Love You to the Moon & Back

Believe it or not, I actually refinished this dresser in my head when I was shopping in Home Goods.

I saw this sign, "Love You to the Moon & Back" and I immediately flashed back to memories of reading this story over and over and over to my oldest son when he was little. Such a cute story!

Guess How Much I Love You
Author: Sam McBratney

Then I found the rug and decided the dresser would look gorgeous painted in Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen. The dresser doesn't appear to be in bad shape from the front, but.....

It was a mess on the sides! Big chips of missing veneer and scratches galore!

The drawers were really nicked as well, and I had to sand down the entire top for a smooth, paintable surface. So I patched the veneer and sealed it with shellac to prevent potential "bleed through".

And here she is! Repaired, painted and glazed!

Sanding between coats of paint makes such a huge difference in the finished product!

And a couple of hours hunched over the sink scrubbing the original brass hardware so they would shine again!

I lined the drawers with a matching grey and white striped paper:

The funny thing is that when my son came home from school he immediately recognized the saying from the book and stole the sign for his own room!

Love you to the moon and back, C! (This is, of course, assuming he'll read this - odds are he won't!)

My prep partner!

On a side note, I have a ton of new unfinished inventory waiting to be adopted and made over. If you're in Southern California, check it out and see if anything piques your interest. I'd love to customize a piece just for you!

Have a great week!

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Drexel Touraine - How I Love Thee

I was in the right place. At the right time. I walked into a time capsule of a Brady Bunch episode at an estate sale - with orange shag carpet, avocado green lamps, and macrame hangings. All perfectly preserved. A magical force was guiding me into the master bedroom - and there she was.

Miss Drexel Touraine

In PERFECT condition!

Fortunately, no women, children or animals were harmed as I tripped over myself in my mad dash to grab the ticket off this dresser and pay for it fast. Before the furniture gods changed their minds.

So what's all the fuss about this dresser? In the sixties, Drexel (before they merged with Heritage and became Drexel Heritage) made the Touraine collection. At that time, it was the most expensive set of furniture being manufactured in the good 'ol USA.

Here's an advertisement from their collection.

I sold it as a custom order to a lovely couple and ended up refinishing all of their bedroom furniture.

It was painted (as their other pieces) in General Finishes Seagull Grey and Snow White. The original handles were refinished in silver metallic paint.

And sealed with General Finishes High Performance Top Coat in Satin. A gorgeous, simple color combination for an elegant, classic dresser!

She's at home now with her big brother:

And little sisters:

I would love to get my hands on another one some day! But I can't promise I won't trip over myself to get to the tag, though!

And while we're on the Drexel subject, are there any Drexel experts out there that can identify which collection this secretary desk is from?

I've scoured the internet: Pinterest, Ebay, online antique stores, vintage advertisements from the sixties, and left messages on the corporate Drexel website and Facebook account without success.

This is my only clue from the back:

I think the numbers "3/68" are probably when it was made. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I'd like to have all my facts straight before I plunge head on into refinishing it. Heck, I may even keep it for myself!


Have a fantastic week!

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The Princess Charlotte Dresser

I've had this dresser in my stash for a while just waiting for me to get to it. It's a Dixie 12-drawer French Provincial dresser. Twelve drawer French dressers are hard to find, and when I saw it listed on Craigslist, as well as the "Dixie" name, I was immediately smitten.

My heart always skips a beat when I open a drawer and see this!

It needed a really good cleaning before I could even start prepping it. G-R-I-M-Y is an understatement! But fortunately, it was in excellent condition structurally.

So after a few coats of oil-based primer, I let it sit for a few days while I was finishing some other projects and waiting for inspiration.

And while the whole world was waiting for the birth of the new royal baby, I jokingly posted on Facebook that I couldn't decide what color to paint this dresser, and that maybe I should paint it blue or pink depending on the gender of the new royal baby!

More waiting (poor Kate - it's bad enough to be almost ten months pregnant, but to have the whole world waiting as well)!  And at long last, when the good news was announced that England had a new little princess, my Dixie dresser was named "Princess Charlotte"!

The body and top was painted in General Finishes Snow White, and the sides were painted in Antoinette (ASCP). I didn't want to go with an over-the-top pink dresser, but for it to be subtle and elegant.

The stripes were really fun to paint! I used a measuring tape to determine the width of the stripes, taped off the stripe lines with Frog Tape, and then painted alternating stripes in pink.

And sealed the entire piece with General Finishes High Performance Top Coat in Satin.

The original hardware was cleaned and repainted in a matching white paint.

So happy that the wait is over....for the baby - and for the dresser! It's available in my Etsy shop....

Have a great day!

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The Dresser I Thought About Stealing...

I'm kidding, obviously. But I have to admit that when I completed this antique highboy for my clients, I briefly ran through in my mind how I would explain how it disappeared from my garage and mysteriously reappeared in my bedroom!

But sanity prevailed - because there were so many problems with my twisted logic. How would I get a 500-lb dresser upstairs by myself? Because certainly neither my husband nor the boys would be complicit in this evil scheme. And they most definitely would rat me out to my clients - because we all really like this lovely young couple and their gorgeous Bijon.

Isn't she cute? And, she does tricks, too!

There was another problem complicating my scheme. This dresser is the big brother to the end tables I recently redid for them -  as well as another dresser that I had yet still to refinish. So sanity prevailed when I realized I really didn't want to go to jail for stealing furniture from clients or losing future business from them!

But I digress. Here is the before picture of the highboy. I loved it immediately - I could see the potential with its gorgeous lines - in spite of a really ugly color choice. My clients purchased it from house painters - and they did a really nice job painting it. The only problem with this was how they painted the drawers. It appeared they had rolled the paint on the drawers with a very high nap roller - which left an orange peel-like texture on the drawers.

So I had to strip the drawers back to their original wood finish and start all over again. Fortunately, everything else was in very good condition, and I just did the usual light sanding to even out any nicks or scratches.

I primed the piece twice with a water-based primer and then set to work. The drawers were painted in General Finishes Seagull Gray and the hardware painted in Rustoleum Metallic Finishes and sealed with a clear polyurethane spray.

I painted the body of this piece in General Finishes Snow White. The top and the sides were also painted in Seagull Gray.

And sealed with a high-performance top coat in satin.

Look at these gorgeous feet!

Here is the beautiful after shot. This story had a happy ending: I didn't steal this dresser and it was happily reunited with its side tables. I do, however, have first dibs on it in case my client ever wants to sell it!

Enjoy your week and thanks as always for stopping by!

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