Hang a Quilt on the Wall!!

I decided to display my great grandmother's feed sack quilt from the 1920's or 30's on the wall of our dining room. It goes great with the rustic direction in which our decor has gone in that room. I've been influenced by early American decorating and primitive furnishings lately, and I love the history that it conjures up in my mind. I also painted three chairs black in that style. Oh! And I almost forgot, we decided to paint our table top red, instead of the stenciling. In the end the pattern fought with the quilt pattern, and the red is more rustic anyway. Always evolving!

Vintage Flower Print Table Cloth

I found this gorgeous rose print table cloth at a consignment shop a few weeks ago. It is in perfect condition, you can tell someone really took care of it. Since it is rectangular, my table is round, and the decor of the dining room is a little different from pink roses...I started to wonder what else I could do with it. Turns out our bedroom is nothing BUT flower prints, so I decided to use it in there. I wanted to make pillow shams, but then I wondered if one day I wouldn't want to use it as a table cloth. So, I decided to just lay it across the pillows. Perfect size! And it looks like shams once the throw pillows are on. Score! A $6 well spent.

Stenciled Table Top

I have been torn about our dining table for a long time. Originally I wanted an antique round country table, but I could never find one. I found many pedestal tables but I wanted one with legs. Finally, I found one at Target online, but nowhere near antique and it was a hideous factory blond color with a plasticky looking finish. Because it was the perfect style, I decided I would just buy it and "antique" it. So last year I ordered the table and painted it black, then distressed it and coated in polyurethane. I liked the way it looked, but it wasn't perfect. Mainly because the super light wood color under the black was too much contrast and didn't look like it had actually aged. That dang unstained blond wood!!!! The past year went by with the table under my vintage crochet table cloth. So, the other day it began gnawing on my mind again. I want an actual antique round dining table!! I still plan on looking for one, but in the mean time I also had another idea. Stencil the table top and make it a little more artful. I have already done a stool with this same stencil design so I knew exactly what to do. It is basically one square over and over and it ends up looking like granny squares, lace, or even quilting. It's really cool. I thought about white, but opted for my Martha Stewart craft paint in antique gold. It is very fast drying and looks amazing on top of black. This was actually a very easy job, with just a few things to remember. Wipe the stencil every time to get a neat print. Also to have a weathered appearance to the design, let some prints be bolder than others, and don't worry too much about small smudges. Do try to keep them lined up straight so that the design looks like someone worked hard on it at some point in time. Aged doesn't equal sloppy. Haha. Anyway, afterward, I ran some sand paper over some sections to make it look even more worn, and then I was done. I might add another top coat of poly if I get a chance, but it doesn't matter to me if it gets scratched because it is already distressed. This made me appreciate my table a little more, so now it is proudly on display instead of under a table cloth.

Antique Screen Door Turned Headboard!

Hello, everyone!

I have been so busy that I haven't been able to take on any projects for a while. However, I did manage to squeeze this one in, and it's a really exciting one!

My mom found this old Victorian wooden screen door on an abandoned house in Portsmouth, VA about 20 years ago, and never did anything with it. Her dream had always been to use it as a headboard for their king size bed. After all this time had passed, and the door had been under a layer of dust in the attic, I finally decided to get it out and bring it back to life.

I wanted to use it as a headboard myself or a wall hanging of some kind. My mom didn't want it any more so she gave me the go ahead to do whatever I pleased with it. So I ripped out the screen, sanded any splinters off (the finish was pretty much gone anyway) and then I painted one layer of rustic looking pastel sky colored paint. Then I gave it a light distressing with sand paper. This was a really easy makeover, there wasn't a whole lot of surface to cover.

I tried hanging the door sideways like a headboard, but because of the handle (which I thought looked cool so I didn't want to remove) it wouldn't lay flat. I felt like I just couldn't keep it up on the wall securely enough to sleep well at night. I would not want to awaken to that thing falling on our heads! So I stood it up behind the bed and hung a votive candle holder shaped like a branch in the space, and I think it looks really cool the way it is! I love the spindles on the door, typical Victorian accents. Here are some photos-

Double chair makeover- red under black

Hello, all!  This is a makeover that I did for a friend of the family- my first paying job!  She wanted these two chairs made over with black paint over red paint, and then distressed so the red shows through underneath.  It took me a long time to get these done, due to the fact that they had the double paint colors and of course..there were two.  I think they came out really amazing, though!  She liked them enough to ask me to makeover another piece of her furniture, so I guess I did OK. I never saw the seats, but I think she is going to use something with a bold print.  I thought they would look cool with a bright colorful print of some sort.   Take a look-

 This is when one chair already had two colors on it, and the other was about to turn black.  just wanted to show the red underneath.

These are the chairs before.  Just blond wood, light finish.  Definitely more stylish now, I would say. ;)

Chippy Black Kitchen Table

I finally got our table painted!!  This table is only several months old, and is from the Target website....everything I can't STAND in a piece of furniture.  But it was the right style and is very sturdy, so I felt that given a romunky makeover (I made up a new word- it's romantic+funky,) this table could actually look cute.  So I sanded the plasticky finish down and painted it black, then distressed it to look like the paint was peeling.  I used sandpaper, but also one of those hand held cheese graters.  It worked great!  Then I put a coat of clear satin poly on it and it was done.  This was actually easy- it only took about 2-3 hours.  Here are the pictures!

Before- Blonde (cringe) wood with a shiny plasticky (cringe again) finish:

AFTER!!!!

For the Love of Wooden Chairs

Ok, if you all haven't noticed by now....I am addicted to chairs. Specifically wooden ones, and more specifically OLD wooden ones. So I have been on a journey over the past year now to find the perfect set of antique wooden dining chairs. The table has also been part of the journey, but for some reason I have more of an obsession with chairs than tables. So, as you may have read in a previous post, I painted a mismatched set of chairs for our dining area (soon to be an actual dining ROOM after we move). All of these chairs were green or white, and all were distress painted. It turns out that some of them ended up working for us and others didn't. We still have the old chair which I painted mint green that I found in my grandparents attic (seen in my post "My Day As An American Picker.") I also still have one distressed light sage green reproduction pressback chair, which is the only non-vintage chair now, but looks so awesome that I had to keep it. We moved the white ladder back (painted in an earlier post) into our bedroom because the arms were just too cumbersome at our small table, and gained an old spindled kitchen country chair which I found at a consignment shop. I painted the legs and spindles an antique red and then distressed. I wanted to leave the worn wood seat and back for some more variation. And finally, I finished another old chair from my grandparents garage which is probably from the 1900's-1920's and added that one to the collection. This one is old dark wood, rubbed with oil and the missing woven seat is covered in a traditional cardboard covering and upholstery tacks. I am very satisfied with the way things look now. I love a little dark wood mixed in with the lighter paint. I am now trying to decide what color to paint the table...it is not old and you can SO tell. It's an old country style, but it looks like it was dipped in plastic at a factory, which is probably what happened. I am torn between black distressed and antique white distressed. I am leaning towards white. Anyway, the only change I could possibly make to the chairs is if I come across an actual antique pressback, and then the reproduction would have to move over for the real thing. Until then, enjoy some pictures of some fabulous old chairs...( sorry if the photo quality is iffy, I can't figure out how to upload pics from my iPad onto Blogger, for some reason it is not letting me.)

First of all, these are the three old chairs I found in my grandparents' garage and attic.  The one in the front actually was just redone by me for my mom, I will show you pictures another day.  The other two you will spot in the following photos, if you can recognize them....

And here's one of my reproduction pressback looking springy...

Looooove this chair, it looks old and the only thing that will make me happier is a REAL antique pressback (my mom has two but she's not giving them up, and I don't blame her.)  Speaking of pressbacks, I thought you chair lovers might like to read this article, about the the pressback method.

Here also are some photos of one of my mom's amaaaaaaazing Victorian pressback (it was my great grandmother's) hanging out with another reproduction which I painted a darker sage green and distressed.  I like to think they are friends..haha

Is this not the most beautiful chair ever??  I can't believe my mom won't let me have it!  Haha

I also wanted to show you this photo that I found randomly while researching...someone else took almost the exact photo I did of their gorgeous green antique pressback!  Great minds think alike!