{Old} French, Meet {New} French

My Granny had amazing style and taste. You never would have guessed she grew up poor on a farm in the middle of Oklahoma during the Great Depression when you met her. Her house was full of French Provincial decor, which I really never took notice of until I started decorating my own home. I suddenly realized why I loved the French style so much; it reminds me of her.

While my Granny did have impeccable taste, her French style is what I call Old French, or 1970's inspired French. She had the yellows and olive greens with lots of gold and dark stained furniture. While I know some of those colors are making a come back, it's not exactly my style.

I was blessed enough to inherit a few pieces of furniture from Granny, and I was so excited to inherit her dining room set. Since I'm trying to stick with lighter tones and more of the Gustavian style, I thought the chairs needed a little updating.

I chose to paint the chairs with ASCP (Annie Sloan Chalk Paint) Old White. I distressed them and finished them off with clear wax. I found this great French print upholstery fabric for 50% off at Hancock's Fabric. Two and a half yards covered all 6 chairs, plus I have enough to make a couple of throw pillows, too!

For now, I decided to keep the table stained as is. I really like the contrast of the painted chairs and the dark table.

I ran out of time before the holidays to finish painting all 6 chairs. (There are two arm chairs that I keep in other parts of the house.)

So, before Thanksgiving I just recovered the seat cushions of the last two chairs and left them with their original stain.

 

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I want to paint these last two chairs. What do you think - paint or not paint?

Nighstands on Sargent Street

That title is about as scary as I'm going to get this Halloween. Unless of course you want to see the before picture of our master bedroom.

Terrifying isn't it? 

In my husband's defense, when he built the house he did put carpet in our bedroom. But, after being a bachelor pad for 3 years with dogs...need I say more?  As soon as we were married I was itching to get rid of the carpet. One weekend, J decided to go on a camping trip and leave me at home all by myself. This is what happens when I get bored! I pulled up our carpet, and got those floors ready for some wood!

Fast forward to last Christmas...J told me he would build me new nightstands for our room that would complement our new bed a little better than the "whatever I had in the shed" nightstands we had been sporting.

I was so excited! I was going to be able to design nightstands and have exactly what I wanted! While I love finding vintage pieces and refinishing them, sometimes a vintage piece just doesn't cut it. We don't have a huge house, so our furniture really needs to be aesthetically pleasing and provide us with much needed storage. I designed two nightstands that I thought would look great with the direction I was going.

I didn't want matchy-matchy nightstands, but I did want to them to have some similar features. Here is what we came up with:

I am so proud of how well they turned out. I want our room to be sophisticated and calming, and I think these pieces are a perfect fit. (I apologize for the horrible pictures! My camera broke, so I had to use my phone to take these.)

I actually used Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint and wax on these pieces. Since we were painting raw wood, we went ahead and used a primer for the first coat. Then topped it off with ASCP Old White. On the mirrored door piece, I used ASCP Dark Wax all over. On the 3-drawer piece, you can see, I only used it around the drawer molding and the radius corners. I used ASCP Clear Wax on the rest of the piece.

I have a few more smaller projects to work on before the room is completely finished, but I am finally seeing it come together!

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I posted new pictures of the night stands that are MUCH better quality than these. You can find them here. Thanks! 

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