New Vanity Pictures

Hey everyone! This weekend has been absolutely beautiful outside, even with the threat of rain. I can't remember the last time I went pumpkin picking when it was 80 degrees outside at the end of October. Not only did I have fun doing that with the family yesterday, we went over to the besties for her open house! For a lot of you that follow me personally on Facebook you know that she had a house fire in March and everything was pretty much destroyed. She was displaced over the summer while her house was being rebuilt, so I was so happy to finally see her surrounded by family and friends having a great time in her newly finished house!

Side note: Girl has some good taste! Her house is put together so well! ;)

This visit gave me the opportunity to see the vanity with the mirror and hardware on and actually looking like a usable piece of furniture. The only thing left is for me to paint and distress her stool and get some fabric to redo the seat. 

Remember how dingy and flat it looked before? Look at it now, it's beautiful!

After soaking the original hardware in some mineral spirits to remove the rust, my BF choose a copper colored hammered texture spray paint for the finishing touches.

Even though there is chipping in the veneer and some scratches on the vanity, leaving it as is and restoring the finish keeps the character of the piece.

I hope you all enjoyed the restoration of this piece just as much as I did. If you have a piece of furniture that needs a bit of TLC, please let me know! My elbow grease is rather affordable! 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

~ Susan ~

Reorganization!

Hey guess what I'm doing? Oh yeah... reorganizing. This house is filled to the brim with furniture and it needs a place to go. I literally have furniture on my trailer, on my garage floor, in the back of my finished basement and in this unfinished bedroom in the basement. I can't take it anymore!!!! I simply cannot get anything done with nowhere to do anything! 

This use to be my storage room before I started to acquire all the furniture, then I just started storing unfinished pieces in there too. Now that the weather is getting colder and the garage is becoming off limits (papa grizzly bear want's his man cave back) I need a room to work and store unfinished and finished pieces. I think I'm going to add some cool things in there to make it not so... concrete? I can't do a whole lot but being surrounded by cold gray walls and plastic covered insulation is LAME.

 Oh yeah... you can commence the poking fun now...

The pieces of paper on the concrete wall are labeling what is in that tower of shelves. 

No, that is not a floral ghost in the corner of the room either. It's my Christmas tree with all the fake metal branches hot glued in. I mean, hello... who wants to unpack, rearrange limbs for an hour and then pack it back up a few weeks later every year? Not me...

The good thing is I will be done with this tonight and will be able to kick this thing right back into gear asap!!!

This makes me and my OCD very happy.

I will post a new studio picture when I get everything done! Have a great weekend guys!

~ Susan ~

Set of 6 Dining Chairs & Table

Updated: As of this morning, 11/16, the chairs were sold as is! I put them up on Craigslist and within minutes had someone wanting to buy them. The buyer is going to paint them herself in due time. Hopefully I will be able to get some "after" pictures from her! The table below is still available, though I believe that may be restyled and heading to a friends house here in a few weeks. :)

Good morning everyone! Last night I added a few more pieces of furniture to the Retro Restyling Family. In this post though I want to focus on a set of 6 dining chairs and a possible table to match. I have 2 captain chairs and 4 regular chairs. They aren't heavy, but they are so cool because they are all hand crafted and carved and pure wood with a light stain. Taking a longer look at them you can see that they aren't identical but very similar. These are available for sale as is, or if you would like them painted and distressed, that is available too.

Here is the detailing on the chair back.

And here is the detailing on the legs and front of the seat.

What great curves! 

If you are interested in this set of chairs and don't have a table to match, I might be able to pair these with the rectangular table below that I already have prepped for priming.

Here's the legs. They are sanded down really well, that's why they look splotchy.

Here is the table top, it's sanded down too.

This table doesn't have a leaf but is 60" long and 43" deep. It will fit 6 chairs and is a sturdy heavy piece.

Please contact me if you are interested in the items above, together or separated! Thanks for checking out my blog and have a wonderful rest of your day!

~ Susan ~

Antique Vanity Complete

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope you are enjoying the rest of your weekend today before the dreaded Monday pops back up tomorrow. :)

I spent some time at the bestie's house yesterday with her vanity. I was determined to get it all cleaned up and drawers lined with her choice of wall paper. She will be tackling the hardware situation though. When the pulls were put on the piece they were tightened down so hard they made indentions in the veneer, and that veneer is so thin that I didn't want to sand it down to nothing.

So here is the before picture... it's needing a good cleaning and some oil.

 

Pay attention to the striped detailing between the before and after, especially in the thinner parts under the drawers. It comes pretty clean but it's so thin that if I were to sand it to get the rest of the darkness off it would just take it right off. The oil and wax really deepened the color of the wood.

 Look how dry the wood was. The drawer on the left has the oil and wax. Check out the depth of the veneer... it's so shiny in the sun. The oil and wax really bring out the details.

This is the paper she picked out for the drawer, a retro theme to match the old vanity.

And here is the completed piece, minus the hardware. She still needs to attach the mirror but that won't happen until she has room to move it inside. I'll get more pictures of that probably next weekend.

I really enjoyed seeing this great piece of furniture go from lifeless to lustrous. If you have a piece of furniture that is in dire need of a Retro Restyling Defibrillation, please contact me! I'd love the chance to bring any boring piece of furniture back to life! :)

The Youngin's New Entertainment Center

PHEW! What a huge relief to finally be done with this project. Soooo many different colors which meant a ton of taping off and painting and touching up. Then there was the drawing... and re-drawing... and re-drawing of the cars on the doors and drawers (it helps to hone the skills, but geez it's time consuming). Not to mention the fact that the hardware was brown and that wasn't going to work so I had to paint that because I couldn't find replacements... Home Depot you disappoint me. Oh... and then the new pulls that needed to be painted. And to top it off I had to custom cut wood for the shelves and paint those and use a poly to protect them. I also relocated that pesky power strip from the inside to underneath by the drawer, hidden from view. This was honestly a rebuild and redesign of a piece of furniture.

So enough talking... time for PICTURES!
Please excuse the length of this post because of how many pictures I have to re-post for newcomers.

Before... the top piece to a TV armoire.

Uh... yup, ugly when open too. I took off the top pieces and filled the holes, the sliding TV piece was tossed and the power strip was removed.

The bedding from Target was the inspiration for the design.

The completed piece. The top is the dark blue, it just looks really dark in these pictures.

A close up of the delivery truck.

A close up of the SUV that looks like mine which was kind of weird.
I didn't even notice it until I started this project.

The center open. There is green fabric in the back for now until I feel like I want to actually put a backing to the piece.

A shot of the bottom drawer. We do have way too many VHS tapes.

Close up of the sports car.

Close up of the classic car.

Here's just a few pictures of the completed room. He's been playing drums since he was 2. :)

The old "tool box" toy box holds all his books now instead of the TV, which makes mommy happy.

There's a shot of the desk too.

I hope you all enjoyed my new piece of artwork. Even though it was very time consuming I really enjoyed turning this old beast into something functional and cute!

If you are interested in any type of transformation of furniture for your child's room, or maybe you would like some cute lady bugs or cars painted on the wall for your little boy or girl, please contact me!

Have an awesome day!

~ Susan ~

Jeffery

“Jeffery” needs a new home. It is prepped and ready to be painted and I even have new hardware for it. There was an extensive amount of bondo/fill work I had to do because of chips on the drawers and scratches on the sides and top. This piece will be a paint only, no antiquing. There are nine drawers that all work very well and to be honest, this would be a perfect dresser to hold a flat screen TV in a bedroom.

I know sometimes it’s hard to envision this to be anything other than an old brown dresser, but think of it as a blank slate. It would look great with solid bold colors or neutral colors. Or maybe if you need it for a child, I can mix a bold color with some chalkboard on the middle three drawers for a tic-tac-toe game. Also for added coolness, the inside of the drawers will be protected with any kind of paper (wrapping, newspaper, etc) you would like instead of an old boring wood drawer.

The dimensions are: 64″ long x 31″ tall x 18″ deep.

If you are interested in this dresser, please contact me to discuss price and design ideas. Remember, no boutique pricing here and I will deliver when it's finished.

Retro Desk and Chair

This awesome little desk and chair is what kicked this whole restyling thing in gear back in April of this year.

The color the previous owner painted it was an off white. I opted to for a Behr Bright White.

The chair was super gross and really needed a new seat. So I bought a bright red cotton skirt from Goodwill and used the fabric to make a new seat cover.

It really looks nice with the brighter colors. :)

A bit of new hardware for the drawers and you have a great looking desk for a kid's room.

Full shot of the desk in the room. The TV stand there is actually not made for a TV... insert new ideas for an entertainment center here.....

Side Note: I love the Backyardigans. I didn't realize I got a good shot of the show on the TV. :)

If you are interested in any restyling of current furniture you own, or would like a new piece to add to your decor, please contact me! I would love to create something for you!