it was time for her to potty.  (remember that Winnie only has one tooth, so Mom wouldn't have been hurt if Winnie had tried to bite her ... which she didn't.)  Ruby, on the other hand, LOVES her grandmother and she bounced and barked and was very happy to see her.

This was the booth on Sunday afternoon.  The Queen Anne ottoman, bucket of balusters and the little mirrors sold later, but nothing else.

Sunday sales were a bit quieter, mainly because we sold so much on Saturday and the booth was fairly empty.  Furniture was the toughest item to sell for everyone at the Market, and that's what we mostly had left on Sunday.  It was my nicest pieces, too, which were very well priced.  They just weren't what anyone was looking for.  Oh, well.

No takers for either of the compass rose tables.  Sales of the vintage flannel shirts went well, though ... and so did sales of my husband's books about how draw super heroes.

The Market closed at 5:00, and we were packed and loaded and pulling out of the lot at 6:30.  Breaking down the show was a bit hectic, as some vendors ignored the instructions on where to park and we didn't have access to our aisle to bring the truck next to the booth.  Fortunately, our space is near the parking field and we parked the truck as close as we could hand-carried our stuff over to it.

Expenses were higher for me this year, having had to rent a truck this time, but I still did okay with sales and made enough extra money so I felt okay about it.  Almost.  I have decided that I will not do this show again.  It's too far away from home, too much work that takes my attention away from my garden in the middle of rose season, and it's just not worth the stress and effort.

This is what the truck looked like after we packed up the booth on Sunday.  Large pieces are still here, but many of the smaller and more unique things went to new homes.

Did I buy anything while I was there?  With so many vendors with such great things for sale, I saw a lot of stuff that I wanted to bring home with me.  There was only one thing, though, that I loved enough to buy ... a pair of vintage 16-pane picture windows that will be a perfect addition to the north wall of my Shack.  

I am absolutely thrilled to have these, and I can't wait to repair the missing putty and give them a fresh coat of paint.

Now it's time to turn my attention back to my real love, my garden.  The early roses are starting to bloom, and the weeds are growing like, um, weeds.  I don't even mind, because now I have nothing standing in the way of continuing my work toward reclaiming my garden from the past years' neglect.  If you need me, you'll find me outside ... digging in dirt where I'm happiest.

(All of the items that survived the Market are available for sale.  If you're interested, let me know.)

Final Preparations for Lucketts

We are halfway through May, and I am still hanging in there.  Preparations for the Lucketts Spring Market this weekend have taken over my life.

French Provincial nightstand and a cottage-style upholstered ottoman made from part of an end table.

If I were a good blogger who uses this space wisely, I would have planned to do full posts to feature the items that I have renovated to take to the market.  Honestly, I count myself as fortunate that I'm not going absolutely insane preparing to load up, set up, and work the booth almost completely by myself.  

Chalk-paint dyed pillows, rustic Italian-style side table, Grey and white hutch, and Ruby.

The best I can do is offer a preview of some of my things, as shown in these photos of the current state of my living room.  No staging or supplemental lighting for these photos ... I don't have time for any of that.  Just a quick point-and-shoot with my iPad, and off I go to the next thing on my list.

Two Compass-Rose round tables, slipcovered Queen Anne ottoman, aluminum bread basket, chicken painting (by my dear husband), and Dorothy.

I am glad to be sharing booth space with someone I know, who is also working alone, so we will help each other and everything should work out fine.  I'm doing this thing alone because  (a) my husband is on a business trip this week, and  (b) my original help for the weekend is now nursing a broken foot ... stay off your feet and do whatever you can to heal, Deborah.

Slipcovered Rattan sofa/daybed (on its side and barricaded to keep the cats off of it), black drop-leaf coffee table, another view of the two round tables.  I may decide to take that slipcovered skirted ottoman with me ... we'll see.

I am honestly feeling pretty good about the status of everything right now.  I have a very comprehensive list of stuff to pack and things to do, to help avoid last-minute panic and to keep me on track.  The only variable left to confront is the weather.  We've been having storms for the past two days, with more predicted each day for the rest of the week ... culminating with a 100% probability of storms some time during Friday set up day.  

Two ornate side tables (gotta remember to get their drawers out of the workshop in the basement) 

and two framed pieces of Art Deco era stained glass.

The major variable will be the state of the ground on the field at the Market.  If the ground is too wet, no one will be allowed to drive on it to get close to our booths to unload ... I'm trying to think positive thoughts for solid ground and an uneventful set up.  The weather for the Market itself on Saturday and Sunday is supposed to be spectacular.  Sunny with temps in the 70s will be wonderful.  Liberal application of sunblock will be necessary ... I have already dropped a bottle of it into my tote bag, to have on hand for myself and for anyone else who needs it.

Finishing up with a gratuitous Winnie photo ... because this little dog makes me SO happy.

That's all for now.  My goal for today is to finish gathering all of my stuff into one place, and to pack as many of the smaller items as I can.  Tomorrow afternoon, I pick up a UHaul truck and I hope to get everything loaded to be ready to head to Lucketts early on Friday morning.

Scary to think that I probably have this under control ... think good thoughts for me.  If any of you come to the show, please stop in and say "Hi".

Staying Organized and Hitting My Marks

As we bid good-bye to April, I am keenly aware that the month of May will be a blur.

On Friday, I head to the airport in the wee hours of the morning to leave on a four-day trip to Rosedango, a weekend full of rose activities near Dallas, Texas.  I have been looking forward to this for months!  This is when I finally get to meet Anne Belovich in person ... she is one of my rose idols, and I am so excited.  (When you have a few minutes, you can see Anne's beautiful, inspiring garden through the photos of Carolyn Parker, HERE.)  

On Saturday, May 10, at 10am, I will be at Strange's on West Broad Street in Richmond to give a program about how to choose and care for roses.  It is free and open to the public.  Perhaps some of you local folks would like to come hear what I have to say?

The next weekend, May 17 & 18, is the Lucketts Spring Market.  I am working on preparations for this in between other things.  For example, this morning I made two more pillows out of the fabric that I dyed with chalk paint.

The hutch that the pillows are sitting on is another item that's destined for Lucketts.

Having a booth at Lucketts is a huge undertaking, and the effort needed to prepare will completely take over my life for at least the entire week beforehand ... considering there will certainly be finishing touches to things, and a LOT of pricing and loading to be done.  I am fairly well organized, and I'm good about writing things onto my To Do list (which is a mile long at this point), so I feel confident that things won't get too crazy.

I am leaving the next week and Memorial Day weekend open.  That is generally the beginning of full-bloom season for the roses.  Bloom season will probably be late this year, I think, by at least a week, maybe two.  It will be nice to have an unplanned week (if it stays that way) to work in the garden and get ready for Open Garden visitors.  (watch this space and the Hartwood Roses FB page for dates, posted as soon as I have a better idea of when the garden will be blooming.)

The next weekend is one that I have looked forward to since fall.  May 31 is the day of the Wine and Roses Open House at Monticello's Tufton Farm in Charlottesville.  This year, I am the rose speaker ... presenting a program on easy-care roses for Virginia gardens.  The event is free, with no registration required.  Plan to come see Tufton's beautiful gardens and, perhaps, learn a thing or two about how to grow roses in your own garden.  There will also be roses available for sale.

In order to keep all of this straight, and keep my sanity, I am having to be a total slave to my calendar.  By staying organized and working on things a little at a time when I have the opportunity, I hope that nothing during the month becomes a hair-raising emergency.  Wish me luck!

The Quality Control Team

It rained all day yesterday.  Instead of doing what I had planned for the day (which would have involved hauling furniture in an open pick up truck), or working outside in the garden, I sat at the sewing machine for a little while and put together a slipcover for this ottoman that's been living in my stash.

You can see that it meets with Alice and Dorothy's exacting standards for quality and comfort.

I was going to paint the legs, but now I've decided not to.  Whoever buys this at the Lucketts Spring Market can paint them, or leave them the way they are.

(Note to self:  Gotta remember to wash and iron the cover before I take it to the market, in case folks are allergic.)

Using Chalk Paint to Dye Fabric

I got a wild hare idea yesterday, to try what I have read online about using chalk paint to dye fabric.  With two colors of paint in hand, Primer Red and Graphite, and some chunks of prewashed cotton dropcloth, I got to work.

There's not an exact proportion of paint to water to use for dying fabric.  I poured a small splash of paint into a large mixing bowl.  I added hot tap water to the paint, mixing it with a whisk, till the mixture was the consistency that I thought it should be ... really watery.  (next time, I will probably see what happens if I use even less paint.)

I didn't think about this becoming a blog post, so I was a little late with the photos of the process.  The photo above shows the last piece of fabric that I dunked into the dye, and the mess that this made in my kitchen sink.  I didn't soak the fabric ... I just squished it into the solution in the mixing bowl, making sure that there was dye all over the fabric, wrung it out, put it back into the bowl and squished it into the dye again, wrung it out really well, and set it aside.  Then I used Soft Scrub to clean the sink.

Since this was an experiment, I wanted to see if the dyed fabric would end up being colorfast and machine washable ... so I tossed them into my washer (front loader) and washed them on the Delicate setting with a small amount of detergent.  I thoroughly expected to find that the dye completely washed out when I checked it after the wash cycle, but it didn't!  I was pleasantly surprised at how much I really liked the colors.  After a spin through the dryer, I was ready to get to work making something ... throw pillows.

This is the design that I came up with ... graphite for the background, with natural and Primer Red strips appliqued onto it.  I tore the strips and fringed them, to add some texture and a bit of rustic interest to the design.

As always, at least one of the cats comes to help.  In this case, it was Dorothy ... checking my sewing machine to make sure that it was in good working order after its tune up at the repair shop last month.

Here is how the pillow cover turned out.

The cording around the edge adds a nice finishing touch ... and I installed a zipper on the back.  (Envelope closures and ties are quicker to construct, but a zipper makes for a much nicer pillow.)

Here we have the finished product!

I love how this turned out.  I learned that I really like the colors that resulted from using chalk paint to dye the fabric, and I am anxious to see what I get when I use other colors of paint.  This pillow and its mate (I made two of them at the same time) will go into the heap of things that are destined for the Lucketts Spring Market in May.

Mariner's Compass Rose Tables ... All Finished!

These two tables came from Salvation Army months ago, and they were living in my garage (part of my stash of raw 'Before' projects), waiting for their turn at a make over.  Their shapes led me to add a bit of detail to their tops ... showed you how I painted the design in my last post.  Now it's time to show you the completed tables.

This is a good example of how well the Annie Sloan colors coordinate with each other.  We have Old Violet and a custom mix of Coco and Olive on the tables, with my Aubusson buffet in the background.

I didn't take any photos of the tables before I painted them, so you will have to use your imagination to picture what they looked like before their transformation.

Imagine this first table with a damaged-beyond-repair veneer top.  I removed the veneer and its underlayment, revealing the rough, pieced base of the top.  I scraped off the glue with my Bahco scraper, then used my orbital palm sander to sand it smooth.  The base of the table and the contrasting edge of the top is painted with Annie Sloan's 'Old Violet'.  The design on the top used 'Country Grey', 'Scandinavian Pink', and 'Chateau Grey'.

The base is lightly distressed and finished with clear wax.  The top received two coats of Minwax oil-based wipe-on polyurethane, for durability.  (I don't like living with waxed tops on furniture, and I don't think the people who buy my pieces should have to either.)

The left leg is waxed and buffed, and the right leg is next.

This table has a drawer.  I cleaned it up and lined it with some Waverly wallpaper that coordinates with the Scandinavian Pink on the top.  The original handle is in great shape, so all it needed was a quick wash and wipe before I reinstalled it.

Now let's look at the second table.  This one is held together with screws and bolts, and it was quick to disassemble it to make working on it easier.  The top came apart into two pieces, which meant that I didn't have to carefully cut in as I painted around the edge of the center contrasting part.

Notice how the compass point lines up with the applique on the side of the tabletop.

No 'Before' photo of this table either ... you'll have to imagine it with a big melted spot in the finish on top, where it looked like someone had set a leaky bottle of nail polish remover.  (That sanded out easily and you'll never find where it used to be.)  The base of the table and the outer portion of the top are painted with a custom mix of Annie Sloan's 'Coco' and 'Olive'.  The compass on top uses 'Country Grey', 'Old Violet', and 'Chateau Grey'.

Just like I did with the first table, the base of this one is lightly distressed and clear waxed, and the top is sealed with polyurethane.

These two tables are now part of the hoarder's stash of stuff being stored in my living room ... destined for the Luckett's Spring Market in May.

I hope these inspire you to take a second look at those less-than-perfect thrift store items you run across ... and I want you to think about other colors to use when remaking your own pieces.  There is a LOT more out there besides white, grey, and turquoise.

*************************
On another subject .... I have told you before about our friends Jim and Dan in Maryland.  Today, Jim has a timely guest post on the Washington Gardener Blog about the Washington DC cherry trees.  Click HERE to read Jim's post ... and enjoy!