Apothecary style dressers and cabinets are very popular right now.  I found an old 1970’s dresser that would be perfect to upcycle into this style. Each drawer has 3 square sections that could be made to look like separate drawers.

This is the dresser before. It was a good sturdy dresser but the front had some damage from the drawer pulls. It took a lot of wood putty and sanding to fix the worn areas on the drawers.

But the rest of the dresser was in great shape! One thing I don’t like to try to fix is drawer slides. It can be really frustrating to find just the right slide to replace a broken or missing one. Cosmetic problems are easier to fix, especially if you are painting it.

I decided to go with two paint colors on this piece. I taped the body of the dresser and painted it Annie Sloan Old Ochre.

The drawers were painted a mix of Old White and French Linen. I distressed the edges of the drawers so each of the squares on the drawers looked like a separate drawer.

I ordered filing cabinet drawer pulls on eBay and placed one on each square of each drawer. There are 9 drawers but 27 drawer pulls giving this piece the look of an apothecary.

This is such a fun piece and one of my favorite before and after projects.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this project. And thanks for taking a look at my blog. I appreciate it! 😃

Cindy

Sometimes I see a sample swatch of a color and it doesn’t stand out as a color I’m dying to try. That was Versailles for me.

This color always blends in with the other neutral colors and I didn’t pay much attantion to it.  But I wanted a color that had a hint of green in it for a piece I want to paint in my own home. I remembered seeing a piece at All Fixed Up where I have a booth that was painted in Versailles and looked for more examples on Pinterest. I was convinced it was the color I wanted to use and I bought a can of it. I decided to pull it out this week and try it out in a small table I bought and wanted to refinish to put in my booth. This cute little table is darling but needed some work.

There was some clear water damage to the top so I started by removing some of the top layer veneer. But the damage was deeper so I had to take it down to the wood slats.

After I pulled off as much as I could I sanded it smooth and filled in the gaps with wood putty. Ready for paint! I lightly distressed and put a clear coat of wax and the table was transformed.

Loving this color. The subtle green is perfect and I’m excited to paint the piece in my home that I bought this paint color for! I’m also inspired to try a few other colors I haven’t tried yet. I love the color options Annie Sloan has put together. And Versailles has moved up on my list of favorite colors!

Thanks so much for taking a minute to read my blog. Let me know what you think of Annie Sloan Versailles!!

Cindy

In  Part 1  of this series I talked about taking these chairs apart. So let’s talk about putting them back together. After I found a fix for the seat cushion for theses chairs it was time to put them on and staple them into place. I knew from pulling the huge pile of staples out of the wood the few days before that the wood was a hard wood. Really hard. I have always used a manual stapler when reupholstering chairs but I didn’t think it would do the trick with this one. So I bought a new one. 😃

This one is more fun to use than the manual one! 😉 It requires an air compressor and packs a punch. I covered the seat cushion with a layer of quilt batting and stapled it to the chair.

I had already measured the seat cushion to see how much material I would need and so that went on next. When you are stapling material to a chair keep it tight and make sure you are leaving enough material for all 4 sides. Always leave yourself a little extra to work with. When you get to the corners you have to start folding the material a little bit at a time as you place the staples. I always try to do several very small folds and try to do each corner uniform to the other corner. Front and back corners will probably look different. With these chairs I also had to work around the arms. I did a lot of tucking and folding to get a smooth look. Different chairs will require a different technique but it isn’t a hard process. Just take your time and if you don’t like how it’s going take the staples out and restart. That happened a few times for me on these chairs.

Once it was all stapled the way I wanted it I trimmed the excess. If you are stapling the material under the chair cushion you don’t have to trim any off unless it’s hanging down. With the seat cushion done I started on the back. This required 2 pieces of material with the cushion in between. I stapled this exactly the way it was done originally. For most chairs I always try to mimic what the original maker of the chair did. This was much easier than the seat except I realized the seat cushion was kind of in the way as I stapled the bottom part of the back of the chair. I should have started with he back of the chair, and on the second chair I did. I was able to finish the back but it was a little tricky. Live and learn right! 😉 I used the original material to cut the new material, but I gave myself an extra inch or so to work with.

I stapled the first piece on the back and trimmed and folded that piece down. The original padding was replaced and the second piece was stapled on top of the cushion.

I think I put as many staples back into this chair as I took out. I placed the staples right next to each other so none of the material would lift. Next the arms.

This part was easy. But on each part really pay attention to where you are placing the staples so you don’t end up with puckering or placing staples in the wrong spot. I spent A LOT of time on this. Stapling really is the time consuming part but it pays off. Time to give it a finished look. I bought some trim that matched the material the client had provided and glued it into place.

I bought some material glue and started with that but I didn’t feel it was holding the way I wanted it to. So I changed to a hot glue gun and that worked best. Ok are you ready to see them all done?

I was so happy to be done with them and happy that they turned out so pretty! For some of this I have to give credit to the client. She picked a lovely material and the perfect paint color. Although this was a big long project, that was sometimes a bit frustrating, I was happy I had the opportunity to tackle it. Probably because chairs always turn out so pretty! 😊

I hope this was a helpful post and didn’t scare anyone away from trying this on your own. Haha!! It was time consuming but not too difficult. Let me know what you think of my chair-seat fix and what you think about how these turned out. I love hearing your thoughts.

Thanks as always for taking a look at my blog. Hope you will stop by again!

Cindy

I sold some mirrors I had upcycled to a cute lady and she asked me if I would paint and reupholster some chairs for her. As it happens I LOVE to upcycle chairs. So I said sure I can probably help you with that, and I asked her to send me pictures of the chairs she wanted redone.

Ok so I don’t sew. Like I don’t even own a sewing machine. So I would not be making new cushions for these chairs and I let her know that wasn’t something I could do. I found a picture on line of the kind of seat cushion I could do and she was game. And so my huge reupholstering project began.

I got the chairs and realized they were even bigger than I was expecting but the bones of the chairs were great. These chairs were huge, beautiful and sturdy. I’ve reupholstered chairs before but nothing as involved as this. I read a few blog posts and had some good ideas on how to tackle this project. It was time to tear these chairs apart. This was no small task. In fact this took a few days. I’m not sure how many staples where in these chairs but my guess is: in the thousands. I used several tools to get the material and staples off these chairs.

As I pulled the material away from the wood some of the staples stayed in the material. But about three quarters of them stayed in the wood. There was a lot of digging, pulling, yanking and frustration during this part of the project. Two days later I had a good size pile of staples that nearly filled a paper cup, not including the ones that stayed in the material.

Do you feel bad for me yet! 😉Haha I was happy to be done with that.

Next it was time to paint the chairs. The client picked Annie Sloan Old White and a clear wax finish with no distressing. I’ve used a paint sprayer in the past but I just got a new one and was excited to try it out.

I will do a post later on paint sprayers that work with chalk paint but let me just say this one is AMAZING! Anyhoo, with the paint and clear wax done it was time for the reupholstering.

The foam cushions for the back of the chairs and the arms were in good shape so I could reuse them without any problem.  But I needed to find a fix for the bottom cushion. I thought about using the foam cushion in the removable seat cushion but it was a bit too thick. It was also already the shape of the seat, so I decided to try cutting the cushion in half to make it thinner in hopes I could still use it.

I used a box cutter to cut the cover off and then I measured and marked the cushion and started cutting into it. I could feel that there were springs inside the cushion so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Once I cut it in half I found a compartment of springs that came right out. But without the springs the foam was very thin so I needed to add more foam. I bought some 3 inch foam and cut it to fit inside the area that the spring compartment had sat in.

That worked really well and I was able to fit the cushion into the seat of the chair and keep the original shape. No sewing required!

This was a big project so I’m going to break this up into 2 posts. In part 2 I will show you how I replaced the thousands of staples I removed and the finished product!

Hope you’ll stop by to see it! 😃

Cindy

I did a post on Annie Sloan White Wax Finish and wanted to do one on Black Wax as well. I really like the Black Wax. It gives a different finished look than Dark Wax. You can see my post on dark wax here:  Using dark wax to give your project an antique look

I started out by painting a small table with ASCP Duck Egg Blue, lightly distressing it and sealing it with Clear Wax.

Annie Sloan Black Wax goes on much like the Dark Wax. For this piece I used a small brush to add the black wax to just the areas I wanted it in. The black wax gets into the crevices and accents it and gives the piece depth and texture.

I like the way the Black Wax spreads over the Clear Wax. I think it’s easier to use than the Dark Wax. It’s a little smoother and spreads a little easier. As with the Dark Wax, once applied over the Clear Wax just use a lint free cloth (I prefer cheesecloth) to wipe off the excess. It can also be lightened up or removed with a little clear wax on your lint free cloth. AS White Wax needs to sit for a few minutes before being buffed but Black Wax does not. It sets quickly like the Dark Wax.

The Black Wax gives the piece more of an industrial antique’d look and I love it. I think it looks great with the Duck Egg Blue and really brings out the character of this little table. Loving the options the new White and Black waxes offer.

Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about the Black Wax.

Thanks for stopping by 😊

Cindy