The "V" Dresser

This dresser is probably one of the nastiest before pictures I've ever had.  It had stickers and scratches all over the front and the top was covered in gunk.  Super gross!  But nothing a little sanding couldn't fix.

First I sanded the dresser to clean off all the nasty, then I primed it in white.  At this point I changed my mind entirely about what I wanted to do to the dresser so I painted it black and distressed it so the white shows through.

 I wanted to make it more unique and not so plain looking so I taped off some stripes on the top and painted them gold.  I just love back and gold together!  

 And ta-da!! It's beautiful!  At least it is to me, I know it's not everyone's style.  

 

I love it!

My Seedlings

Over the summer a lot of my newly hybridized seedlings have finally bloomed!  How exciting!!  For those of you who aren't familiar with flowers or daylilies hybridizing is when you pollinate the flowers, pluck the seed pods, plants the seeds, and the flower that grows is a whole new daylily you created yourself!  I've been experimenting with hybridizing for about 5 summers now.  It's a lot of fun but a lot of hard work.  This summer I decided to pass on hybridizing just because I was so busy and the daylilies were late this year.  My seedlings aren't super spectacular but I think they are beautiful and they are my babies.  Here are some pictures of the seedling I created with my sister and father.

I love the golden edges on the pink flower!

 I love the edges on this one too! 

 My kitten Siti decided to photobomb this picture.

 The edges on this one stuck together and it looks really cool but I'm not sure if it'll do this with every bloom.  Probably just a one time thing but I love the colors and edges!

 This picture does not do this orange flower justice, it's so pretty!

 I love ones with alternating colored petals!  In our field of flowers we sell we only have two varieties like that.

I'm not sure if any of them are good enough to name yet but I plan on propagating them and hybridizing them to tweak them to make them special and different.  Some of them I really like but if I hybridize those with some other really nice ones I might make a flower I like even more!  This kinda stuff takes time and years and sometimes after a few years of work they bloom and look terrible.  In my first batch of seedling most of them are terrible looking.  There are only 5 out of 30 that are really nice.  I just don't have the heart to throw out any!  They are all special to me!

Surrounded by Desks

Lately I've fixed up quite a few desks.  This one I picked up at a local thrift store for $13!  It's solid wood, doesn't have any structural problems and all the drawers work properly so it was an easy fix up.  My boyfriend, Daniel, was with and he is not a big fan of helping me load the furniture but I make him help anyways, that's part of his boyfriend duties!  So we loaded it into the truck and brought it home. My dad was really excited because he likes it when and I bring home new projects, especially when it's solid wood and not a chair (he's not a big fan of chairs).  I actually bought this when my mom had a "Don't buy any more furniture!" ban on me but I don't listen to those kinds of bans.  When I find something new to fix up I can't help myself!  It's really an addiction.

I really liked the wood grain on the desk so I decided to restain the top and drawers.  I painted the body a dark grey and sprayed the pulls with a bronze oil rubbed spray.

This piece is my dads favorite one so far!  He wanted to keep it but I reminded him that we don't need another desk.

This next desk I bought at the Unique thrift store.  Unique is one of my favorite places to look for cheap furniture to fix up but sometimes their prices are inconsistent.  This desk was $12.

I really like the shape of this desk.  I decided to restain the top really dark and then paint the bottom white.  It took more coats of paint then I thought it would getting it to be white but after looking at the finished product it was worth it!

 Here are two other desks I fixed up without the before pictures.

I hope you aren't tired of looking at desks!  But if you need one you know where to go, lol

My First Re-Upholstered Chair

I bought this chair for $15 from someone at a storage unit auction in hopes of it being my first large re-upholstery project.  I have done a few dining chair seats before but that's not too hard, I've never done anything this large before and I was excited to get started!  Of course I let it sit in the basement for almost a year before I even touched it.  My dad kept asking if he could burn it!  He does love to burn things.  I didn't let him because I knew this chair could be great and if I messed up then he could burn it.

The orange, brown, and red stripes were not very attractive but I liked the shape of the chair.  I read all sorts of blog's and how to's on re-upholstering chairs and got to work.  First I ripped off all the nasty old fabric.  After tearing everything off the chair looked like this.

It's a naked chair!  At this point my dad was skeptical if I could ever put the chair back together again.  It is just so bare!  I decided to paint it black and distress it.  For the fabric I decided to use a grain sack for the back and then I found a fabric the looked similar to the grain sack for the rest of the chair.  Now here is the finished product.

I think I did a pretty good job for my first chair ever!  My dad thinks it looks great and he doesn't want to burn it anymore.  Now I have to list it on craigslist and hope someone else likes it as much as I do.  Onto my next chair project!

Garfield Gardens

Garfield Gardens is the daylily field I own and operate in the summer and today I'm going to tell you how it all started!  When my brother was 13 he wanted to get a job and start saving money for college.  My mom was not a fan of the idea because she didn't want to have to drive him to work and pick him up but my dad was all on board.  When my dad was a teenager he worked for his uncle in a daylily field and thought that Ben could do the same.  The daylily field my dad had worked at had been sold and gone out of business after all these years but some of the daylilies were still there.  The hardier varieties were growing in the weeds so my dad and brother dug up 70 different varieties and planted them in a small field in our yard.  Now after all these years of selling daylilies our field has grown into over 200 different varieties!  This is my 4th summer as owner but my 9th summer working in the field.  Crazy how time flies!  Now that you've heard so much about daylilies here are some beautiful field photos.

Getting Started

This is my first ever blog post!  Freaky!!  Ok, where to start?  Last year my Dad and I bought a storage unit full of furniture because I had no furniture for my apartment and it was cheaper to buy a storage unit than new furniture.  Most of the furniture was pretty ugly so I decided to fix some of it up.  My favorite thing I fixed up from this storage unit was this chippy green table.

  It took forever to scrap and sand off the green paint from the top but I did it!  I couldn't manage to get it all off the legs so I painted those.

Now this table is my favorite piece of furniture in my apartment!  I love it!!  As you can see I didn't do any sort of staging or anything for my after pictures.  This is one of my first furniture projects I've ever done and I think it looks great for having hardly any experience.