French Provincial Archives - Revive. Refresh. Restore. Lakeside Restoration

Provincial Dresser Makeover

April 30, 2017September 18, 2023Posted in French Provincial, Furniture, FusionTagged before and after, casement, coastal, dresser, farmhouse, french, furniture store, fusion mineral paint, little whale, nautical, painted furniture, provincial, restore, tallboy, upcycle, vintageLeave a comment

This dresser project has been many many many months long. She has actually been completed for some time now, but I hadn’t gotten around to taking her “After” pictures until just recently.

Here is where she started; A room full of project furniture…of course. Try to ignore the rest and focus on the tall, yellowish French Provincial dresser to the right of center.

She was so very tired looking but was a quality, solid wood piece and very well constructed. The whole set of provincial bedroom furniture came from the original owners so there were no loose joints or missing pieces to contend with.

We decided to upgrade my daughter’s dresser (which had been a roadside find) at our summer cottage and replace it with this one. There are also two matching twin head/footboards that will eventually go into her room once they are revived. The only problem was trying to fit the furniture style into the relaxed family cottage. I’m not fan of distressed shabby furniture, so this would be an interesting cognitive exercise for me.

I like natural wood accents on my painted furniture projects, so the first step was easy – strip the top and see what was under there! The sweet cherry wood under that factory paint finish was then stained and sealed. I painted the body of the dresser creamy white (FUSION Mineral Paint Casement) and struggled a bit with what to do with the details. Paint a darker cream to highlight the features? A deeply contrasting color? Leave it all white (my significant other liked that idea). How to make it fit into the cottage…

After a few false starts I finally used FUSION’s Little Whale from their Tones for Tots line. Turns out to be a very cottagy (is that a word…it is now) accent color.

A little taste of Before and After.

I really like the way this turned out! I had originally planned to paint the hardware a brushed steel color, but frankly we needed the dresser installed STAT! I had already passed along my daughter’s old dresser and her room was turning into one big pile of homeless clothes. So I put the original handles back on with plans to update the finish later (we all know how that works…). But I think the contrast has grown on me – I like them just the way they are. And I’m not just saying that because I think I’ll never get to the task of refinishing them. Really.

If you look closely, one of the updated provincial headboards is to the right of the dresser (painted in the same Little Whale blue) – but that will be for another blog post – and once the other bed is finished!

What are your thoughts about the hardware color? Would you have chosen a softer or bolder accent color to go with the style of the lakeside cottage?

Rethink the piece. Revive the parts. Restore the function.

All products used to complete this project can be purchased at our Online Store https://lakeside-restoration.myshopify.com/

or our brick and mortar locations;

Vintage Matters 7060 Ridge Road, Sodus, NY OR Lakeside Restoration 1833 Monroe Ave Rochester, NY.

See more at our Facebook Page and please “Like” our page while you are there! http://www.lakesiderestoration.net

French Provincial Update

April 18, 2017October 6, 2019Posted in before and after, French Provincial, FurnitureTagged before and after, french, marble, marble side tables, painted furniture, provincial, rose marble, side tables, tables, vintage, vintage marbleLeave a comment

Yellow, gold and pink. I’m not sure the “before” pics provide the full experience of 60 year-old, dingy, gunk-in-the crevices state of this furniture. The streaky yellowed color resembled the tar on the walls of a smoking room. While the rose marble was really beautiful (and flawless), sitting atop the yellow and gold bases made it appear rather tacky and crass at first sight.

We received a house-full of french provincial furniture from the original owners who purchased it new as newlyweds. This has provided an almost endless supply of projects – many of which will be documented here in future posts.

I was very nervous about having slabs of marble
lying around the garage – it’s too expensive and too permanently breakable for me. So, the marble topped tables were
clearly the first candidates for repair and restoration.

The repairs were pretty straightforward and included filling a few gouges, gluing a loose joint here and there and adding some structural support screws.

After scrubbing with TSP substitute (twice), it seemed the toughest part was finding the right shade of creamy white to show off the rose marble while subtly highlighting the french details of the pieces. After many tries, I settled on the perfect hue. As you can see here, flipping a detailed piece upside down to access all of the crevices is the most effective way to ensure a thorough paint job; (and I can throw in a load of laundry while coats are drying!). A thorough sanding of all surfaces, including the patches, a few coats of paint with light sanding in between, and a final coat of polycrylic for durability (and easy future cleaning!) and this set was ready for it’s new home.

I love how the carved wood details subtly show off the distinctive lines of the pieces without having to use the previously overdone gold highlights.

What color would you have chosen? Would you have used an accent color to highlight the trim details?

This Table Has Legs (6 of them) & She Knows How to Use Them

March 15, 2017December 27, 2019Posted in before and after, French Provincial, Furniture, FusionTagged before and after, Champlain, dining set, french, new store, painted furniture, provincial, restore, tables, upcycle, vintageLeave a comment

After working on several of these provincial pieces, I find I really love the lines of these legs. I lament the size and shape of our dining area as it just won’t accommodate this set. Here is a photo of how battered and beaten these legs were and how nicely they cleaned up after a bit of scrubbing, filling, sanding and painting (& sanding & painting: repeat…). This table has 6 gorgeous legs .

In addition to her battle scars, the overall color of this set was also frightening. The yellowed, worn, faux finish with chipped gold trim was not exactly appetizing.I was initially planning on lightly sanding and re-painting the whole thing. I’m not sure what made me curious to experiment on the table leaf…perhaps it was the factory marking on the bottom of it indicating “Cherry” in barely legible scrawl.

Could this tabletop possibly be cherry wood hidden under a thick, impenetrable layer of paint and wax and what can only be described as funk? Only one way to find out…Citristrip on the leaf.

And This is what I discovered!

Not exactly blemish-free, but too beautiful to be covered in a faux-wood paint finish.

So, this is what I did.

Yes, that’s my living room with multiple furniture refinishing projects in various stages of incompleteness in the middle of it. Before judging me, please understand…It’s Winter in Western NY. The unheated 1-car garage is filled with pending project furniture and averages about 15 degrees. The yard alternates between deep snow and semi-frozen mud this time of year, so there was no place to sand the table top. Thank goodness Citristrip can be used indoors because the goopy, gloppy mess ended up getting stripped in my living room. Who can wait for Spring when you know there’s painted cherry wood yearning to be free?

So if you look carefully in this photo of my progress preconditioning the wood in preparation for staining, you will see that I am totally busted. Citristrip and mineral spirits only got me so far and I needed to sand the table top to address a few particularly difficult areas. Yes, I power-sanded in my living room. In my defense, it was midnight and it didn’t seem to make that much of a mess. Until the morning sun shone brightly through those big windows, illuminating the thick layer of dust everywhere. I quickly regretted my nocturnal activity. And I cleaned. A lot. Please folks, Don’t do this at home in the house.

But it does look pretty good, doesn’t it?

The next morning, in addition to realizing how silly it is to sand in the living room, I also noted that after conditioning, the wood was less than perfect. Nothing that a few layers of stain couldn’t manage, but it was clear I would have to go with a darker shade than I originally planned. This became especially relevant when the edges took the stain much differently than the top. It took some creativity, but I was able to make it work.

With the time needed to dry between layers of stain and polycrylic on the top, I was able to patch, sand and paint the base and 6 chairs. A few of the chairs needed gluing and general tightening up, but this is a great set of quality furniture and it is SOLID. The seat covering is pretty new, in great shape and professionally done, so I decided to leave it in place. Better for the next owner to select something specifically suited to their taste than to mine. (Although I do have a bolt of gorgeous blue-patterned upholstery I purchased just for these seats – before I realized they wouldn’t fit in my space…). Oh well…

Since I was obviously working indoors, I chose a paint with no fumes or VOCs. Fusion Mineral Paint is the most eco-friendly paint I have found. It is pure acrylic, sticks to just about anything, and doesn’t require a topcoat for tough-as-nails durability. By the way – I despise waxing furniture, so not requiring a topcoat is a Huge plus for me. The color I chose for this set is Champlain, an off-white neutral in a creamy tone. I sanded between coats for extra smoothness and ended up using a quick swipe of wipe-on poly just to make sure it would be easy to clean in the future – it is a dining table after all – and I know what my tables endure so I expect no less from anyone else.

Just look at all of those great legs!!!!!

I wish I had a better space to properly stage this in, but it really is a gorgeous set that I think speaks for itself despite the lack of staging. What colors would you have chosen? How would you stage this set?