Moody Blue Dresser

NEW DRESSER! That’s right - I’m finally breaking my radio silence to bring you a fresh flip. A lot has happened since I last debuted a piece so I am WELL overdue to get back on here. Let’s do a quick bottle episode to recap what’s been keeping me from workshop all year:

Jan 2021 Took a new role at my day job and found out we were pregnant with No.2
March 2021 Started house hunting
May 2021 Kicked-off a string of unexpected health challenges culminating with my husband’s mysterious partial hearing loss
July 2021 Moved into the new house
Oct 2021 Had another baby

Whew. It’s doesn’t seem like much when you distill it down to bullet points but it was enough to keep me from tackling many new projects or sharing any of the ones I did. Maybe I’ll get around to posting about those before the new year, but in the meantime I at least have a pop of color to splash on here. Dusting off my old MO, let’s start with a quick before:

If you thought that dresser looked familiar, then good eye!

It is from the same line as the one and only 2020 Flip List Item I shared in August of last year.

Yup, in the turbulence of the pandemic, I shared one flip list item and then completely abandoned my furniture goals of 2020. I didn’t even pick up the mantle to set any goals for 2021. But, I am trying to be gentle with myself. And as I have stated from the get-go, my annual Flip List comes with automatic grace if I fail or falter.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you may already know that I often like to preserve wood finishes as often as I can. I’ve been painting furniture since 2013 and have come to appreciate a beautiful wood grain over time - mostly because I can appreciate how much work it is to strip a painted piece to restore it back to its wooden skivvies. I typically choose what to paint on a piece and what to leave alone based on repairs. If the veneer is damaged or a drawer chipped, they I am likely using a high-performance wood filler which will never blend in perfectly if left un-painted.

Inspired by MCM Furniture Designer Arne Vodder,

I chose a moody blue. This dresser is serving as a pop of color in our guestroom/ nursery.

And this piece had all that and a laminate top. So I painted the body in Nocture Blue by Behr - adding wood legs to match the sculpted divots for the finger pulls which I left in the original wood finish.

To me, a dresser without legs feels like you might as well leave your clothes in a box on the floor. I think the leg-lift allows a piece to not feel as heavy in a space and for-sure makes vacuuming the dog hair easier (if that’s your vice).

I ordered the same legs as it’s 5-drawer sibling but had some challenges upon install. These legs require the mounting hardware to be inset. Which means I need to drill a hole big enough to sink in a threaded brace that I can screw the leg into. I didn’t want the brace or the attachment screws to poke through the bottom of the dresser and compromise the bottom drawer’s functionality so I tried to inset them as close to the corners as possible where the inner frame of the dresser would provide more wood to screw in to.

A lot about what I do is trial and error

which is all part of the creative process. Fun fact, I accidentally screwed shut the bottom drawer of this map chest by installing the legs with the wrong length screws. I didn’t realize until the buyer came to pick up - which was t-minus 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave for the airport to go visit my sis. I had NO TIME to fix it and was mortally embarrassed. Luckily the buyer was handy and wasn’t intimidated by the quick fix and was willing to still buy it with a discount.

This dresser had a slight lip that prevented the wide legs I chose from screwing in flush to the base.

Leaving the legs like this would completely compromise their stability so I ended up cutting some scrap wood to recess into base.

I could then sink the mounting hardware into the scrap wood and attach the legs safely.

Since our guestroom is doing double duty as a nursery, I styled this piece with some of my favorite children’s books.

The illustrations are so beautiful that I put them on display using pant hangers (another frequently deployed trick of mine).

And in case you’re pondering the dimensions of this piece for scale, it’s a smidge taller than Huntleigh.

I’m a little rusty, but happy to be in the workshop again. As I mentioned earlier, I do have a few retro-active projects to share that got lost in flurry of house-hunting/ moving/ baby-birthing. I hope you all are well and will pop by again for more reveals.

Maybe Mauve Dresser

Creatively speaking, I don’t have much to show for myself lately. When the world shut down, many of you found sanctuary in projects while stuck at home. I found myself going to my day job in full PPE. Suddenly I was signing waivers at the door each morning, bruising my nose and breaking out under an N95, getting COVID tested twice a week, limiting my water intake to avoid taking off my mask, wary that a single mistake that could compromise my health or that of those around me.

My 9 to 5 is working with residents at an Assisted Living Facility - a very vulnerable population that I have seen wither under sequestration. My creative bandwidth was eaten up by how to keep spirits up among the residents and how to keep us all safe.

For these reasons, my garage workshop stayed quiet for most of last year (well that and because Caleb turned it into a home gym for a while). My 2020 flip list fell by the wayside with only one project completed and others never tackled or never shared.

I have a lot of hope that this year will be different. I do want to see more pieces unfold on this platform as my time and energy will allow. These projects still bring me great joy and your support and positive response to them are such a source of encouragement for me to keep creating.

I found this gem listed in Facebook as a curb alert. It was free and in the neighborhood so I snapped it up while I was already out running errands.

I was kinda digging its dusty color but the original paint job was a HOT MESS. The body was shellacked with thick drips of high-gloss beige while the top was and unfortunate clash of flat cream from what I can only assume was a bad repair job.

The stripping process revealed several layers of paint that started peeling off like wallpaper - indicative that it wasn’t applied properly in the first place.

This piece had lived at least three other lifetimes as a shabby chic dresser with obvious brush strokes in a white paint finish. Then it did a stint as a vivid aqua/teal dresser. Then it turned into the mauve-meets-beige mess that landed it in my workshop. But that mauve gave me an idea to try something new so I picked up a new color to try.

Now mauve is technically in the purple color family but that scalloped detail was calling for something soft and pretty and reminiscent of Shire’s pink room circa 2018. I browsed my favorite paint line (Behr Marquee) and chose Retro Pink that lands in right the dusty hue range.

The scalloped detail lends itself to a sweet overall look while the dusty pink color still reads mature for all you millennial-pink lovers out there.

Keeping with the original dresser’s look, I painted the tapered legs in the same color as the body.

I did not however, keep the ridiculous pulls from the original dresser. Instead, I filled those holes and drilled new ones for a single gold whistle knob on each side.

Just enough gold to give it a touch of glam.

I had wanted the color to be reminiscent of a dried clay so naturally I had to style with a ceramic touch.

I pulled this trio of ladies from various corners of my house and invited them to come smirk from atop the dresser.

They agreed to make eyes at the dresser’s potential buyers until the right one comes along.

Maybe Mauve Dresser
Now Available for Sale
$545

If you are interested in this piece or a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com

Horse Tack Coffee Table

Confession o’clock.  I’ve been creatively spent during this pandemic. 

This time last year I was desperately clamoring for a “new normal” while transitioning back to my day job after maternity leave.  I had no idea how to do things with a baby in tow and certainly didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to absorb the larger problems of the world.  Admittedly, this is when my StyleMutt projects started to take a back seat to juggling family and work.  I sought fewer and fewer outlets to create and found myself too creatively spent to be inspired by many new projects anyways. 

I was just beginning to chip away and new work again (see my goals for 2020 here) when COVID-19 enters stage right.  Suddenly, my husband has turned half my workshop into a home gym and we are splitting up who gets what “me time” between working from home and engaging the baby without daycare. 

For some, stay-at-home orders and the lack of access to the rest of the world seemed to fuel many to alternative creative outlets (did you see this post about Chelsea’s home garden project?) but I actually found it to be quite draining. The unique challenges of this upside down world have been eating up all my creative bandwidth: how can I safely buy used project pieces now? How can I safely interact with clients in my in-home garage workshop?  How can I maintain proper social distancing when helping someone load up a piece?  I admit, these questions halted my already limited motivation. COVID-19, I would very much appreciate if you could exit stage left now pleaseandthankyou.

I can’t be the only one who’s yearning for “normal” out there can I? I want you to know that I feel you friend and I do believe it’s going to be ok.  I may be mourning what used to be, but I don’t believe this will be forever.  And it’s ok to acknowledge that.  I have to acknowledge that if I’m ever going to find a way to a new normal.  I have to call it what it is and try to move on - even if it took me 8 months to share my first flip of 2020 (let’s be real… that’s like 19 in Coronayears.)

So I clumsily got back in the saddle, trolled facebook marketplace for a new project, put on my facemask, and bought myself a big fat box from a nearby horse farm:

Don’t let the listing pic fool you. I could probably quarantine in this thing if I needed to - it’s that big. The original owners said it was handmade by grandpa and basically used for garage storage, but it was in great shape and it had that warm wood stain I like so much so I thought why not? It would make for good project to flex my atrophying creative muscles.

At first I thought I would add legs and make it a bar cabinet but I felt like it needed a shelf or two. I was looking for a simple project to get my sea-legs back so in the end, I opted for some small embellishments to make a simple storage coffee table.

I’m calling it a horse tack box to pay homage to the farm I bought it from although it’s in such good condition that I doubt it was ever near a horse.

All I did was add a few black accents: black casters so it can roll away if needed

Some black corner braces for character

And a black hasp (aka a latch) for the lid

And this guy has loooooooads of storage. We’re talking blankets, or board games, or bodies - whatever you’re into these days. (Oh come on - don’t tell me you don’t need your own secret hidey-hole just to get away from your family during quarantine?). Huh - must just be me ;)

Large coffee tables are fun to style - there’s such a large surface area to play with.

I went with several stacks of coffee table books, some backyard branches, and a few figurines.

I have a few more pieces coming your way as I get my mojo back (here’s a tip: check out the shop to see what’s available). But if you’re looking for big blanket chest, email me so I can work with you for a contactless pick-up.

Horse Tack Coffee Table
Now Available for Sale
48”L x 24”D x 19”H
$295

If you are interested in this piece or a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com