Do you Pinterest? I have a little problem…I can’t stop pinning things to my boards. Check out my account to see my inspiration for DIY, home decor, kitchen/bathroom/office space, food and over a dozen other areas. If loving Pinterest is wrong (it’s not), then I don’t wanna be right.
It must be me. I was going to ask is it me or has the past week flown by? Then I realized I’m right on cue when it comes to posting-the last one was 7 or so days ago and I tend to post once a week (hope to change that to at least twice) on both this blog and my food blog.
My guess is that it has to do with this past week/this week being splendiferously busy for us. Greg and I are still getting used to having things to do-things we really like that aren’t just ways to pass the time. A year after our move to a land where we knew not a soul, we were facing cheap weekends with our Wii-Tetris and Mariokart rocking our world with many conversations going a little something like this “what do you want to do?”…”I don’t know what do you want to do?” To make a long story short, we got an apartment with a garage and got to work…after months of house searching without any luck. There will be no turning back, although a rousing game of Tetris is still welcome.
Recently, there was the Junk Bonanza we checked out Friday, a few more orders came in, spent several hours searching for more pieces to tide us over the long Minnesota winter (I bet we’ll still be going out and picking things up though) and to fulfill some requests, an overnight house-sitting gig, meeting with clients and working on two projects at once which must make it seem as if I haven’t been here in a long time. Throw in that I’ve been a bad blogger who hasn’t taken very many pictures throughout all of this and there’s the guilt. I’ll just toss in a few pictures including our newest addition-dresser 7. Tomorrow evening we’ll be looking at a vintage secretary and for the perfect robin’s egg blue paint at Home Depot to help a family out with a storage solution in St. Louis.
That reminds me, we’ve added an ‘Available Custom Pieces’ page above, as well as, a ‘Sold’ section. All of these pieces are unaccounted for and you can call dibs to help us make a one-of-a-kind piece for you. Remember, we still take orders if you come across or already have a piece of furniture you’d like refinished-paint, stain, or just plain repaired. Wishing you a pleasant week.
Recently one of our customers brought the desk that she wants overhauled to our garage door. We spent most of our weekend prepping this puppy. It’s a natural beauty with a few dents and layers of paint we removed. Dur moment of that day was not snapping a proper before shot. Lucky for me, I remembered that our customer had sent me a photo. (Thank you, Ann.)
Then this happened…
The desk will be done in no time now that scraping the paint (we prefer a cabinet/heavy-duty paint scraper and some muscle power over chemical removers), filling, sanding, filling some more, more sanding, painting the drawers a fresh white then putting the first coat of paint on is complete. Just a little more sanding, a few coats and the finish to well, finish this one.
1) I created a few collages to go over our steps with dresser 6. They pick up from the last post, the “take it apart then put it back together” portion. So you’re seeing a collage with the leftover shots from putting it together (including a happy Greg), some pics of sanding and filling with wood putty the dents/scratches/etc., then random moments from the long (somewhat aggravating) step of putting the drawer stops in… stops Greg made. Because you don’t want your drawer to not line up and keep going deeper into the dresser body. That’s no good so they are important and one of the big issues with this dresser. One more drawer to do tonight in between meeting with a client about painting/repairing her desk and showing her the plans for the dresser she’d love to see come to life.
2) We are busy bees. I adore this fact. Maybe we’re doing something right.
3) My birthday was great (see this post at my food blog for more info…no reason to write it all out when my words exist elsewhere in the blogosphere, right?) I will restate my feeling that I am the happiest I’ve been since living in Minnesota over the last 3 years. Mostly due to following this design passion and being allowed to create/share the ideas that only existed in my head before this refinishing venture. The challenge of finding the ideal dresser, communicating with others, the thrill of the deal, meeting new people, picking out the paint/technique/hardware to fit the client’s perfect piece and actually getting dirty/back to basics during the prep in the garage with my husband, along with all of the small steps in there and I’m happy as a clam. (No comment about my choice of the word dirty…maybe nitty gritty is better.) Also love that this career “dovetails” (dresser joke) both Greg and I individually and together-making our already wonderful relationship that much better. (Commence gagging and puking.)
4) You don’t see much, if any, of me in these shots. Just some of my handiwork (I filled the dresser body with putty and sanded it.) Someone has to take the pictures and someone (ahem me) is not a fan of being in front of the camera. It doesn’t help that I look my worst when we’re in the garage. I don’t care but I’ve scared bicyclists away. Okay, so maybe it was a coincidence that the biker had a look of repulsion on his face while looking in my direction then peddled away as fast as he could. So what if he was about 6. Kids are honest.
I know I called the sixth dresser a “he” on the last post-what was I thinking? Well, I was trying to make a nod to the song ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’…Greg said I might have failed…moving on. It’s definitely got some feminine curves though. That will be balanced with the choices our customer and I have made in the last few days but that’s for a later post. Today I just wish to catch you up on where this project lies. In ruins. Okay, not really. But it is scattered about the garage after disassembling the hefty gal. It looks like this….
It’s the only project we’re tackling this week/weekend. Oh, we sold dressers 1 and 2 Monday! Doh-I can’t believe I didn’t mention that joyful news. They are going to a nice, young couple in St. Louis Park, Minnesota who happen to be moving to NYC in less than a week for their careers. They said our dressers were the only furniture they were bringing. That makes happy tears of flattery show up in my eye and a happy dance to my legs. We’re delivering the last one Saturday and spending some time in what we call ‘the Cities’ which basically means the Twin Cities. We live about 45 minutes south, in a town still described as the metro…I don’t get it. It’s only our third year in Minnesota. Anywho, I’m a foodie and I only get to venture to Whole Foods a few times a year so I’m mega-excited and somewhere new and different will be our lunch spot. Might take a peaksy at another piece of furniture or two. Putting an entire, well-rounded trip together is efficient and that’s how I try to roll.
I’m even more excited that we have 4 more projects lined up. Three women have been great communicators wanting fabulous dressers and one desk-two local and one in St. Louis. When we dive into those, you will see the whole shebang. It might sound like I’m trying to reel in birthday wishes but I don’t care, my 29th birthday is this Labor Day-September 5th. My mom’s birthday is the day before…I was a present…a statement she may not agree with for my entire life. I tell people I was a present with a goofy, ornery grin on my face. I know better. Have a happy weekend!
Greg and I picked up a third dresser for another project over the weekend (making it the 6th this summer). A bit rough, heavy and haggard with an unattractive wood grain made worse by the stain…but there is potential. This one screams paint me. It also screams take me apart, repair my drawers and make me sturdy again. So we are. It’s currently completely apart around our garage where we will pick back up this evening. I have to keep telling myself it will be worth it.
It’s curvy with paneled sides and is in need of an extreme makeover. I’m not a fan of the word ‘extreme’ because it is often misleading and quite frankly annoying. I can’t help but conjure those sport videos where the announcer cries out extreme something or other with every single mediocre task. But there is no other word that came to mind best describing its needs. We have a buyer for this one. Keeping an eye out for a piece that met her expectations, this one finally came on craigslist and we agreed it had potential. I’m awaiting the details of her paint requests and a small deposit.
I don’t think I mentioned that we had two ladies request specific dressers while we were on vacation so we’ve been busy working to fulfill those orders. But if that falls through, we’re going to refinish them the way we want. One of the other dressers from the previous post fits the other woman’s request. So we do take orders and I do work hard to find a piece that meets your needs. I say that because more than one email from a craigslist-er wants to belittle our work by offering something insulting (we take offers but maybe offering less than half is a bad decision if you really want us to take you seriously) and oh, the spam mail! The etsy people get it though.
I know I’ve been asking for ideas about the dresser with the attached mirror (although that can be removed) and received a few regarding stains in place of paint. However, we spent some time in the ol’ garage this weekend and after closer inspection, believe it’s going to require paint. Too many chips and an unattractive grain pattern. I have to be completely honest and say that I’ve had a color in mind since we picked it up: turquoise (aqua/teal/whatever you want to call it). Something like the dresser below from Barb at Design Sponge. One of my absolute favorite websites. There are a few more inspirational designs on my DIY Pinterest board. Another site I can’t imagine being without. Do you Pinterest?
I’ll be back with more pics of our “taking the 6th dresser apart” process sometime soon.
and we’ve been busy. Greg and I picked up these two dressers yesterday. Even over vacation we were taking orders, returning calls and emails, and monitoring the thrifty finds on craigslist and in stores between Minnesota and Indiana. We’re looking at a third dresser Friday. Until I can tell you a little more about our ideas for these pieces and the requests we’ve received, here are our newest additions to the refinishing family.
I’ll be back with more info. Do you have any ideas for these?
We're Annie and Greg Witkamp (aka the Wits, aka Em & Wit Design). We salvage, refurbish and design furniture and homes. We're taking a break from an online & social media presence (for the most part). Our time on the blog was memorable and fun, but we're off to other projects and opportunities. Most derived from our shenanigans here. We'll drop in once in a while, but just know we're off chasing our dreams, tackling goals and living a life we enjoy.
Our specialty is wood furniture in rough shape that we come across on craigslist, at estate sales, on the curb, in a barn, you get it. Those pieces are cleaned, repaired, refurbished and good to go for years to come. Sometimes we design our own pieces.
As of spring 2016, we decided to make this website, the Wits, about our remodeling homes and emandwit.com about the furniture. You can shop there, ask us questions, see our newly finished pieces and portfolio.
We sold our second remodeled home near Seattle in August 2018 and moved to Richmond, Virginia. Getting to Washington was a goal that took years to achieve, but we had an opportunity come up and we grabbed hold (again)!
You can watch our journey right here, there, and/or through Instagram.
-To see the projects we did to our first home, check out the home improvement page. To see our current home projects, scroll through the most recent posts. (I need to update that....)