A Vintage Hutch ~ with just a little Paint

This gorgeous Vintage Hutch with great curvy legs had me swooning the moment I spotted it on Craigslist! It had only been posted for 3 hours, it was a fair price and close to my home. I acted quickly. Fortunately for me I did, because when I got there the lady said there was a half a dozen people waiting behind me to get it...SCORE! I'm not gonna lie, there's a little thrill in getting to something first when you know other people want it! RIGHT!? I know I'm not alone, even if you won't admit it ;)

                    


I had all kinds of grand ideas about painting this hutch {oh, it would have been fabulous} but upon seeing it and realizing what great condition it's in, I decided I would deny myself the pleasure of painting it and let the natural beauty of the wood shine! Although I'm a furniture painter, I appreciate wood and the original artist. In general I try to paint only pieces that really need it in order to be cherished again. I know this piece will be a great addition to someone's home in its {mostly} unpainted state. When I was inspecting the interior, I saw that someone had tried re-staining the inside, with not much success. My intention was to sand down, and re-stain, hopefully with more success. There were some stain marks that were so deep into the wood, I called my husband out to look and he agreed I probably wasn't going to get those out....now what??? It was either live with the marks or paint over it. Clearly from my picture, I decided to paint. Maybe I could have kept sanding, and made it look pretty good with stain, but my gut told me it wasn't gonna happen (or maybe it was my sore neck) so I listened and went with a nice neutral. Besides, I really thought it would make the fret work pop, and it does!

I didn't get a picture, but the entire top edge had some nastiness that wasn't going away either. 

I used General Finishes Seagull Grey Milk Paint (not an actual Milk Paint) for the interior. I've only recently started using this product, but it's quickly becoming a favorite! It dries fast, goes on beautifully, and has awesome coverage! I did 2 full coats and a quick touch-up in a few spots, but that's all it needed to be completely covered. I used a small roller, i think the kit at Depot is under $3 to make quick work of getting the paint on, then I like to lightly brush over it. I did one coat of their High Performance Top Coat in Satin using a cheap foam brush.

I think it's more noticeable in person, but this gives an idea of what the Danish Oil did.

After cleaning the whole piece, I used Danish Oil to touch up the few spots that were marked up. I just put some on a rag and go over the places that look a little scratched. That's not what the directions say to do. You're suppose to sand off all the old finish and then use the Danish Oil. My mom had told me years ago to use good 'ol Danish Oil to freshen up scratches and it works great! Of course, you should always use all products according to the directions.  I don't...but you definitely should!(that's my disclaimer)  I'm just sharing what worked for me on this piece.

I forgot to throw in the topcoat in this picture, but besides that, here are the products I used. 

I'm really pleased with the way the Hutch turned out! Some may cringe that I painted even the interior, but I really like it. I think it's a great balance of old/original with just a bit of new.  Now it's off to The Design Cottage in Tacoma Washington to await a new home where it can be enjoyed for many more years!


Thanks so much for stopping by and reading my little blog! Hope it was useful :)
~Aurora

To Blog or Not to Blog...

That is the question I've asked myself for some time now. With SO MANY Blogs out there, why should I possibly start one? I've talked myself out of it for a long time, and with good reason. I'm not a writer, I didn't finish high school, never went to college, am completely behind in technology (our family just got Internet a couple years ago), in no way whatsoever do I consider myself an expert on the subject I intend to blog about, and I'm a pretty private/shy person. That's not even scratching the surface, I could easily keep going, but let's move on to why I decided to start a blog in-spite of my shortcomings and the fact that the world doesn't really need another furniture painting blog.  

Basically, I've decided to blog about my small furniture business because I've only been using Facebook and recently Instagram to show my work and hopefully sell it.  I started using IG so my friends that aren't on FB could see what I do and also to show some sneak peeks of my current projects. Facebook has been my main source of interaction with customers, diy-ers, and my peers in this field. Recently, I've seen a huge drop in how many people Facebook is letting see my page (rude). Besides that, when I'm posting a piece I just finished painting, I struggle with what to write. I often want to tell about how I got to the finished product, what it took, what went wrong, what went right, what brand and color of paint I used....and of course I want to tell you where you can purchase. Plus, I spend a lot of time answering people's questions "what paint did you use?" "where'd you get those knobs?" "where's that paper from?", in addition to private messages. I SO appreciate any (ok I don't love the not so nice comments) and all interaction on my FB page and I try really hard to respond to every comment (some do slip by me, sorry about that). But, it does take up a lot of time answering the same questions over and over. (I'm not complaining, like I said I appreciate all interaction, I've heard that comments and likes help your page to be seen by more people, and thats great!) I've decided to try out blogging in an effort to answer all those questions before they even get asked! I haven't written a furniture blog post (is that even what you call it?) yet, so I don't know what you can expect exactly. Maybe I should have written one up before this? But I will try and answer all those question I get, with my very simple "how to" or more accurately "how I did it".  I want this blog to be helpful and informative to the best of my capabilities.  There'll also be a place to find my current inventory for sale. So if you can overlook my poor grammar, bad spelling (but not horrible thanks to spell check), the wrong use of there and to..., and occasionally the wrong meaning of a word altogether, then I hope you'll follow my blog and find something in it useful! 

As a side note, this is a work in Progress(obviously, right!?). You will notice, besides the simplicity, I'm missing the handy little Facebook, Instagram, Contact/Email...buttons on the side, that's because I haven't figured out how to get them. I tried watching a tutorial on how to get them, but he was not speaking my language. So if any of you tech savvy people want to lend some advice, feel free to email me! I would be forever grateful! 

And remember, stay in school and take computer classes!! See, I told you I wanted to give useful information :) 

I leave you in anticipation for my first furniture post with a sneak peek picture of my current project ;)
~Aurora