My Journey In Painting
I have had a lot of fun over the years doing furniture makeovers, trying new paint techniques and giving old furniture an updated look.
I love to paint because it allows me to experiment with faux techniques and it allows me to explore truly antique paint colors. I also enjoy the challenge of turning something dated into something beautiful.
I make over furniture as a hobby, and I try to focus on classic upscale styles such as Chippendale dressers, French furniture, American styles which I usually make over with paint.
French furniture has become my choice of furniture because it has so much potential. You really cannot paint a classic chippendale dresser yellow or pink, but you can with a French dresser. The curvy lines of most French furniture pieces are just brimming potential.
There are three ways that French furniture pieces are typically redone….
1. Bright Colors and Patterns – Typically either solid colors or dramatic patterns such as the prints Jonathan Adler is famous for.
2. Faux woods and Marbles such as are found in the palace of Versailles, or Tuscan blacks.
3. Antique Swedish looks – High end white finishes.
So just how did I start painting?
I am Canadian, while my husband is American, so I wasn’t able to work full time when I first moved down to Virginia. We went through the extensive immigration process, which meant at first I couldn’t work right away after arriving in the United States. It allowed me some time for small projects and makeovers.
But it wasn’t until the second year of our marriage when our apartment building went through a management change that things really opened up for me. I ended up becoming manager of our apartment building. Actually, I managed two buildings, which allowed me plenty of opportunity to learn how to mix different paints, and do small DYI makeovers. It helped tremendously that the owner of the building was open to DIY changes. He was grateful for any improvement and allowed me great freedom in decorating the buildings. I really took to painting and really took an interest in color theory. I have learned to love faux finishes and the possibilities they hold for creating period looks.
After the apartment buildings got sold, we moved on and I started painting furniture. As we were in the process of moving, I needed to get rid of some furniture and I discovered the joy of selling things on craigslist. I found that there were a lot of people out there interested in looking for nice quality furniture.
I decided to look for only furniture I loved myself. I focused on colonial and traditional furniture styles which were easy to find in Virginia. I learned that people really loved classic white and black finishes. While some of my girlfriends painted colorful pieces, I learned that only certain types of furniture worked with certain colors.
Regency Barrel Chairs Torn Apart and Re-Upholstered Into Slipper Chairs
As I got more into painting, our small 2 bedroom condo quickly became overcrowded with all my painted projects laying around. I felt so bad for my husband, but every business has to start off some way or another.
We constantly had wet painted furniture all over the condo, and there were times when it drove me kind of batty. I learned how to be a very neat painter, because often times I had carpet I had to keep a meticulous eye on.
My husband started blogging, which over the years turned out to be a full-time business. He left his job as an attorney, and we both moved towards making money online. Living in a 2 bedroom condo, with one bedroom holding all of our furniture, I painted furniture while he worked hard on our Internet adventure.
Today, we blog full time, and I don’t paint furniture anymore for re-sale, but still paint in my free time. I really enjoy trying to master Swedish finishes. They intrigue me, and I am still experimenting with other finishes as well. I am still learning and growing, and I am hardly a master, but continue to learn along the way.
You can find more of my home here.
French Provincial Living Room Furniture
Turning a rather plain piece of furniture into something spectacular can truly be a lot of fun. Some of my favorite french provincial furniture pieces are the marble-topped living room vintage sets.
French provincial marble living tables consist basically of the base of the table which is made from wood, and a marble top which is inserted into the wood base. Many of the 1950’s french provincial coffee tables and end tables were made with luxurious marble tops which even today is still a very expensive material many people still have to stretch their wallets for.
Marble itself is an extravagant choice for counter tops in kitchens, but is often bypassed because of its high cost. Marble is one of the most beautiful materials in the world, because of its complex patterns and deep colors. Marble comes in a wide variety of colors and patterns. These vintage marble sets can be picked up for as little as $50 dollars a table which pales in comparison to the cost of purchasing the marble, then having it cut to fit a particular table, and then making the furniture.
A marble coffee table or end table can bring a touch of elegance to any home. Most of the marble tables seen in high end hotels and homes have marble tops with wooden stands.
The process of turning a raw stone into a beautiful piece of furniture is a rather complicated process. One aspect of marble furniture that must be appreciated is the rather dangerous job of finding and processing it. Marble is found in the mountains which means that obtaining it involves the use of dynamite. They essentially blast off parts of a mountain and collect the boulders that are blown off. Those huge pieces of rock are then taken into workshops where they are cut into large slabs. The slabs then are cut into sizes and are then waxed and polished.
In many countries these jobs are carried out by very advanced machinery, but in developing countries, many of these processes are still handled by individual workers with the help of small, semi-automated machines, which makes it very labor intensive.
Maintaining marble tables is a very delicate process. Marble scratches and stains quite easily if it is not sealed. If you do buy a french provincial marble coffee table set, you will have to consider the cost of having it sealed yearly and then polished as frequently as possible to maintain the good looks of the marble.
Avoiding placing wet, hot or cold drinks on the surface and always using a coaster. Keeping your marble clean of debris, drinks and sharp objects will help keep your marble furniture beautiful for a lifetime.
Architects and interior decorators around the world still draw inspiration from the Provençal region. Living In Provence features sections on gardens, and useful information on restaurants, hotels and guesthouses. Its gardens are visions of paradise rediscovered, its houses–whether looking out over sea, forest, the countryside, a shady terrace, or a patio full of flowers–reflect a secret harmony between interior and exterior. Living in Provence features how to achieve Provence Style from a variety of angles, featuring contemporary houses, village houses, farmhouses, log cabins and lodges, and historical buildings.
About the Author
Dane McDowell is a journalist and academic. She is assistant editor of the magazine Résidences-Décoration, and has also contributed to Connaissance des Arts and Figaro Magazine.
Christian Sarramon (photographer) spent long months traveling the length and breadth of Provence to create this book. He works for leading interior design magazines and has published numerous books, including the Book of Roses and Provence Style.
French Provincial Furniture Ideas – Living in Provence By Dane McDowell
My Louis XV French Provincial Chest Makeover
White-washing is basically applying glaze mixed with white paint to the surface of your wood furniture, giving your piece a two-tone effect.
The two tone effect is basically where the wood shows through the paint finish. You can achieve this result by liming, which can be picked up at your local hardware store, or paint alone can achieve this finish.
This effect ONLY works when you have unfinished wood which enables the paint to soak into the furniture.
White-washing can also work with oil based paint in combination with paint thinner. If you are working with vintage French Provincial you might run into a stumbling block like I did, where you have a really hard white melamine paint that is baked on. If you have patience you could strip off the paint.
Every dresser is different, some manufacture paint finishes are relatively easy to remove, while others are very difficult. If you have a white french provincial dresser that has a white finish, check out what I did with my painted french dresser:
I had a white dresser so I decided to fake the appearance of a white painted piece which was distressed showing the wood underneath. What I did to mine was started with a orange oil paint, and layered on color with slight distressing in between to produce a finish that looked to have layers of blues and creams and beiges to the finish.You can also achieve this look by mixing water based paint with glaze BUT, for most of my pieces I prefer to work with oil paint, rather than with latex, so this article discusses OIL rather than latex paint.
I would highly recommend Rust-Oleum’s oil paint in satin or flat finishes. Rust-Oleum’s satin oil dark taupe is one of the most frequent colors I use when I paint furniture.
Using a faux washing technique with soft butter yellow satin oil paint is one of the best colors to use on top of dark taupe. Additional oil colors such as the butter yellow can be purchased from specialty paint stores that tint oil paint. I use this technique on a lot of my projects. I have come to know that my local Home Depot paint store no longer carries this color. Here it is on Amazon.
Rust-Oleum 241238 Satin Enamels Spray, Dark Taupe, 12-Ounce
The other color which works well is Rust-Oleum’s color Fossil in latex . Again using white-washing techniques, Rust-Oleum’s oil flat paint tinted with an off white works extremely well in creating a washed Swedish finish.
Rust-Oleum American Accents Spray, Satin Fossil
I would suggest Sherwin Williams for oil paints, and you also can get virtually any color with Behr’s Paint and Primer in one.
Here are a few of my staples:
If you are working with latex paint a glaze can go a long way toward adding depth to your furniture.
Ralph Lauren Faux Technique Glaze
If you are working with oil, translucent finishes can be achieved by simply working with paint thinner and stippling it on to your furniture just like you would with glaze.
Ralph Lauren Faux Technique Glaze
Many french provincial reproduction furniture pieces have such durable finishes that they are almost impossible to chip, which is an excellent quality to have. If you are looking for a french dresser, and you want to make it over using a white washed appearance, I would highly suggest working with a dresser that has just a wood finish and no paint.
Typical white french provincial furniture pieces are often found with rock hard enamel paint. The challenge with these white finishes is they are especially hard to strip.
Many vintage manufactures have taken the enamel finish and combined them with chemicals such as melamine paint and baked them in large ovens, which gave them rock hard solid paint finishes. Stripping these finishes is next to impossible.
So what do you do if your original paint is white?
The dresser I painted was solid wood, but also had an original white finish, so I had to duplicate the look of wood with a coat of orange paint, so that when I distressed the furniture, it would give the appearance of some depth to the paint finish.
The next layer is an off white beige color, which I was able then to distress showing the orange.
After the distressing, I used a white oil paint diluted with thinner and dabbled it onto the dresser giving it a little bit of a textured look. Additional white washes were applied to give it an overall white effect. I did about 7 layers of additional washes until the entire piece was finished. Here was the transformation.