When in Doubt, Make a List

It’s been a mad, crazy month, what with starting the blog, setting up shop at River Market, and now getting ready for the September market at The Mine. What I still need to do:

1. Recover a seat in burlap for a chair.

2. Finish the shiny red chandelier.

3. Fashion a lamp shade out of vintage maps, and make some more vintage map buntings.

4. Figure out how to hang old player piano rolls on a wall in the front entry in a way that is not impossible to dissemble if someone wants to purchase one (or more).

5. Touch up the file cabinet.

6. Wax the metal on a bar I converted from a vintage Cosco changing table. I can’t understand why the bare metal keeps rusting, but the wax should take care of it. (I love paste wax!)

7. Look in the garage for all the autumnal stuff I’ve squirreled away for the season that is shortly upon us.

8. Transport the remaining necessities from the warehouse to The Mine.

9. Make some sense of my booth and finish the front entry.

10. B R E A T H E.

Yes, I think I can do it!

Vendor 571

This is my little corner of River Market. Second Floor, one booth in from the northeast corner. Thanks, Carlo, for the pics!

River Market! River Market!

No pictures yet, but I moved into River Market Antique Mall yesterday! This is a big step–the first market I belong to that’s open 7 days a week. Kansas City people, make sure you hustle on down there this weekend for the big re-opening sale. Everything is 10% off through Sunday! Grab some veggies at the City Market while you’re down there.

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

When I bought this drop leaf table, it was standard issue “shabby chic.” That is, painted white over layers and layers of other paint, then marked up to a ridiculous price. I found it at a garage sale of the reseller who couldn’t manage to sell it. Imagine that. So, the price I paid wasn’t quite exorbitant, but I definitely paid more than what I should have, given the labor I put into it. Yes, folks, I stripped it all down. My original plan was to take the legs and base down to its original light-colored wood, then do a simple tabletop. Well, well, well. Another Plan B! I resorted to chemical stripper on the legs because of the number of layers of paint and I tell you, the color those legs ended up was frightening. See left. Gag. So, I had to paint. I had just used kind of an olive drab on an old file cabinet and really liked the color. So, O.D. for the legs and base. I’ve been dressing up furniture legs lately with little contrasting color “socks” and I used a nice rich red on these.

I learned from the legs not to use chemicals on the top, so I went back to what I really like to use to remove paint–a heat gun. It worked great on this. When I sanded off the residual, there was a wonderful greenish tint to the bare wood. I wanted the wood darker, though, so I added some mineral spirits to a darker, non-red stain, and applied. The color perfectly complimented the O.D. legs. I was happy. The large black checks completed the look which I then coated with 5 layers of varnish. I love this table!

Stories

I love the way this chest turned out. I bought it at an estate sale close to a year ago when it was just a very large plywood box on legs. It’s what was inside that made me buy it. There were newspapers dated 1936 from Austin, Texas, and the most bittersweet letter from one sister to another. These are the things I love about this business. The objects you touch have stories; they’ve been part of lives before mine. This piece in particular felt somewhat sacred, so I left it in it’s original condition to see if it would sell, newspaper and letter included. Well, my homely box just sat there, making me sad. So I changed it up a bit. I cut off the existing short legs and attached industrial strength rollers, then painted it. I love the way the distressing turned out and I love the color. The turquoise paint right out of the can was a bit garish, so after painting and roughing it up, I stained it with a light oak stain that had enough yellow in it to really bring it to what I was envisioning.

So, how big is this chest, really? You could probably smuggle a family of four out of the country in it.

I’m going to sell this piece, but I’m keeping the letter.

Plan B

Always have Plan B. Or C. Unfortunately, sometimes D, which in my mind is give it up and donate the damn thing to your favorite charity. Luckily this little chair only required a slight variation in what I had originally envisioned for it which was to simply clean it up. When I started the cleaning, though, I realized the wood was pretty messed up in some places and really couldn’t stay natural.  I also realized there were two matching holes in the vinyl on either side of the chair which looked unfortunate. So, I painted the wood goldenrod and donned little checks on the sides of the seat. And gave it an all-over scrub. Voila!

Here are two little tips for you:

Don’t believe it when wood fillers (any of them) claim to be stainable. They’re really only just a tiny bit stainable which means you’ll never get the match you want.

When you’re picking, make sure you give everything you’re interested in more than a quick once-over before you buy. I still would have grabbed this chair, but I would have been more realistic about my plans for it.

Metal Wardrobe

This is what I had to start with. I could tell that under all those dents, all that rust and despite the flaking brown paint this vintage steel wardrobe could be awesome.

I had first thought I’d paint an overall color and do a tone-on-tone large checked pattern, but when we were moving it, the brown paint flaked off onto our hands. Instead, I removed all the paint (mostly by just rubbing, and sanding off the rest), and revealed a great industrial look. The rust and resultant holes on the bottom are more problematic, but I think I have a good solution for that.

I was hoping to finish this project this week, but the wardrobe is so dang big, the sanding is taking longer than anticipated. I’ve got several other projects that need to be finished before I move into River Market so this is going to to sit for a few more days.

Picking in Paradise

It was fortuitous I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to take my daughter to the airport for a 6:00 flight to California. After she was checked and boarded, I headed straight to the Blazing the Trail Day community flea market in Dover, about an hour and a half from the airport. Because of the early hour, I actually arrived before most other dealers and was able to find some wonderful things at great prices. I ran into my friend Brenda at the first stop, but thankfully she looks for different things than I do. (Otherwise, I don’t think she would have told me about this in the first place!) I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been able to pick this uber-cute child’s rocker that with a little TLC should sell for significantly more than what I paid for it.

Isn’t this beautiful? This is where a bunch of the vendors sold their things. Sometimes it really is great to get up before the sun!

My Checkered Past

My first, long-neglected blog was focused three ways, as I sorted out where I would go after early retirement from a very large greeting card company in Kansas City, Missouri. I’m a designer by trade and previous employment, and I really couldn’t see giving that up entirely, so that was focus number one. Secondly, on a lark, I took a bartending course and thought about getting a job serving up booze and wisdom to poor souls in a smoky joint somewhere, so I bloggedly dabbled in mixology, too. Finally, I had recently stumbled upon the mother of all junk stores that had a stockpile of restaurant ware which inspired me to buy a bunch of it to sell on Etsy. Of course there were all sorts of other things to buy and sell besides restaurant ware, and plenty of other places to go to buy it. To say I jumped into this third category with both feet would be an understatement.

The blog was fun, and more importantly, over the months I kept at it, it became clear where my real passion lie–junking, or picking, or thrifting, or antiquing, or whatever you wish to call hunting down previously used, pretty old merchandise. Since much of what I found was too large to easily sell and ship from my Etsy shop, I eventually acquired a booth in a monthly vintage market to sell my things.

In the beginning I wasn’t much interested in furniture. That changed radically. I love furniture–not perfectly lovely, as-is furniture, but rather homely, neglected, in-need-of-love furniture that I can transform and at times repurpose into something unexpected, useful and perhaps even beautiful.

A few months ago, I rented a work and storage space so I could refurbish more efficiently than on my patio, garage, kitchen and living room. More recently, as I was painting a checkerboard pattern on the top of an abused, yet beautiful oak teacher’s desk, my endeavor acquired a name–Checkered Past.

I started selling my furniture (and stuff) at Urban Mining Homewares then spent a few months at Bottoms Up, both of which are occasional vintage markets, open only the first friday weekends of each month. All that’s going to change at the end of this month, when I move into a small space at the River Market Antique Mall, which is open seven days a week. While I’ll be selling “stuff” too, I hope my little space at River Market will be piled to the rafters with reclaimed furniture that people will love to have in their homes. (I’m staying at Urban Mining, so I’ll have two places in Kansas City for you to see my work.)

I want to chart my progress and share some of my projects, with plenty of before and after pictures and perhaps some how-to’s thrown in as well–hence my new blog. Today I picked up an amazing steel wardrobe (dented and neglected, of course) at Goodwill that will be my first before/after piece. I hope you enjoy the process and perhaps gain some inspiration along the way to give a little TLC to some of your own furniture.

P.S. I’ll do the TLC for you! I do custom work!