French country provincial style white and timber coffee table- cute as a button!

French Provincial coffee table, cute, no?

I never intended this coffee table to be a French Provincial style table. I bought it off eBay intending to make a twin of my own coffee table this turquoise and whitewash one which I just love so much.
When I picked up the coffee table though, it was a bit smaller than I had anticipated- my fault, the dimensions were listed and I ignored them due to my very poor spatial awareness skills and lack of any ability to visualise an item when given dimensions! I'm not sure why, but white was just calling out to me for this one. So white it ended up, not blue. Don't be sad, though, just this morning I picked up a Queen Anne style coffee table that I fully intend to paint my favourite aqua colour!

This is a little coffee table, perfect for a two seater sofa or a smaller lounge room. I think it has come up really well. The stained timber top is beautifully smooth and the timber itself has lots of lovely knots.

I thought I might also include a shot of the leg detail- last post my dog was photo-bombing, this time it's the cat's turn!

For those of you who love a before shot, here it is!

Before photo.... and time to cut the grass!

Yes, it is for sale- check it out on my items of sale page, complete with dimensions!
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Vintage Record Player Cabinet Painted Pink!

Last time I wrote I promised that I would do a write up of the other piece of furniture that I picked up from my gorgeous friends' grandparent's home. It was this:

Before photo of this cute vintage cabinet. Yes that is my dog photo-bombing in the background!

A piece with lovely Queen Anne style legs, cute hardware and nice and solid but made in that funny streaky timber. I immediately loved it and wanted it all for myself. I have been on the hunt for somewhere to store our many DVDs without having to have them out in the open for all to see as they used to be. Also, I have a very adorable 7 month old son who is on the cusp of crawling. I could just envision him pulling down the whole tower and having them all fall on his little head! So the towers had to go.

I wanted colour for this piece. As I've mentioned many many times I love furniture painted bright colours. This is quite new for me. When I first started buying my own furniture I always went for the dark wood look, however when we bought our home I realised it was such a dark house with quite small rooms that the furniture was claustrophobic being so dark. That's where my hobby began- painting furniture for my own home to make it look brighter and more open. It has definitely helped- I am much happier in my home now!

But back to this piece... I undercoated the whole thing then mixed my own shade of paint using Dulux Orchid Orange as a base. I actually started painting in the straight colour but as I was looking at it it seemed too dark so I lightened it up with more white. Here is the 'After' photo.

My biggest problem was with the handles. They couldn't come off as they were not screwed on, but rather adheased with glue or something and I was scared I would do irreparable damage to the piece if I tried to get them off. So I tried to cover them off with masking tape and paint around them but due to the intricate nature of them this was just impossible. So I decided to go with the shabby chic look and sort of lightly paint them but do a really shoddy job of it so you could still see the black underneath! They actually look great in real life, but they haven't shown up all that well in photos. Here's a photo anyway...

I love it! It holds all of our DVDs (only just- we are going to have to stop buying new ones) and looks oh so cute with the photos from our wedding, my grandparents' wedding and our little keepsake box which has just the right shade of pink in it too!

Does anyone else have a great piece that hides all their DVDs?

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Queen Anne Vintage Bedside Tables Painted White White White!

Sometimes someone's trash really is another person's treasure. Like these. The story of these beautiful tables begins at Dumpling King and a conversation about cleaning out my friends' Grandparents' house, ready for sale. 'You should see how much we've thrown out, we've already filled a skip bin  the size of our driveway' my friends (sisters) told me. It turned out that these were in the skip bin, along with another secret treasure, which I will blog about next.

So they were saved. Here is the before picture.

The gorgeous little tables before

I think you can see that they weren't in perfect condition. One handle was missing (sadly I couldn't get a matching one so they all had to be replaced), there were some pretty bad stains on the tables, some stickers and chips. The chips I quite like, they add to the shabby chic feel. I could have filled them with some wood putty, as I usually do with chips but these ones I kept. I like the history of them. I did, however, fill the holes where the old handles were, then sanded the tops completely (where the marks and stickers were).

I didn't sand back the legs as I am using a new product called Zinsser Smart Primer. I'm told that if you use this primer you do not need to sand (it claims to stick to anything) and you only need one coat for stain blocking. We've been using it around our house as we are in the process of painting all of our wooden skirting boards. On the first section we painted around the house I did only use one coat of the primer. I should have stuck to what I normally do and painted two coats, as even with three top coats of white paint, you can still see the wood grain. But I digress. 

My advice? Always put two coats of primer on. Here is a quick pic I took of the tables to show the difference between one coat of primer and two.

Two coats of primer on the left, one coat on the right. Massive difference.

Painting furniture white is actually more tricky than painting it a colour because you really need more coats of paint. These guys got three coats of white enamel paint and in some parts where I wanted to touch up, four. But I think they look great!

After!

Want them? They're up for grabs for as long as you can see them on my 'Furniture for Sale' page.

Detail of the leg. These are really beautifully made.

 What other colours would you love to see these in?
 *Hint* I'm already planning my next project!

Can you tell that these are little crystal knobs? Cute.

                 

Detail of the top of the tables.

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