A transformational tale of the pitiful pine table

Everybody loves a love story, especially tales of transformation. Think the Ugly Duckling, Beauty and the Beast, Pretty Woman. Now while I have officially given up on men as "projects" and highly discourage it far and wide, my obsession with all other kinds of tranformation remains the key guiding force in my groovy life.

With that in mind, I want to help everybody get some vision and see past the ugly ducklings in your own lives: garage sale furniture, parental hand-me-downs, and maybe even your house you've given up on. All of these just may need some paint and inspiration!


OK, it's not so bad. But it's really not inspired either, is it?


My really cool client Susan had a feeling something could be done with this table. She really needed an outdoor dining table. Enter the transformation-obsessed person who wants to paint everything that isn't moving. Years earlier, I had painted a brand-new potting bench to look old and crusty for her powder room. She's so clever she used a bucket for the sink. I sure wish my computer guy would backup my old laptop that died so I could show you a picture of it. You'll just have to take my word for it. It's super cute.

Anyway, after putting our heads together, we came up with a hammered copper top and painted legs, with some stenciling. I saw this design somewhere and had to make the stencil but it wasn't hard. All you have to do is go to Hobby Lobby and get the clear sheet of stencil plastic. Trace your design using a Sharpie and then cut it out with an X-Acto knife. 


These candlesticks were an inspiration.

And, I had just finished working in this bank.
That's hammered copper wrapped around the bottom.

So anyway, this is how the table turned out. When Susan emailed me a picture last night, if I had had on a skirt, it would have not just blown up, it would have blown off. I delivered it in the dark and never got a chance to see it on her patio, in good light. I think it's even prettier at her house than it was at mine while I was painting it.



It's my new favorite thing.

 Now I am seriously on the prowl for an old pitiful table to paint for myself. You can so do this. And if you have any questions, just ask!!

Patience, honey ... just give it some time and it'll work itself out!

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know two things about me. I am obsessed with transformation. And, while obviously obsessive in nature, I have been obsessing over my next career move for at least two years. Today I'm happy to report there has been a convergence of obsessions and I finally made a move!

You see, I thought I needed something to keep me off the streets between big faux jobs. After agonizing for years ... where should I sell painted furniture and should I revisit my past life of collecting and finding new homes for antique and vintage furniture and decor ... I'm happy to report that the pieces of the puzzle eventually came together this month. Now, without even knowing me, you can all run out and buy furniture with that special Painted Groove pizazz. And as a special bonus, my alter ego, Vintage Pilar, has returned with funky vintage finds. Now, all of my stuff can be found under one roof, at Back Alley Antiques at Artisan's Alley in San Antonio!

Here's how it all came together: I met Frannie Roberts, the precious and very cool manager of Back Alley Antiques, in a decorative painting class, of all places. She told me about her store and I asked whether she was interested in painted pieces. After meeting Frannie, choosing Back Alley was easy, because of Frannie's knack for merchandising and their longevity in the antiques market. Although Back Alley sells the wares of several different vendors, it is all merchandised together beautifully like a real store and very much unlike your average antique mall.

The store is clean, and pretty, and organized. Most antique stores are just dreadful and give even me a headache after a while, because it is exhausting to look at booth after booth of crowded crap. Even when they're done well, I think they miss out on a lot of sales from people who can't imagine how the antiques can fit into their homes.

So, let me show you around the place!



Here's a little child-sized chair I picked up at an auction. It was brown, stained wood, but I knew right away it really wanted to be gold. Now it is happy as Princess Pilar's Naughty Chair.

This is not one of my pieces, but I wish it was. I love it! Look real close and you'll see a super-cute set of Christmas glasses.

I think these are sooooo cute. In my family, they're the perfect size for a Christmas morning mimosa! Ha!

This vignette just makes me happy and shows Frannie's skill at grouping items from many different sellers. Just in this photo, that's my cute little lamp and my antique mirror I spoofed up with some leopard spots. And that iron bed with the vintage linens? They're not mine, but I love it all.

Here's a beautiful old mirror that I had no impulse to improve. It's great just the way it is.

A closeup of my spotty mirror.

I initially loved this little table for its height. It's a little taller than most side tables, which makes it perfect for today's larger scale pieces. Many older side tables are dwarfed beside beds or chairs but this one was perfect. Right underneath, written on a little white piece of tape, is the name "Frances Doyle." I sure wish I knew who Frances Doyle is, or was. My grandmother used to write people's names on tape and put it on knick knacks or pieces of furniture as a way of designating who would get what when she passed on, or who it came from if it was a gift. It still makes me happy to pick up a piece of something she "put my name on" and see her handwriting. So I named this piece "Frances Doyle."

This piece didn't need a thing. I just love, love, loved it. I really wish I had it back, but times are hard and somebody needs it worse than I do. Or at least someone has more money than I do!

Here's Princess Pilar's Naughty Chair after Frannie found a home for it. I think it needs to be on top of something actually, but I'll bring that up later, when I'm not such a newbie.

Goodbye beautiful crystal chandelier I bought on ebay. You were beautiful and I loved you, but you looked like a dwarf in even my tiny dining area. I hope you find a happy new home in a much smaller room.

Hey! There's that half-of-a-table I thought made the perfect console table for an entry or, as Frannie thought, a table between two slipper chairs. Fantastic. The Venetian Gem leather top is yummy.

I have my eye on this chicken lamp. I know there is a better name for this other than "chicken lamp," but I'm from West Texas and I don't know what it is. It is so fabulous. But I'm trying to make some money here, not spend it.

Two small shades adorned with rick-rack and pompon fringe for a small lamp or sconce. They're super-cute on their own.

But check them out beside that blue lamp? I'm telling you, Frannie has an eye for this stuff.

These ladderback chairs with the faux ostrich rungs finally found a home with this charming table. They look so happy here with this table because the scale is right.

To get there, plug in 555 West Bitters Road, San Antonio, into your GPS. For those more familiar with San Antonio, it's on Bitters between West Avenue and Blanco Road.

In praise of progress ...

I can see the top of all of my desk. And for this I am very grateful. Now I can continue onward toward more interesting & profitable ventures, such as painting and completing creative proposals for eager clients.

But one recent development that I'm very excited about is a new retail outlet for pieces of my painted furniture. Finally! In the very near future, you'll be able to find my painted furniture, specifically vintage and antique pieces, at Back Alley Antiques, in Artisan's Alley in San Antonio. Stuff like this, some of which you've seen before:



A favorite piece, sold in an auction and now living out its sweet little life at my friend Marty's house. Lucky table.

This little chest couldn't make the trip to Back Alley. For one thing, it's not an antique, or even vintage.

It used to look like this:

But Wendy at Nesbit Living & Recovery Center had faith I could do something better with it. See, now it is very happy living between these two chairs, holding business cards and brochures. I get to go by and say hi whenever I go up there.

As far as antique stores go, Back Alley is great because the entire store is merchandised like a real store, rather than an overwhelming antique market maze with rows of vendor booths. Those tend to make me confused and annoyed. And God knows I don't need any more reasons to be confused and annoyed.

I painted a set of four ladderbacks with alternating black & camel-colored ostrich. Really fun.



This is a re-purposed find ... half of a table to be exact. I think it will make a great quirky side table or entry table piece. I still have this one and think I may add a little more glitz before it hits the market.

This is a great antique china cabinet I painted a while back for a client. I may not get this crazy at Back Alley, but you never know. This job called for some outlandish thinking outside the box.

I want to paint using some lighter colors, more beiges, maybe some blue or gray, ala Wisteria ... so I'm eager to get into my studio and see what I can whip up. And use the StucoLux product from Faux Effects. I know that's going on a table top asap. StucoLux is the next thing I'm going to become obsessed with ... but you'll have to wait for that because I can't find a photo ...

I'm still looking for another location somewhere around the state ... maybe Houston's Urban Market, so if anyone has a suggestion ... I want to hear from you!

There's a big question mark hovering over my head...

Make a note of this day: I'm asking for help because I don't know what to do. I'm generally pretty self-sufficient (which isn't always a good thing but can come in handy in a pinch), but I just don't know what to do about this particular problem. So I am seeking the advice of my six or or five blog readers.


OK. Here is the dilemma. You all know I love transforming interesting pieces of furniture with paint and whatever else to give them new life. And, I just happen to have a garage/studio full of stuff that needs a home. I see pieces all the time that are just begging me to fix them and find them a home. I can't buy any more because there's no room. The real problem is, I don't have any idea what I'm supposed to do with the stuff if I was to transform it. So I'm stuck and meanwhile there's not much room for painting the pieces people are actually going to pay me to paint.



See what I mean? I love, love, this cocktail table but I already have a one that I cannot get rid of ... someone else really needs it. I also can see it with floor cushions all around it...

So here sit all these lonely pieces of furniture. If I were to get started on it, will it be the right color? How will the person who needs it even know it's available? Where can I display these treasures for sale? I've said my greatest desire is to hole up in my garage and create these works of art and then have them magically sell. I have the know-how and the want-to, I just don't have the how or the where or the who when it comes to sales. And, I don't exactly live in a hotbed of artsiness. But I am willing to travel.

A retail store requires labor and being stuck there and rent and all that overhead. I've already done that. Online? Ebay or etsy? This is really appealing, but some of this stuff is big. Website? That's great but you gotta know it's a website before you go there and check it out and buy it. I'm perplexed. A cooperative venture is really what I need, but where, and with whom? The perfect thing would be a really cool store with furniture & art & jewelry & my stuff scattered within it.

So there you have it: What should I do?

OK, OK, enough already

Lavenderchick grew weary with my procrastination so I finally decided to rebel against my perfectionism and just take a few pictures of the bar I have been writing about for months now. This is the bar that makes my Modelo so happy.

Here is the top. All these images were cut out of a planner book Mr. Kevin gave me for my birthday about 10 years ago. And then my super new neighbor Lauren had a book of Mexican folk art and advertising images that she sacrificed for the projecto.

It was really fun and easy and so if you'd like to make one of these happy places to sit and solve the problems of the world, here's all you need:

1. Friend who is raising money for a vacation and wants to unload their ugly bar on you, "because I know you can do something cute with it."

2. Motivation to do something fabulous with ugly bar because you'll never hear the end of it from your husband and brother who had to help you move it. And really, it's destroying your chi just sitting around in your garage it's so ugly. See:

3. Smart and creative neighbor who is interested in helping you "create" in a steaming hot garage.

4. At least one bottle of red wine.

5. Maybe a few beers for when you get thirsty.

6. A chance bottle of Modge Podge you don't know why you have.

7. Scissors

8. Leftover paint in fun and funky colors.

9. Palm fronds you just happened to have trimmed off your palm trees that you can rescue from the compost pile. If you don't have any, call me. I have a little more trimming to do.

10. Staple gun, any do-it-yourselfer woman's best friend.

11. Great new lime green spray paint from Home Depot for bar stools. They've sure have come a long way with spray paint colors, havent' they?

12. Briwax or gel stain to age and/or "antique" it all. It needs to look like it's been salvaged from Francisco's Bar in Boquillas.

So there you go. That's the bar I've been raving about. We had such fun putting it together. And the sad part is we haven't had much time since to belly up to it. But we will.

Girl talk, kolaches, antiques & a wedding

One of my cousins got married in Houston a few weeks ago and my Mom and I decided to make it a mom-and-daughter quality time trip so we could finish a few conversations we had been trying to have for the last three and a half years. We got so much talking accomplished in such record time that by Schulenburg we ran out of things to talk about so we stopped for a kolache. It was almost as fun as stopping for a "cup of coffee and a piece of pie" like my Mama always liked to do.


We struck out early Saturday morning, armed with a list of must-see shops recommended by Joni on her Cote de Texas blog. We were inside Loop 610 and on Dunlavy by the time shops were opening at 10 a.m. First thing, I fell in love with these lamps at Boxwood. They would be perfect in our bedroom because the ceilings are so high and everything always seems so out of scale when anywhere else it would be fine. Actually, I fell in love with quite a bit in that store.



See what I mean? I love it when I find something as clever as this fabulous chair. If I was to buy this chair, it would make me happy every time I walked by it. It's hell having La Crema taste on a St. Genevieve budget.

In the same shopping strip is The Country Gentleman (3829 Dunlavy), where I spied this yummy little green chest. The owner there, Larry Bahn, is delightful and the store is crammed full with fabulous antiques from all over the world. If you love religious artifacts and statues and crucifixes like my little old Catholic self, you will love his shop.

This corner piece was so fabulous. I think someone I know needs to buy this for her new house.

Back at Boxwood, I loved these glass apothecary jars and this rustic brown cocktail table. If anyone is interested, I know a crusty old Kingsbury craftsman who could make this for you, so strong you could dance on it.

As luck would have it, my camera battery crapped out and I had to run next door to the Fiesta Food Mart to buy a disposable camera before I could venture on to Antiques and Interiors on Dunlavy. So you'll just have to wait until I get the pictures back like we did in the old days. As a consolation, just take a look at these two little cuties:

Our spiral staircase freaks out a lot of people. We installed a baby gate at the top, but once C&C got reasonably steady on their feet we figured it was safer to teach them to maneuver it. So far the only ones to almost break their necks have been much older (say for instance me).

Back on Task

Remember the little potting shed I painted for a powder bath. The sink was to be a bucket and the faucet a pump. Well there it is, installed. My client Susan certainly is clever, isn't she?

Sadly the walls in that powder room are still builder beige, but I have plans to transform them one day....

Here's the finished result of a brand-new cabinet that the painters mistakenly painted white. This cabinet was constructed to hold a Mega TV on top and other electronics behind the center doors, which will have glass. It was a brand new piece, but she didn't want it to look new. The top is Faux Effects' Venetian Gem in Tiger Eye. You can't see it very clearly in this picture but the front face has a very subtle stencil design that is raised over a background of Venetian Gem in Sage Green, which looks more blue than green if you ask me.

The insets on the drawers are the same Tiger Eye. Someday they'll probably feature hardware but my client is one of those thoughtful people who likes to live with pieces before deciding what they need.

Here's a closeup:
Once they move into their wonderful home in the country, I hope to be able to take some photos showing the rooms all set up. This TV cabinet is going to live to the right of a grand fireplace.

I'm off my meds

I can't help it. I've been warped by the Curse of the Blue Rock. And the proof lies in this fabulous half-of-a-table I just finished last night. I love it. But I'll admit it's a little out there.

The top of it, pictured above, is so rich and wonderful you can't help but touch it. The picture just does not do it justice, so you'd better stop by for a visit and check it out for yourself. Then, I got a little funky with Activation and check out the legs:

I just love that fish-eye effect. I want to do an entire wall in this, in watery colors. Here's the whole table. I don't think I like where it's located, but it sure does liven-up that long hallway.

Come on over and do it my way...

I realize there may be a few people out there who have not come on over to my way of thinking. But that's just because I haven't yet convinced you that painted furniture rules! I don't know why and yes, there are exceptions. I do resist painting things and there are some well-represented wood tones in my very own home. But as a general rule, the most ordinary piece of drab furniture can be made lovely with a carefully crafted paint job.

I was reminded that not everyone sees furniture my way the other day when I bought some darling little 1960s twin beds for my twins. I made the mistake of announcing to the nice man selling them to me that I was going to paint them.

"Paint them?!!!? Beautiful solid maple beds? And you want to put paint on them?" he gasped. I got the impression he almost wanted to yank them back out of my hands and take them back to his protective home.

In defense of my outlandish opinions, and inspired by Cote de Texas' blogged report from Dallas market, I thought I might plead my case with you here. Here's the photo that got me all juiced up and dying to paint something:

The Guildmaster line in the In-Detail showroom. I want to move in.

Is that armoire not the most romantic, most beautiful thing you've ever seen? I can recreate that, just in case you're wondering. In her blog, Joni of Cote de Texas reveals light-colored furniture like this cream collection was hot at the most recent Dallas market last weekend.

Here's a peak at the Two's Company showroom, again courtesy of Cote de Texas:

I'm sorry, but this piece looks oh so much better in white than it would in crusty brown. Those walls remind me of my girls' bathroom. Maybe I won't repaint it after all.

To further convince the masses, and in search of inspiration from other sources of painted furniture, I found a company called Patina, makers of fine Italian painted furniture. This company only reinforces my point:

The frascati table from Patina Inc.

I have a pitiful little brown table very similar to this in my garage that I bought at the St. Andrews garage sale. It can expect to be painted cream and gold any day now.

And please tell me, why on earth would you want something like this:

When you could have this instead:

Hand-painted Veneto Bombay chest from Patina Inc.

Any one of these armoires from Patina, I would tenderly love in my own home:

Just in case you're not in love with black like I am, Patina offers this yummy, less dramatic option:

If I was to let go of the two "garage-sale chic" pieces taking up residence in my bedroom right now, I would have just the spot for the following beauty:

I know it's enormous, but my ceilings are so high it requires a mammoth piece of furniture. And for my pink-loving friends, isn't this gorgeous?

Why can't pink be the new black? I want to marry this armoire.