French Provincial Furniture

French Provincial furniture is often very curvy and delicate that it is the perfect choice of furniture style to paint in a bright color. French nightstands, cabinets and dressers can often be found at very reasonable prices that it makes redecorating very affordable. Bright colors do make dramatic statements, and often become the focal point of any room making the room more designed and throught out. Accent furniture gives you the opportunity to change the look of your room without making a huge investment. Consider french provincial living room end tables, or french provincial tall bed side tables, as they are easy accessories that you can paint and then combine with throw pillows which easily tie in the bright colors. Living room end tables and coffee tables do not have to match the existing furniture, and they also can be easily be repainted months later with ease. (Read more....)

French provincial furniture has caught popularity with designers and decorators as the new Tuscan looks sweep the magazines.  More decorators are getting resourceful transforming old vintage pieces that have the charm of high end looks, into the expensive antiques they see in the designer show rooms.  Black has always been one of the most popular choices of the past andof today because it is a color that works with every other color of the color wheel.  Black and white will always open up your choices for your walls, and fabrics compared to other colors. 

Perhaps you are an experienced painter, and have transformed hundreds of pieces; we would love for you to leave your insights into painting tricks and tips of the trade.  If you are a new painter, I hope I can share some valuable tips that I have learned first hand over the years that I have painted furniture, and hopefully to encourage you in your next transformation of your plain dresser into something spectacular.  (Read more....)

Achieving the authentic feel of a period-styled room is usually accomplished by staging the right period furniture. With authentic or reproduction pieces your room can be transformed to a French cottage or a luxurious French chateau. Upholstery is usually the easiest ways of creating the mood in the room, and does push the envelope from a decorated room to a professionally designed room. French sofas are generally something you can find easily since many reproductions were made in the 1960's. There are so many designs, so pick one you absolutely love. French provincial sofas from the 1960's often featured satin fabrics, and a mix of baroque fabric, which are generally out of date, which means you will have to factor in upholstery costs. Your fabric alone can make your room signal an antique feel, or formal style, or relaxed family home, so your fabric consideration is very important when you want to make a statement. When considering fabric, limit your selections to upholstery fabric than curtain fabrics and so forth. Upholstering a chair or a couch alone can be a large job all on its own if you are doing it by yourself, and can be pretty costly, so be sure to pick a fabric that lasts long, and wears slowly over time. Picking a simple fabric with no design isn't a wise choice. A design of some sort will disguise age and daily wear and tear well as apposed to a solid fabric that shows where you have sit, and placed your head and hands. Consider silks only for chairs which are accents which are there for decoration only. Never use silks as dining room chairs as I did once. I upholstered 4 dining room chairs in a silk striped fabric, which took me long time to stuff, and stretch and staple, and finish with nail head trim, and one night I spilled water on the chair, and the fabric was ruined by the water mark. Often times, we don't understand some fabrics are dry clean only, which doesn't make any sense if you are considering them as upholstery fabrics. I came across this outstanding taffeta silk with Swedish colors in a checkerboard pattern which I fell in love with. Considering it for a pair of chairs, I decided I would wash it as it was vintage and smelled it's age. The colors ran in the wash and the fabric wouldn't press with an iron. It was permanently wavy. I was really disappointed to throw out the fabric, but thankful I didn't go to all the effort of upholstering, as eventually down the line it would have been ruined. Natural fabrics are the way to go. Velvets, and heavier fabrics will age well with the slight coffee spills over time. (Read more....)

Interior designer Ruthie Sommers designed this one of a kind office for super maga star Drew Barrymore.  “I’m not a paper pusher,” Barrymore says. “My goal is to be creative, which is why my work space is playful and full of images that are thought-provoking and inspire me.”  “Drew decorates intuitively. She falls in love with individual pieces—and somehow they always end up working together,” says designer Ruthie Sommers.   A linen-covered corkboard serves as a map of the actor-producer-director’s mind and inherently collage-y aesthetic.   Drew's office is a mixture of her favorite things she says, and when it is all combined together, it just works!
Questions for Drew Barrymore - How did you connect with Ruthie? (Read more....)

Cassie Bustamante and Theresa Carver now owners of Primitive and Proper, a successful restoration business,met by chance through a Craigslist transaction a number of years ago and wouldn't consider anything else they would rather do than paint furniture. One email lead to the next and the two were exchanging ideas and eventually teamed up together refinishing wood furniture, that had once seen better days. Located in Virginia where antiques surface often, Theresa brings a unique edge growing up in North Yorkshire, England which is known for their antique gems and painted furniture. Both are busy mothers find time to paint after their children go to bed, get their inspiration from their children's playfulness, and hope to pass on their treasures to moms looking for a creative piece for their growing children's rooms. Their selection of painted furniture range from cottage styles, to old world black polished pieces, to French painted furniture. (Read more....)

Many savvy business minded women are leaving their jobs and working for themselves fixing up and decorating furniture.  In a rough economy one thing is for sure, there is always a market for children and baby furniture.  New parents are excited to build nurseries, and within a couple years are then looking for chic bedroom sets for their toddlers.   Being a furniture painter myself, it is rewarding to pick up these vintage sets and breath new life into them.  It is even more rewarding after a new mom sends me a picture of her nursery with my painted piece just where it was meant to go.  A once vintage set easily ignored at a garage sale, can be transformed into a work of art worth several hundred.   (Read more....)

Buying vintage french furniture can be a very exciting buy, because the style is unique and it is very pretty to look at. Not only do these sets offer beautiful features and the charm of french furniture, but they often come at a great price, and can be found in many different styles.  In the 50's and 60's many furniture manufactures offered their sets in a natural wood finish, and a white finish.  The wood finishes were marketed as adult bedroom sets, while the white furniture was often scaled as children's furniture.  White was also used on living room sets as it went hand in hand with the look of rococo and antique french furniture.  Today if you do find a set with the original paint, it may seem slightly yellow from the paint aging over the years.  While many people look specificallyfor the original finishes and shun these pieces being painted, other people get excited about painting them modern colors to match their interiors.  Most famously, these sets are known for being painted crisp white, and just as popular of a choice is the Tuscan distressed black which works well with cottage and french interiors.  Some features found in higher end antiques are the serpentine wavy drawer fronts which have also been produced in some french provincial lines such as the bassett french provincial furniture.  Other beautiful french features found on Dixie for example are the architectural raised features formed on the drawers which give the dresser an authentic french feel.  Many of the bedroom sets came with beautiful curvy mirrors which attached to the dresser, and have been re-purposed as vanity mirrors in bathroom remodels, than the traditional look of  the dresser and mirror combination.  Drexel's vintage sets in particular  offered very large mirrors the size of their 72 inch dressers, which sat on the back of their 9 drawer dressers and were also made from solid wood.   (Read more....)

French Provincial furniture has such beautiful lines and timeless looks that it fits into any shabby, french or old world style.  Most often vintage french provincial furniture sets have been found most frequently in french provincial living room sets, dining room sets and bedroom sets, but many pieces were produced  by themselves.  On the odd occasion you will find individual pieces that possibly were manufactured alone, which  leads me to think this desk I bought was manufactured alone.  (If I am wrong please leave a comment) This desk is unique because I haven't seen a double pedestal desk in the french provincial style without the wood being painted.  With this piece I really loved the wood, and decided to just improve the look giving it an old world finish which would fit into any European or Tuscan style interior.   (Read more....)