The Lane Coffee Table

We love a good story, especially one involving furniture and our home state of Virginia! The Red Cedar Chest Company was formed in 1912 by John Lane and his son, Ed in Altavista, Virginia. After cornering the market on cedar chests, the company expanded greatly throughout the next 60 years, eventually manufacturing tables, casegoods, and accent pieces before acquiring a reclining chair company in Mississippi in 1970. From there, the sky was the limit for the Lane Furniture company. Today, Lane is part of the Heritage Home Group, one of the largest furniture manufacturing companies!

We found this beautiful, mid-century modern Lane coffee table at a thrift store for cheap. It was in rough shape, but we new just what the piece needed - a little bit of elbow grease!

After a good cleaning, we sanded the entire table with 200-grit sandpaper to remove all of the dents, dings, scratches, and stains.

We were surprised to find the gorgeous grains on the top of this wood, with the lightest portion in the center of the table. Just beautiful! Next, it was time for stain. We chose a deep ebony stain to highlight the beautiful grain of the table top.

After several coats of stain, we sealed the top with polyurethane and painted the base of this table in Country Chic's vanilla frosting, a creamy and warm white.

All finished! We lightly distressed the edges of the piece in order to highlight them without being too overt. We thought, a mid-century piece might have minimal wear after 60+ years of gentle use.

This table is low and long, and would be perfect in a spacious living or sitting room to accent a couch or settee. Let us know if you're interested in purchasing this beautiful Lane coffee table by emailing us at blessingdesignhouse@gmail.com!

The $5 Dresser

One of our biggest picks of the year was in early January, when four of us went to an old farm house in Clifton, Virginia that is slated for demolition. The house was constructed in 1850, and the previous owners included Annabelle Ashenhurst, who bought the home in 1950, and her second husband Russell. Annabelle and Russell each served in World War II, and in their later years each worked as school teachers and librarians. Annabelle even worked on the Manhattan Project!

Because Annabelle and Russell had lived in the house for so long, it was filled to the brim with treasures, and because the house is going to be torn down, these treasures needed to go! We were lucky enough to be asked to look through the house (and the two barns!) to see if there was anything we would be interested in buying. We did. There was. We left with three truckloads of pickin's that day.

And three days later, we made a return trip and left with a fourth truckload. It was on this second day that we found this cute little dresser with spindle legs sitting unloved in a bathroom. We picked up the dresser for $5!

This dresser is solid wood, with dovetail joints and some great detailing on the top two drawers. We're not sure how long the dresser sat in the bathroom, but several different paint colors, that were mostly on the front, told us that it was probably for a long time.

We've said it once and we'll say it again: the first thing we do when we get a new (old) piece, especially if it's been sitting in an 1850's farm house for decades, is to give it a good cleaning. We like to us warm water and either dish soap or liquid laundry detergent.

After the dresser was cleaned, we lightly sanded the entire piece to remove any flaking paint and to smooth out areas where paint had chipped off. This is an old piece, and we didn't want to hide its age.

To give this piece a fresh look, we opted to use Country Chic's "bliss" chalk paint.  We started with the body of the dresser, mostly because we weren't too sure on how we wanted to handle the drawers. The picture above is after two coats of paint!

Even though we weren't going to paint the back of the piece, it still needed to be addressed. Over the years, wood dries out and begins to turn dull, grayish hues. To fix this, we used Old English wood conditioner, which is a lemon-scented, oil-based liquid that you rub on with a rag. The top photo was taken right after we started to re-condition the wood, and the bottom is the finished product. We also ended up using the wood oil to re-condition the sides and insides of the drawers.

After a third coat of paint on the body of the dresser, and three coats on the drawers, we were ready to distress the piece. We wanted the distressing to look natural, and used it to highlight the spindle legs and detailing on the top two drawers. We also wanted to highlight some of the dings and scraps that this beauty had acquired throughout her lifetime - like we said, we didn't want to hide the age of this piece! Two coats of protective wax were used to seal the piece.

We found a great deal on brass knobs at one of our favorite stores, Carriage House Consignment in Aldie, VA (this is also our local Country Chic retailer!). We had picked up a lot of these knobs, which we also used to refinish the white night stand and yellow dresser that was turned into a matching set.

The finished dresser! Not bad for $5, right? This little cutie is for sale, and we are asking $225. If you're interested in making this dresser yours, send us an email at blessingdesignhouse@gmail.com!

The Victorian Side Table

One lesson that we've learned about huntin' through flea markets, consignment shops, and antique stores, is that if you see something unique and original - perhaps a piece you've never seen before - buy it! Haggle a little bit to get the best price, but make sure you are taking your unique find home with you! That's pretty much the story with how we came home with this solid wood, Victorian-style side table. We were originally looking for burlap sacks to re-cover Dad's chairs when we came across this unique piece in the attic of a barn!

We had never seen a solid wood table with such detailing before, and we knew we had to have it.  The previous owner had spray painted the table a glossy black, which we liked for the simplicity but disliked because we felt as though the details of the table just faded into the background.  The table had a great original patina / antiqued look on the top, simply from sitting in a barn for so long, which we knew that we wanted to keep. We finished the piece with some gold wax to add a shimmery, elegant feel to the piece.

We picked Country Chic's "rustic charm" for the base of the table, which covered completely in three coats.  After the paint had dried, we lightly sanded around the edges and the detailing on the base to reveal the original glossy black finish, highlighting all of the ornate detail that makes this piece one-of-a-kind.

The finished product! We were please with how this table turned out.  We loved the way the the original black paint on the base helped to highlight the details of this piece, and we were happy that we decided to keep the original black top with natural patina.

This piece is currently for sale!  If you're interested in purchasing this unique, Victorian-style side table, shoot us an email at BlessingDesignHouse@gmail.com!

The White Night Stand

I found this night stand when a couple of us drove to Clifton, Va to an old 1850's farmhouse. We found so many pieces that day but one of my favorites was this white, wood night stand. 

It is so simple and useful, I could not leave it sitting in a house that was soon to be torn down! After a good scrub with some soap and water, I painted the shell Country Chic's "Pebble Beach" grey. 

Then I painted the drawers Country Chic's "Vanilla Frosting" white for a chic two-toned look. We found a steal of deal at Carriage House Consignments off Rt.50 in Aldie on 24 brass knobs. They added the perfect finishing touch to this piece! 

I love this design. It is so simple and elegant. It would be perfect for a shabby chic bedroom or even a little girl's room. To complete the whole idea behind this night stand, I refinished our old yellow, wood dresser that has sat in our craft room for years. We used it to store our arts & crafts tools but after a sitting there over the years, it's use had diminished. 

I used the same color scheme and knobs to create the perfect match for the night stand. 

They are in great condition and offer a ton of storage. We're selling these either separately; the night stand will be $70 and the dresser $200. Or you can have them both for $250. 

Email us at blessingdesignhouse@gmail.com if you're interested in these pieces! 

The Blue Queen Anne

One piece of furniture that we tend to see a lot of when we're out at fleas and thrifts is side tables.  Specifically, Queen Anne-style side tables.  They seem to be everywhere!  The great thing it, though, is that you can usually snag one or two at a pretty good price.

Queen Anne is a style of architecture and furniture that was developed during the reign of Queen Anne of Britain during the early 18th century.  Some defining characteristics of Queen Anne furniture include cabriole legs - that it, legs with one convex and one concave curve - as well as attention to clean lines and minimal decoration.  Shell embellishments are also quite popular.

We found this Queen Anne side table for CHEAP at one of our favorite antique stores, Stallion Antiques, on Route 15 south of Leesburg.

We took this picture after we had already taken off the original hardware, which we planned on re-using, right before we painted this piece.

A close-up of the shell embellishment that is indicative of Queen Anne-style furniture.

For this piece, we chose to use milk paint, which tends to give finished pieces a smooth finish.  We found Miss Mustard Seed's milk paints at another of our favorite thrifts in Aldie, VA.  Milk paint comes in a powder form that you mix with water - you also have the option of adding a bonding agent, which helps the milk paint stick to almost anything!  For this Queen Anne, we chose "flow blue," a bright and cheery hue, similar to a robin's egg blue.

 Here is the piece after three coats of flow blue.  We moved the table to the side yard so that it could dry in the sun.  Milk paint dries pretty quickly, so all the painting was done in one afternoon.  After the paint was dry, we gave the entire table a light sanding to remove the little bumps that sometimes build up when you're using milk paint.  We decided to distress the piece lightly to give it the trendy vintage-chic look.  These photos are post-sanding and pre-waxing.

We're BIG FANS of saving money which, a lot of the times, includes just "using what you got."  When it came to the hardware for this piece, we saw no reason to buy a new pull for the drawer, and ended up spray painting the original pull a creamy off-white.  We just knew that this would stand out against the bight, cheery flow blue.

 Here is the finished piece!  Disclaimer: we took these photos on a cloudy day, so the brilliant hue of the milk paint is a little subdued.  We waxed the entire piece to seal it, after all sanding and distressing was completed, to protect the finish.  This side table was sold in the fall of 2014.

Do you have a favorite Queen Anne-style project that you've seen or worked on before?  Leave your comments below!

The Forest Table

We found this table in the woods in Fairfax County, and it was clear that it had been there for a while.  We immediately recognized this solid-wood style of furniture from our college dorm rooms.  We thought that if we were going to be refinishing it, we would have to keep the style in mind when picking out finishes.

Here it is, in all of its "I-sat-abandoned-in-the-woods-for-a-long-time" glory.  The first thing that we tend to do when we get our hands on a new piece, before we do ANYTHING ELSE, is give it a good, solid cleaning with warm water and either dish soap or laundry detergent - which are both great at removing oily residue from woods and other finishes.  We used a soft sponge and elbow grease to get rid of any dirt, grime, and debris.

Years of exposure to the elements had warped some of the boards that make up this piece, so after we cleaned the table, we simply removed the wood boards and reattached them.  For more severe warping, try soaking the wood in warm water and then letting it dry under the weight of books / anything you have lying around the house to keep it flat.  Luckily, the boards on this table weren't in terrible shape so that was unnecessary here.  After repairing the structural deformities, we sanded the entire piece with 200 grit sandpaper to prepare it for stain and paint.

Next was the fun part - refinishing the forest table.  We decided to stain the top because raw wood takes stain really well, and we happened to have a lot of stain lying around.  We picked a deep cherry finish.

 For the bottom, we used Miss Mustard Seed's "linen" milk paint, a bright off white.  We also had some leftover "grain sack" milk paint already mixed up from Dad's chairs, so we added it to the "linen" and created a custom color for the forest table.  We hate to waste ANYTHING (especially old furniture!), so we were glad we could use the leftover paint.

 After the paint dried, we put an additional two coats on to create a beautiful, opaque finish.  The great thing about milk paint is how quickly it dries, ESPECIALLY after being applied to raw wood.  We lightly sanded the piece when it was totally dry to enhance the natural grain of the wood, followed by two coats of polyurethane.

Ta-da!  The finished product.  We were very happy with the final outcome and immediately listed the forest table on Craigslist.  The forest table sold for $35.