Louvered Door Dresser

My sister, Emily,  moved to the charming town of Pacific Grove, which if you remember,  is the place I got my start in the furniture-selling business at Blessings Boutique.  It is a picturesque, seaside town filled with shops and victorians overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Monterey Bay.  I drive around the bay weekly to see my sister and nephews.  I cannot resist sharing this adorable picture my sister took of me holding her youngest, Ezra, at the beach.  

We have a bit of a weekly ritual while I am visiting PG.  First, we meet at Happy Girl Kitchen for an organic coffee or refreshing kombucha. Then, while Emily's older boys are still in school, we like to go to sushi at the freshest and bestest of sushi restaurants around: Crystal Fish.  Next we hit the plethora of thrift shops in the area.  We finish up the day by picking the nephews up from school, going to the beach, and getting delicious organic ice cream from Kai Lee Creamery.  

I found this vintage dresser at one of the thrift shops in Pacific Grove.  I was drawn to the lovely, louvered doors.

I painted the dresser with one coat of Old Ochre Chalk Paint®.  

I replaced the old hardware with these adorable, distressed bird pulls that can be purchased at Emily's and my online shop:  www.relovedliving.com.

Little birdies!

I sanded the dresser heavily, especially the louvered doors, to make them look like old shutters. Chalk Paint® distesses so nicely with 220 grit sandpaper and it was easy to get to the wood because I only used one coat of paint.

Goat Hill Fair 2014

We finished setting up our booth for Goat Hill Fair this weekend.  It was a tremendous amount of work, but the outcome is well worth the energy expenditure.

The setup took two whole days!  It is amazing how much Chalk Paint®  and other merchandise we were able to cram into our booth.

We will be doing Chalk Paint®  demos during the show on Saturday and Sunday.  We are sharing this space with Magpie, another Chalk Paint®  retailer from San Jose.

We made several shutter door light fixtures by mounting old wall sconces to them, like the pair I made for my apartment a few months ago.

We love our steer head planted with succulents!

Our deer antlers are lit with tiny lights.

We have a beach area with lots of Duck Egg blue Chalk Paint®.

This cute little cabinet is painted with Old White on the inside and Provence with a Florence wash on the exterior.

We are selling metal letters made form recycled oil drums.

More wall sconces mounted on shutter doors and an antique bathtub filled with Annie Sloan Wax

Paint Brush Display

I am so excited for this weekend!  If you live close to Santa Cruz, I hope you can make it to this amazing antique and artisan fair.  There are so many fabulous booths set up by talented people.  It is located at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds in Watsonville, CA.  http://www.goathillfair.com/

Wall Sconces on Old Shutter Doors

I love the synergy created when two pieces of rubbish come together to form something greater than each part could ever be on its own.  That is how I feel about these vintage, louvered closet doors and this pair of scrolling iron, wall sconces.

I really scored when I found this pair of wall sconces at the local Santa Cruz Flea Market.  I got both sconces for twenty dollars! When my upholsterer was picking up some of my other projects, she mentioned that she also did rewiring, so I had her take the wall sconces to rewire them.  She is a jack, or rather, jill-of-all-trades.

I salvaged the shutter doors from the Last Chance thrift shop at a local landfill. I got nine of them at only two dollars a piece.  They are really heavy  and solid, old closet doors. Perfect for this project!

I flipped them upside down, so the shutter portion of the door is now at the bottom and mounted the wall sconce to the flat panel at the top.

 It seems simple enough, especially when my brother happened to be in town.  He is really great at taking things apart and putting them back together again.  I remember his vast lego collection and his intricate lego designs. His skills came in handy for figuring out how to mount the sconces to the shutter doors.  He used a drill attachment that drills large holes to feed the, newly rewired, cords through to the back side.  Then, luckily, the wall sconces came with mounting brackets and all we needed to get was longer screws to attach the brackets to the doors and the sconces.

Voila!

I left the original, weathered patina, that only time can create, on the wall sconces.  For the shutter doors, I painted one coat of Coco Chalk Paint® followed by a coat of Old White Chalk Paint® that I thinned with water.  I wiped the white back as it was drying, so the Coco showed through more in places.  Then, I sanded the whole door to make it look like a rough and weathered, old shutter.

I placed my new lighting fixtures on either side of  my french doors in my new apartment.

They look so lovely when they are lit and add a lot of old world charm to the room.

This simple and inexpensive project is one of my favorites of all time.

Louvered Medicine Cabinets

 

While shopping at the local Goodwill, I spotted two matching medicine cabinets with shutter doors.  They were in the furniture department shoved underneath a desk and I do not know how I managed to see them in their hiding spot.  They must have been whispering for me to take them home with me.

 

 

These two medicine cabinets are great for extra storage in a bathroom.  The box is made of laminated wood, but the louvered doors are real wood.

 

 

 

 

I started by painting both medicine cabinets with Pure White Chalk Paint®.  I love that Chalk Paint® sticks so well to both laminate and wood, giving pieces like this a more unified look.

 

After the Pure White dried, I used a dry brush to casually swipe Provence Chalk Paint® over the Pure White, leaving plenty of the white showing through.  I finished this piece by distressing the shutter door to make the paint look weathered.  The ceramic sea star knob adds the finishing touch to this now beachy cabinet.

 

I decided to do something different on the second cabinet.  I still painted the whole thing Pure White, but then I dry brushed French Linen over it and added a ceramic, clock knob.