Vintage Desk - what a find!

Sometimes you find a great piece that looks fantastic but turns out to have a lot of issues!
This is what my Big Issue looks like now

And this is what she looked like when I purchased her...

She seemed to be quite old as she had lovely original wooden pulls built in for knobs on each drawer

After we picked her up and got her home there was a lot of damage and moving parts underneath, all of the original mahogany wood was in great condition but the stays, runners and drawer bottoms were not. So we pulled the underneath apart, replaced all of the bottoms and now she can work her magic as a vintage desk again. There is a lot of detail in the piece so I wanted to paint her quite organically to capture the old vintage feel to her shape and to look as if she had been painted a long time ago and was loved and used.  I have not painted a desk before and hopefully there is a market for desks in my area  as I really enjoyed hunting out for one and painting her. Let me know what you think of her?

Carla, pp villa design

Queen Anne Sideboard - what a find!

I love hunting down new pieces to refurbish and recently I found a Queen Anne sideboard in a neighbouring town,  that I just had to have. It was a great price, just right to refinish and my husband was happy ( happy might be stretching the truth. I really I mean it took some convincing, and a lunch, and me putting up with an hour of " we are nearly in Taupo" as we were driving!) to drive over with me to collect it, all the planets were aligned on this one ( so to speak).

We picked it up and took it home, some of it poking out the end of the ute all the way.

I knew I had to do her in AS Old White and initially I painted over the hardware as I could not work out how to get it off. But I hated that look, so I chiseled and pliered and managed to get all of the hardware off so I could refinish them in a black and silver metallic for a hammered look, which was worth the effort.

Here is her cat walk shot...

Scruffy before - stickers on drawers