Antique desk for my daughter

My daughter is in grade 4 and she'd never had a study desk.

She usually does her homework in the nook or at the dining table.

One day I bugged my husband to take me to a thrift store hoping to score some cheap but can be potantially nice furniture to work on.

.....and there she was!

(I don't know why I always treat furniture like a human being..)

Isn't she a beauty?

Sure, it had to be repainted but drawers worked perfect and nothing was broken, except the top left handle, it stays intact like this but it's broken and completely in two pieces. No big deal. I definitely wanted to have this desk.

I also found a good size chair to go with it.

From the first moment I laid my eyes on this desk, I knew I wanted a dark stained top so I decided to get rid of the laminate top.

Please don't mind the darker part of the top I just wanted to try a natural stain method which I had found on the internet, but I'd have liked it darker.

BTW, I'm a big sucker for anything natural, organic, sustainable stuff & food.

My ultimate goal of furniture restoring is to use products which are all earth-friendly....I know, it's a long way to go.

Then I primed white and did the demo.

My very first trial of staining.

Finished.

I really love the contrast between the dark handles and light baby blue drawers.

First, I was thinking to distress these, so I went ahead and distressed the chair first.

When my daughter came back from school and I proudly presented the distressed chair, the corners of her mouth went south right away.

"Oh....mommy, it looks so old..."

I explained her that's a good thing, but she didn't like it.

I was glad I didn't do the desk first, imagine having to paint the whole desk again, oh, no.

Anyway, I love her desk and I hope she'll do lots of studying on this desk for the  many years to come :)

 I'm currently working on this dresser.

Thank you for reading, have a great day!!!

Princess Chest

First off, I love love love French Provincial furniture.
The design....the curves....they are just my kinda girls!

When I saw this at a thrift store, I knew something had to be done!

One of the drawers was broken.

 Rreconstructing is not my speciality, so this poor dresser was used as is by my daughter for so long...

um...excuse her mess on top!

I knew I can't look the other way everytime I go into her room, so one day, I finally gathered my courage and started working on it.

With this stripper, I removed the white paint.

At this point, it's fun to scrape all the paint...

...even though you know the-big- messy-cleaning-up is coming up next :(

and look!!
Gold lining underneath started to show through.
It's fun to know how it looked like before.

It took me all one afternoon to clean it up. Boy was I so tired.

The decorative part of the legs was made of wierd plastic or something and as I applied the stripper, it started to melt........Aaarrgghhhhhhhh!!!

 After panicking a little while, I grabbed again my beloved wood filler and smooth the legs out.....

OK, looks not bad now ;)

Then, it's fun time! Painting time that is.

From the beginning, I had a vision for it.

Pretty pink and white knobs.Yes.That'd look super cute!!

But first, I had to ask my client (daughter )cuz it'll be in her room.

She has to LOVE it.

She came to the shed and look at my (small) paint collection and she picked the different pink with a little purple tinge to it.

Also, she wanted to have silver line and (fake) diamond piceces ALL OVER the chest.

I did the demo.

I love to do demos, it gives me something really look forward to in the end :D

And it looked so pretty!

Then my daughter say: I told you so!!

OK, you were right, sweetie.

After so much struggle with the silver lines, I finally finished it.
Oh, I forgot to take any pictures of the broken drawer redo.
I glued a piece of wood , filled the gap with wood filler,sanded,
then you can't really tell which one was broken. Done.

What do you think?

Sleek Black Nightstand

This was my very first attempt to redo old furniture.

I didn't even know we had this, it was in the guest room we used to rent to a good friend  of us, it turned out that my husband picked it off the curb, good job, buddy!

Well, my first attempt to use the orbit sanding machine and paint stripper.

Oh my, scraping the paint bits is such a messy job! it took me a good 1hour to clean it. But I love every minute of it! I don't know why, I'm usually not so fond of cleaning....;)

...and my first attempt to paint. I was SO nervous!

Painted twice and applied clear coat, put back the spray-painted-silver original handles, it's ready to go back in the house.

Not so bad for a first timer,eh?

Blue & Silver Table

I found this baby at a thrift shop, dated, dirty and sad, but she had a big storing place inside.

It also had a hole in the back. It looks small in the picture but it was about 2 inches in width.

 I bought it anyway because I loved the design on the front.

I brought this home (it's my husband did the carrying )

sanded with my electrical sander (well, it was my husband's but he gave it to me, cool to have a handy hubby with all the tools!!) and hand-sanded all the details.

Then filled that hole with my trusted wood filler.

Also, one of the corner was kinda missing, looked like something gnawed on it, mice? Ewwwwwww!

Again, I used the wood filler to create a corner.

It smelled funny a little so I gave it a good cleaning too.

Rough up the surface so the primer can adhere well.

....and put the primer on.

you can't really see there used to be a hole now, can you?

Now the question is which colour should I go for?
White? Black? Yellow? Grey? Hmmmmmm.
I decided on icy blue  because.....I've already had the color right here with me :)
But it needed more bling, something that can make it a little more special.
So I grabbed an artist's brush and painted metalic silver on the front and dry-brushed the same silver all over the table.
I always try to make old, dated furniture a little more special, to give it a soul kinda thing if you know what I mean....

Now this is my kinda furniture!

                                                Now she's looking pretty :)

Lovely Yellow Dresser

This old but pretty dresser was given to me by a friend.....like 3years ago!
At that time, I was just busy taking care of my 3 little kids and had no time or energy...
But finally, I mean, FINALLY ,the youngest started kindergarten and I've got free time to work on it during the day :)

First, I sanded it down and primed.
It had a little too beat-up-look to my taste, so I filld some holes with a wood filler.
( I love wood filler, I can fix anything!! well...almost, that is.)

I painted it warm yellow.

For a finishing touch, I added a furniture applique on one of the drawer and a piece of molding on top,spray painted the original handles and added crystal knobs on the top drawer.

I really like how it turned out.
It makes me smile everytime I pass in front ot it :)