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God Bless,
Deanne

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

in the navy

 VCH and I headed out on a garage sale date (we are so romantic that way) one Saturday morning and scored big time.
One of the things I came across was a very boring brown desk.

 It was is good condition but lacked personality, so of course I had to have it.
I bargained the guy down from $15 to $10 and then he wanted me to take the thing on top of it, and which he ended up giving me for $2 and we all know how that turned out!

 When I got it home and had a good look at it I decided it looked like a manly desk and started to throw around some ideas in my head.
I knew it had to be blue and dark, but I didn't want it to end up to dark, I briefly toyed with a union jack on the drawers but quickly threw that out, then I thought maybe white drawers would look cool, but unsure if that would work, I headed to pinterest and typed in two tone furniture I pinned a few examples of some I liked and then one day when I was looking through my furniture inspiration board I noticed that the navy and white one I had pinned was by Catherine at Paisley and Polka Dot Threads.
How cool was that - obviously great minds think alike!

I removed the drawer handles and spray painted them navy.
I would have liked new drawer handles but the ones I have ordered haven't arrived yet, 
but I like the way the old ones turned out with a bit of spray paint!

I like the drawers to be fresh so I painted them white and lined them in red and white striped paper, I really wanted navy and white but I couldn't find any and was really cross because I had picked up a few rolls of cute stripey paper at the shop B1 works at part time and didn't think at the time about the drawers when I went in a couple of days later it was all gone.
I went with red by default, but red, white and blue always looks nice together.

I love the navy and white together so gave the desk the name "in the navy"

I am really enjoying this business, 
I am getting return customers or people come up to me saying their  friends recommended me! 
I have had a customer email me some leads on furniture she thought I might like and I managed to pick up some cute chairs for free, all ready to be repainted.
I had a custom order for a bride to be.
But along with it's ups there are sometimes downs.
I bought a piece without looking closely enough at it and when I went to work on it found the sides of the drawers had been severely water damaged.
I have had markets which I sold heaps of stuff and other markets that were extremely slow.
The one I went to on Saturday was slow. 
It was a one off market, I am not sure whether it was poorly advertised, 
or that people had too many things on, 
or they were shopped out from the weekend before where I did exceptionally well, 
but having said that I also know I sold way more that all the people around me,
 and $170 profit is still a profit!
While I was at the market VCH went garage saling and picked up a few things for me- he is really cool about it- except when I buy heaving pieces and he says that getting them to the markets will be next to impossible- enter Gumtree (for my overseas visitors this is Australia's version of Craigslist).

I have also started a blog for my local customers, 
I have had people request to see my stuff and if there was someplace on line they could look.
I went with a blog because I am familiar with how they work and they are easy to update.
I will put a link to it in my sidebar but I will not be putting a link from it back to here.
 I am wanting to keep it professional and away from my personal life and here I can confess what I get things for - where I won't be over there!

Featured at:
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Sharing at:



shabby creek cottage
link party

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 Primitive and Proper

14 comments:

  1. great job on the desk,it looks so much better! I popped over to your other blog and had a look. GREAT stuff!!!
    keya

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  2. This turned out FANTASTIC Deanne! And the 2.00 lamp is perfection sitting on top of it - well done!!!
    xxx

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  3. Great makeover. I like the Union Jack too, but I would have dismissed that idea pretty quickly too.

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  4. fabulous! You shouldn't be concerned about people finding out what you paid for it - you put a lot of hard work into every piece, and it's also your vision for it that people are paying for! xx

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  5. Love it! But I really love your map too! Its so great that you are making a little business! Lots of people here in the US are doing similar stuff right now too. Its fun to see something change right in front of your eyes and go from plain jane to fabulous!

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  6. so sleek!!! it looks perfect and love teh map!

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  7. I love your desk - the colours are gorgeous and the table top looks amazing.

    And thank you for the shout out!

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  8. What a fab turn around! Looks great x Tina

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  9. I love the red touch in the drawers.
    Allison x

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  10. I think it looks great, too.
    I especially love the lined drawers!
    Super cute!
    Thanks for linking up to the party!
    Stacey of Embracing Change

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  11. The desk is gorgeous!! I love the navy and the drawer liner:)

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  12. love your title of this post (it's what made me click over from the link party) and what a fun surprise with the red striped paper!

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Thanks for taking the time to comment, I always appreciate your kind words.