Paris Grey China Hutch

Hello....I've got a few projects that I've finished over the past few weeks and not yet written about them...will try and catch up, starting now!

This one I actually finished today.

I am a little bit in love with it!

Here is how it started out...

I immediately envisaged it painted in grey and white and filled with white china and natural coloured things, so styling it today and seeing my vision come to life was pretty fun!

I gave the exterior two coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Paris Grey. For the inside I used a custom mix of Pure White and French Linen (approximately 1/3rd of a tin of Pure White with a couple of tablespoons of French Linen) - this took the starkness off the Pure White and just gave it a nice antique white look without the yellowish tones of Old White.  I'm really happy with how the white looks.

The inside has had 3 coats of white.

New 4cm crystal knobs give it a nice bit of bling!

I'm taking this to my next market stall, which, weather permitting, will be this Sunday 24th November at Cassegrain Winery, Port Macquarie from 9am-3pm.

Linking up with:

* Elizabeth & Co. * Domestically Speaking * A Stroll Thru Life 
 * Miss Mustard Seed * DIY Show Off * Savvy Southern Style
*Funky Junk Interiors

English Yellow Phone Table

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in English Yellow was made available for those of us in Australia and New Zealand to purchase this week, so I had to get my hands on some and try it out!

Here is the piece I decided to use as my trial piece for this colour - a sad and tired looking vintage phone table.

As soon as the courier van dropped off the paint from Crab Apple Vintage in Newcastle I got straight to work and painted the phone table with two coats of English Yellow...boy was it BRIGHT!  I had a feeling that it would be a little too bright for this particular piece, but thought I would try it anyway, knowing that if I then applied more coats in a lightened shade, I would end up with a great layered effect when I distressed the piece - I also did this on the Seafoam Doily Chair using ASCP in Florence.

I applied two coats of the full strength colour then two of a mix of English Yellow and Pure White in equal parts. The lightened mix takes it from an almost mustard colour to a pretty buttercup shade.

Here she is, all done. I also reupholstered the seat pad using one of my favourite English-made floral cottons...an English made floral I thought was fitting for the English Yellow paint :)

I decided to change the existing handle for something more quirky, so filled the old holes then drilled a new one.

I do love bright and happy colours mixed with pastels, they just make me smile :)

My verdict on English Yellow? I love it, for certain pieces, and I very much look forward to finding the right sideboard or hutch dresser to put it on!

Linking up with:

* Elizabeth & Co. * Domestically Speaking * A Stroll Thru Life 

 * Miss Mustard Seed * DIY Show Off * Savvy Southern Style

*Funky Junk Interiors

Pure White Sideboard

Hello, today I've got a gorgeous sideboard transformation to show you.  It was a custom job for Paula, a lovely client of mine who has entrusted me with a few pieces of her furniture, such as this hall stand...

this china cabinet

and this desk.

Here's what the sideboard looked like before I worked my magic:

I just love to paint this type of furniture - it is solid, sturdy, has nice lines, and looks amazing once painted!

This one was hiding a bit of a secret.  It had been stored for a while and wasn't being used. As we pulled it out from the wall to load it into my car, we discovered this:

A very mouldy backing board! Our sub tropical climate is quite humid at times and as such, mould can thrive before you know it. 

Of course it looked bad, but I knew it would be simple to fix by removing it and installing a fresh new one.

I used 3mm MDF and got the lovely man at Bunnings to cut it to size for me. I primed and painted it in a fresh green (Dulux French Limestone) before stapling it on after I had painted the sideboard.

The sideboard itself was painted in Annie Sloan Pure White - it was my first time using Pure White as I would never choose to use a pure bright untinted white myself, as I find it too stark. However, after using this I am converted! It is a beautiful colour and goes so well on this type of furniture. It did take 5 coats to get a coverage I was happy with, but had expected that as I had read others say similar.

Here's the finished article, looking all beachy and fresh.

I delivered the sideboard back to Paula's gorgeous home yesterday, and came home with the next project - this bookcase which is going beachy in pale Duck Egg and White...really looking forward to this one - it's going to look beautiful!

Seafoam Doily Chair

Well, this week finished better than it started...on Monday our bedroom flooded due to a blocked drain in the shower. Pulling up the carpet and forking out several hundreds of dollars to a plumber and a carpet layer wasn't how I planned to start my week!  These things happen though and it was all fixed by Thursday which meant I could focus on finishing some painting projects.

This chair was one of the items I finished, and I am really pleased how it turned out.  Once again I've been playing with mixing Annie Sloan Chalk paint colours, this time it was one part Florence to twelve parts Old White, which made this lovely light seafoam colour.

Because it's just a single chair (I don't have any others to match it), I wanted to do something a little different to it to give it some personality.  I decided the Doily Stencil I bought at Spotlight a few weeks ago would do the trick!

Because the chair seat has a bit of a moulded shape to it (it's not completely flat) it was a bit tricky to spread the stencil out nicely, but my daughter was my willing assistant and helped hold it down while I dabbed on the Old White paint. It only took a couple of minutes, and how exciting is it pulling a stencil off to reveal the design!

Can you see the darker green peeping through in these shots?  That's Florence - I used it full strength as a base coat before I painted on two coats of the lightened mixture. 

Lots of sanding, clear wax and buffing gives the chair a gorgeous sheen :)

I also finished a desk for a client that you can see in the above shot - I will be back with a post about that later...right now I am going to try and finish a French Linen coffee table that I posted a peek of on my Facebook page last night.

Have a lovely Saturday everyone!