Country Grey and City Grey meet in Florence

Hi everyone,

Is everybody in the US still in a turkey induced stupor or are you out in full force doing Black Friday shopping? Either way, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I bought this small table (or bench?) at a garage sale. It was an expensive garage sale. They had many gorgeous antiques, but they were asking as much as a store would. It was an "new" older couple, two widowed people merging households, and I was thinking, good luck with getting rid of stuff at this rate.

Nevertheless, I was able to negotiate a deal on two items. On of them was the table I showed here. The other was this:

I'm not quite sure actually if it's a table of a bench, but I loved all the detailing on it.

These are the after pictures. It sat in my family room for at least three weeks, in other words, plenty of time for me to take a before picture, but do you think I did? Noooooooooo! 

Just imagine a dark wood table. Go ahead, close your eyes and picture it. I'll wait.

And then, tada!!

When came time to paint it, I couldn't think of what to do with it, until I saw a chevron pattern somewhere, I forget where. Now, I know what you're thinking, what is she talking about, that's no chevron pattern? Well, it wasn't the chevron pattern that inspired me, but its colours: a beautiful bluey green and a putty grey. Very trendy. Florence from Annie Sloan Chalk Paint was the perfect match. However, for the putty grey, not so easy. Paris grey was too blue and Country Grey was too green. Solution? Mix them both together in equal parts. It was exactly the colour I had in mind. The blue of Paris Grey and the green of Country grey were perfect partners to Florence's bluey green.

And then came the fun part: stencilling. I found this beautiful silkscreening stencil from Martha Stewart. These are pricey, but they are beautifully detailed and make seamless patterns. The finished result does not look stencilled at all. It comes in several pieces which you can place any way you want, which allows for varied designs. I'm thinking of investing in a few more, they're that beautiful.

The woodwork is so lovely and lacey!

I did minimal distressing on it and just a touch of dark wax.

This is by far one of my favourite pieces. It's at the store now and I'm almost hoping it doesn't sell!

So, what do you think, bench or table?

Linking up to:

Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint and 10,000 views!

It is a foggy morning here as I write this. It happens when the seasons are in transition. Cold air meeting warm air and all that.

When I looked at my stats today, my blog had hit 10,000 views! It might not seem like a lot of views for some bloggers, in fact some of them get that many in in a day probably, lol, but for for me, this is a big milestone and worth mentioning.

Speaking of blogs with a lot of views, most of you are probably familiar with Miss Mustard Seed's blog, but if you're not, you should pay her a visit. She is a great inspiration to me when it comes to painting furniture and decorating, etc. She has evolved from mere blogger to authoring her own book and creating her own line of milk paint. (And all this while raising two little boys!)

A while back, she was approached by Homestead House Paint Company, a milk paint company located right here in Toronto, Canada. They asked her to create her own line with her own colours. It has been interesting to watch her progress, hard work and finally, success in creating this line.

I have used milk paint from this company many years ago on a couple of furniture pieces. Milk paint applied to raw wood is virtually unchippable. It's the best paint adherence there is. On varnished and painted furniture, you have to use a bonding agent to make it adhere, otherwise the paint chips in places, but this can be highly desirable for a wonderful distressed look. Milk paint is an old paint formula, it is organic, biodegradable and has zero VOC.

Yesterday, I stopped at a Home Hardware, a Canadian chain of hardware stores, and I was surprised and thrilled to find Miss Mustard Seed's paints!

 The colour I bought is called "typewriter", a wonderful black with slight brown undertones. I have a music sheet cabinet that I envisioned painting in black, this will be perfect to test it.

I also picked up a free colour chart:

The colours Marian (Miss Mustard Seed) chose were inspired by favourite objects. You'll find posts about what inspired each colour.

I bought the bonding agent as for the piece I want to paint, I don't want too much chippiness, but rather just a bit of wear.

Can't wait to use it! 

If you want to learn more about milk paint and how to use it, visit Marian's blog to view her tutorials.


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