Tuckahoe Home & Garden Tour

One of the houses on this year's Home & Garden Tour was a beautiful craftsman home that had been recently built and placed on the market: 3020 N. Underwood Street. I was fortunate enough to stage several pieces, including a secretary & chair, 3 occasional tables, a green farmhouse bench, and rocking chairs on the front porch. All pieces were painted with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I offered one of my occasional tables as a raffle prize (winner's choice), and the French Linen table was claimed. The winner also purchased the table in Provence. :)

Chair painted Country Gray and finished with clear & dark waxes.
Seat reupholstered in natural linen.

Secretary exterior was painted in Country Grey and finished with

Clear and Dark waxes. Interior painted in Duck Egg Blue and

lattice hand-stenciled in Old White, protected with Clear Wax.

Farmhouse Bench repainted with Antibes Green.
Finished with clear & dark waxes.

Close-up of bench aged with dark wax and sanding.

Rocking Chairs in French Linen (no wax)

Side table in French Linen, clear & dark waxes

Side tables in Paris Grey (left) and Provence (right)

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Owl Silhouette Project

The animal of the moment for Au is the owl. This summer she has devoured Kathryn Lasky's fiction series The Guardians of Ga'hoole . Au selected the species for the project based on their characteristic sizes and profiles. I created silhouettes in Adobe Illustrator based on the photographs Au found at owlpages.com . Next we will print and frame them for her room.

Navy Bed

Painting in blue is something that I haven't done much of, so when a client was interested in painting her son's vintage white bed in navy blue, it was really a great opportunity. Annie Sloan's Napoleonic Blue wasn't quite dark enough for the room decor, so we chose to finish the piece with a generous helping of Annie Sloan's Dark Wax. I preceded this step with a layer of Clear Wax (and let it dry overnight) because I always want to have max manipulation when it comes to the dark wax application. This pictures shows the difference between clear and dark waxes. The paint, followed by the dark wax to achieve navy blue, also created depth and movement in the painted surface. A single navy blue paint color wouldn't bring that style!

Yankee Doodle Re-Do

If you were a boy of the 70s growing up in New England, this piece may bring back fond memories of playing with your Lite Brite or He-Man, splayed out on the shag carpet in your den: I donated this fixer-upper to the Junior League of Washington's "tossed and found" charity sale last month. A massive cleanup, repaint with an Annie Sloan grey mix (leftover Paris Grey, French Linen, and Pure White) and reupholstery with fresh modern home decor fabric gave this toy bench a complete new look. So cute. Another of those projects the girls are sad to see go. Who knows, maybe we'll run across another Yankee toy box some day.

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