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Before and After

Fixing rusted furniture with gold Sharpie pen

How to Fix Rusted Metal with Gold Sharpie Pens

After spending the past couple of years fixing up old furniture I’ve come across a lot of rusted metal, it’s fairly straight forward to fix larger areas of metal with spray paint or just replace it with new hardware, but sometimes there’s smaller areas like the feet on furniture legs or accent inlays of metal that are rusted and you can’t replace them because you can’t source the parts.

Fixing rusted furniture with gold Sharpie pen
I’m about to show you the easiest trick to make rusted metal look new again, anyone can do it!
Get yourself a metallic Sharpie pen, in this case I used gold.

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Reupholstered Mid-Century Chairs

Last month I shared with you that our reupholstered mid-century chairs are happening! After a few weeks they were reupholstered and today we brought them home. You have no idea how excited and nervous I was. I have been wanting to get these chairs done for years, I had even blogged about how I wanted them to look after endlessly looking for inspiration on Pinterest, you can read about that over here. I was so scared they wouldn’t look the way I had imagined in my mind, plus I have serious commitment issues, so picking a fabric took forever. Finally going a head with this was frightening, but Luxcious Upholstery on Main Street in Vancouver ended up doing an amazing job, they’re even better than I could have imagined!

Here’s how they looked before, just to refresh your memory. You can see more photos in my previous blog post over here, where you’ll see holes in the seat and other gross details.
Pink vintage chair before

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painted vintage mid century modern sideboard before and after

Before and After: Painted Vintage Sideboard

This past Summer Andrew and I found this awesome solid plywood vintage sideboard, credenza, mid century modern cabinet (whatever you want to call it). I finally took some photos of it to share here and can’t wait to finally sell it….or keep it…

It weights a ton and if you could have seen how we got it home you would of had a good laugh, lets just say thank goodness we didn’t live too far from where we found it!

Here’s the before photos of this vintage sideboard:

vintage sideboard before and after

Here’s some close ups of all the ugly laminate that was broken and peeling off. Those legs though…
You have no idea how good it felt to remove all the loose bits of laminate!

vintage credenza before and after

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modern satin brass hardware pulls

Modern Brass Hardware

If you’re following me on instagram you’ll know that I’m currently working on a new furniture makeover. It’s a vintage sideboard/cabinet with sliding glass doors and 3 drawers. Check out the before photo below.

vintage mid century modern sideboard
The dilemma with this piece was that I really wanted to change out the old brass hardware with something more clean-lined and modern. The round brass knobs set into the glass doors had to stay, so the new pulls on the drawers had to be brass.

I can’t stand the look of shiny vintage brass, so I hunted online for satin brass hardware that’s been spotted on pieces at West Elm and other large retailers furniture. The dream hardware I had been lusting over for a while was just so far out of my budget, but they’re really stunning. They’re the Bar Collection from Lew’s Hardware, check them out in the top section of the photo below.
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loft bedroom before and after

Loft Bedroom Before and After

It occurred to me that I haven’t done any recent posts of our apartment. We’ve lived here for a couple of years now and things are finally feeling settled. After initial renovations and minor tweaks along the way, I’d say things are pretty much where we want them. There will always be things we want to update or change, but those projects will get done eventually and when our budget allows for it.

Today I’m sharing the loft bedroom. I haven’t posted anything about this space because whenever I think to take a photo it’s far too dark or messy, plus it’s a very awkward space to photograph.

Check out the before photos:

Smelly old carpet and a dark purple ceiling making the low ceiling height feel even lower.

loft bedroom before
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vintage furniture before and after

Before and After: Vintage Dresser

After a few weeks of procrastination during the holidays, we finally finished this vintage dresser project. It’s come a long way since we first got it. It was cleaned, patched and brought back to life.

Here’s what it looked like before we started working on it, yes at first glance it doesn’t look too bad, but it was scary. It had 1000 spiders in it from being left outside, so that took a while to get it clean and remove the musty smells.

vintage dresser before
The wood veneer was very dry and chipped in several places, the only area that was in decent shape was the top surface, the legs and the decorative pieces on the drawer fronts.

Luckily we were table to remove the decorative pieces on the drawers, making the painting process much easier and cleaner. The bow tie handles were also removed and cleaned up.
vintage dresser before and after
The first test was to find out if the vintage hardware was pure brass or just plated. You can do this with a magnet. If it’s solid brass, the magnet will not stick, unfortunately ours was plated.
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