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!