Tales of a Furniture Refinisher • Flipping Furniture as a Business • Women Who Use Powertools
today i'm sharing a tale of a furniture refinisher i am bringing you along to visit with one of my amazing friends velma her beautiful flip furniture her crafts and techniques that she uses come learn how a thrift flipper is turning her hobby and passions into something positive and how her amazing work helps her community welcome to my channel freckled mom diy i'm devin if you're new welcome and if you're returning hey come on along and meet my friend velma and hear her tales of a furniture refinisher so here we are we are in velma's garage if you don't know velma this is my friend velma i'm so excited i love her so velma is actually a subscriber that's how we first first met and she came to my booth at the rainham flea market and we met and we fell in love and we have so much in common guys and that's why i'm here because velma is so talented i have to show you guys what she does plus i'm going to ask her all about it so let's jump right in in the garage we are in the shop okay this piece i just finished it was a curbside piece it was the original i would say a piano bench and i just refinished it and you can use it as a bench it'd be a great side table with a storage cabinet very sturdy with my fat bud on it very sturdy and i just um obviously stripped it washed it cleaned it did all of that painted it and then did decoupage paper over it tons of coats of um gator hide dixie bell product super good hard coat and it should be it should then add a little wax over it just to just because i do extra and then you're a little extra like me i'm one of those little extra kind of girls it's okay we like those kind of people this is an old dry sink that is so out of date and ugly no it's beautiful just as it is it's going to be i took the top off i broke the top but that's okay i intended to when i was taking the if you know what a dry sink is and i'm sure you do they have that sort of thing here and then it goes around the back and then it comes around the side and this is open and you know it had a big old heart cut out of the wood it was truly outdated so i said i'm taking it apart and i did take it apart so what do you think if you have like a year in mind of how old this is uh this is actually a handmade piece but i have no markings on it but you can tell it's a handmade piece just by looking at the and i start every project upside down right i look at a piece and i go um good bones but let's turn it over just in right right so every single thing i work on has been on its head and i start from the bottom up really thick and it's heavy and it's it's better did you do this paper or was that already i did yeah oh my god i don't know if anybody knows a white cottage company on youtube mary yoda see shop and i pick up some things from her but i love the newspaper peel and stick paper i put it on lots of drawers this is one of my favorite pieces this was the 1800s piece you've seen it advertised so that's something i wanted to ask you about so you sell these yes they do okay so if somebody wanted if they're local because these are huge pieces obviously you're not going to ship them because that'd be ridiculous but people can drive here and they could meet you and they can pick it up and this is 1800s you can tell another stamp a handwritten thing on the back but there's also the lock the locks were 1800 i stripped it completely down this was as poor as shape as i could ever get in a bureau but i saw i know this is going to sound very strange my furniture speaks to me why would you think i think that's strange i i think this could sit here for weeks i just like before i said i know what it needs now where did you find this this there were three bureaus that were given to me donated to me and i'll tell you why about donations in a minute these were in a friend of mine's neighbor's attic for 41 years these people came to to the united states in the 70s they they're from the azores so you don't put furniture in there's no basements right technically it's just water there you don't put furniture in your basement they don't have them so they came here they had too much furniture they put it upstairs in the attic yeah so my friend john said to me i've got a friend that is going to throw away some bureaus you want to come and look at them and oh my god believe it or not singing from outside really if i had a high pitched voice i'd go ah like the angels you know hallelujah i wasn't sure what i was gonna do with them they were in pretty tough shape but i let them talk to me the three of them sat in here and i said just just you'll tell me what you want i completely wait hold on hold on i don't want to interrupt but i'm going to so it's okay for us diyers and furniture flippers to leave furniture in our garage or any storage area for a long amount of time and leave it there and wait for it to tell us what it wants it will sing to you okay everybody got that everybody got that it honestly did and i and i have two of them out here and the other ones in my bedroom but my oh so that was the other one that's one actually the this green one that's a green sort of a hampton olive green this blue one i'm changing the light blue to wood now how do you do that is it like a stripper or um do you just scrape it i've already stripped it down to wood and then i gave it a painting and i did the light blue with the navy blue i like it but it's not the right blue i'm gonna take it down to wood i sanded it to wood initially yeah so it's only one um one layer here so it's gonna be wood like the black one is i'm gonna do navy and wood but it's gonna have a little gold trim somewhere on it a little something something yes a little extra so the drawers are out right now i kind of leave things out so i know that i'm going to work on that project okay otherwise i'll say oh it's covered i'll forget about it that's a good idea that's a tip too is put everything on rollers yeah i have to have it unrolled yeah i'm getting old i'll be 75 soon ah that looks like my um i was just gonna tell you that i wanted you to see hold on i'm calling my husband i'm taking this home this is hampton olive dixie color and dried sage it was yellow when i got it was disgusting five coats of pink white black yellow pink and blue it was a piece to work on from heaven are the um wheels staying on it they're antique vintage wheels original wheels i didn't even touch that i didn't sand it down i didn't do anything to it it it's beautiful i love it i love the color i love everything about it i'm just leaving it yeah and it's got little dings on it and everything it's like literally the exact same thing character but this is very early 1900s waterfall started to come in around 1920 30 in that round oh see i was thinking like the 40s no it started in about the 20s to 30s you start to see pieces coming in generally you saw tall boys come in with the sides this is an old table that was on the side of the road a pub sized table so there's no shame in picking up furniture on the side of the road for years i was afraid to do that well were you afraid that the owner was going to come out yeah yeah what are you doing what are you doing like i was some kind of i don't know what i don't want anything to go on the trash dump or the landfill or the burn pile whatever anybody wants to call it almost everything is salvageable if i can't fix that whole thing i will rip that sucker apart and use pieces anywhere i can nothing goes to waste nothing goes to waste i save everything because you know i'm going to use it right now you have a partner who helps you with some woodwork and stuff too because i see some stuff in this garage for storage ideas thank god for my partner his name is tom pals he is married to a girlfriend i went to school with and she generously lets me have them um once a week and i needed storage because everything you see that's in these cubbies was out here on the floor taking a valuable real estate and i couldn't move in here i just couldn't find anything it would take me twice as long to get a job accomplished because i was rummaging for things well these aren't like little tiny shelves and you don't buy them at ikea yeah you can't you can't buy these kind of things at um stores um i do smalls i do signs i do obviously my thing is big pieces of furniture obviously yes yeah home decor and yeah decor yeah good houses lampposts mail posts anything made of wood he can do anything he makes about nine or ten different styles of birdhouses and i did the old uh iod transfer stamp then i painted it then i stamped over it again if you have a big yard you've got a place for this puppy you're gonna want it oh yeah it's a bird condo you can see the hole in the middle there that's the middle condo and each end has another condom wow but this i don't know the colors yet but this is going to be colorful i like them to be colorful i got a mid-century modern euro over here it's on it's tilted i did it in navy blue it's huge yeah it's nine drawers the drawers have they're curved as you can see oh so they all stick out on a curve like this oh they're not modern and the legs are really different on this um normally let's face it every bureau has a leg in every corner right right no if you don't have this balance properly it's if you're gonna think it's gonna tilt that is just one of the features of the manufacturer of that time so they aren't exactly across them they should be i mean but this works fine it's not wobble there's nothing that's the way it was built so i painted that navy um in the navy dixie belt and then i sanded it down and stained it with um tobacco and growed i think and i created that wood grain by doing painting with i know you're going to think i'm weird i don't think you're here i use three different brushes i've seen it done something similar on a youtube once you know i like paint it light very very light background color then i take my scrub brush and i it's hard but it's nylon bristles but they're very compact and very hard it's not like a soft brush and then i run that across and that creates different lines then i run an antiquing wax wash mixture put that over it and just before it gets really set another brush comes out and that's like one of those little dustpan brushes i use that and then i put the glaze on which is an antiquing or aging glaze and it's brown and it's a rustoleum product really good product put that on and immediately take one of those any one of those brushes don't matter grab one and it creates another line another it shows more wood keeping your wood staying wood but you want to do something to it you don't want to cover it so you just use washes and that way the wood grain still comes out that's beautiful yeah it really when it's set up it's a beautiful piece i mean nine drawers what do you what can you hold in that lots of crafts it would be that or oh yeah yeah if the silverware and all the gadgets that you use that would be that perfect that would be a great piece and that would match my dining room it would be a great place in the dining room to get friend discount and this red beast it's been in my house i've owned it since 19 oh goodness probably in the 80s it's huge friend of mine came in and said well i love that you said let me paint it for you i didn't you're like though you're like the leonardo dicaprio of uh velma's garage let me paint you oh let me fix this for you let me paint this i have an antique um armoire in my kitchen then i transposed and fixed it up and put some shelving in and made a pantry i have an eight-foot walk-in pantry too but i don't know if i'm just too lazy to take two more steps or i just like the antiques i want them in my house maybe it's a little bit of everything i think so so she saw my pantry in my kitchen the amount and she said i want one of those but i need like this and i said well all right i'll sell that to you sorry i'll just get another one furniture yeah i mean i can go find more this is sitting here waiting for me to get to it i've got to have a day where it's warm enough for me to spray i want to spray it because it's a big piece when i post it on my facebook page she calls me or texts me and says put it wait i'm buying it nothing ever seems to leave my house it isn't in her car but that's not necessarily true but she does buy almost everything her style is quite similar to mine she likes the farmhouse rustic farmhouse a little bit modern farmhouse i'm leaning her towards industrial palm house because she needs to update a little bit oh so you're like an interior decorator too so i am an interior designer as well all right sheffield school of design but it's an online thing but i did it in the back in the 80s wow i didn't know that oh my goodness those little things i suppose i don't tell people um but i mean is that real natural pink hair velma i mean what are you keeping she wrote no i'm a natural redhead much like you but as you age red fades to pink that's my story i'm sticking to it was this once a vanity is an antique you're gonna die when you see this piece i love this piece but it needs a lot of work tell me what it looks like oh my goodness it's a it's a card table it's a card table but the legs swing out piece oh i love it i love it this piece was originally they're gonna die 500 then it went down to 250 and i ain't spending that kind of money on right and i might paint right then it went to 150 and then i bought it for 50. there you go it's just one of those pieces that all one little small table it's talking to me there you go talk about nautical now uh what color is um it's yankee blues it's a dixie bell yankee blue so very eclectic um kind of garage isn't it it's full of stuff that's strange i mean this is kind of on my storage corner here like stuff this is going to have decoupage or transfers or something on it once they clean it up this is extremely heavy oh what's that it's like that heavy right there oh my god that used to be on my wall i have a shiplap wall in the bedroom and in the kitchen which we'll go to and i used to have a big old magnolia but this is a gun cabinet it was uh someone said free come and get it so i did it's got the racks in there for the gun handles and the stocks the barrels and the stocks yeah will you keep the duck on it oh you cut the dough yeah i know i i'm gonna keep the duck on it i don't know why i'm i used to haunt my family of hunters so i like the duck i just think he's cute and i'm gonna i'm gonna use it i don't have quilts but i'm gonna stage it with quilt that was yellow it was ugly i just used a glaze here for a little stencil on the side i think it's a pretty little table now beautiful i made that um shelf and i refinished those two um bookcases because i had to change the layout here for him he developed sensory overload so there was two too many books because they're colors but i didn't put too many books back out here neutralize this room right for him i had to make it safe for him so and neutralize it they're just tv tray tables you buy them on you know go to wayfair or any of those stores they're a hundred dollars plain i'm a hundred dollars and i did all that work yeah any thrift store will have you sitting around in the furniture side absolutely this piece 20 bucks it was falling apart you know me flip it over start at the bottom every single thing was broken every piece of um trim the drawer pulls the drawer glides there was nothing that wasn't broken the drawers were broken i had to repair them i finally get everything sanded painted it's ready i just put the handles on it i'm putting the door back on i get it on and it cracks right there all right there i like but you can feel that can't you yeah i'm good i know exactly what to do yeah but it was like yeah it felt lost right right so and then i just did you know obviously sanded and stained the top keep that now green one keep it in your head keep in your head that's original the way it is it came out of a lady's house and i went to a flea market i picked it up at a flea market it has the vintage rollers on it and the window is my lap wall which i'm taking things down for christmas and stuff now you did you do this i did not do that i have a very tall friend who did it and i keep up my perfectly imperfect sign because that's me i'm totally perfectly imperfect and this was made out of old parts all this is an old ladder bond boards and a door that's all made out of old scrap and then i liked it so much we have another one over here it was stages of coffee bar kind of i do um tons of rolling pins and then we make cutting boards too that's another thing that tom and i will be doing is that cutting the woods that's one i made it's an antique anyway it's a cranberry scoop made that made that made the yawn trees they do the smalls too you know this was an old turntable oh yeah i love that and i just made a little christmasy thing out of it yeah it's so cute don't you love it made that ladder made the sign oh my god the craft area wow whatever um stuff i've done my craft table which was thrifted for ten dollars and i refinished it flowers and it's everywhere it's just everywhere i love it and all my smalls i tend to do up here that back table is where i make signs when i make small things i just bring them up here and get them out of the way and just pile them up and i could stay up here for months yeah i i don't have to buy another thing for 10 years so how long have you been crafting i first started crafting probably since i was a kid yeah i mean i just have always been that kind of kid furniture i started when i was 16. um i needed a bureau and my we had a big 18 room house we had 10 people in the family uh eight kids my parents didn't have a whole lot of money to buy furniture i mean i had a bureau but it was little so i said well i have to go thrift a bureau so i thrifted the bureau and i fixed it for myself and then 19 i get married you know you you're 19 years old you don't have a house full of furniture you got to go thrifted so i grew up in canton a couple of towns over was this kind of the deluxe very kind over that way it was called dover a very uh kind of wealthy area i don't know if it is now but it was them so i found a thrift shop over there figuring they'd have good stuff which they did and that's how i furnish my house other than basics like i always buy couches and i always buy mattresses but for the most part if it's wood i bought it it's an antique and i don't own anything that's like brand new brand new um everything else i own is pretty much thrifted drifted flipped curbside upcycle it somehow that's the way it should be it is and i you know anytime somebody says they're gonna throw it away i go no you're not i'm gonna take it that's how i get the donations for stony brook where do you work uh i am the president of the board at stony brook which is an independent senior independent living senior housing facility we have 99 units and love the people and i do a lot of work over there and we're very active board during the pandemic we were running a food program for them um obviously everything was closed down they couldn't do anything there was no interaction everybody was isolated the least we could do obviously is give them food uh the firefighters the town of sharon all very good we're in sharon so they were bringing food over to us every other week so we had a great food program going and it made me realize that i can't give them money i can't donate money to them but i have a skill that can produce money that can buy them programs and food chromebooks or anything that's a way to get what you need and also by networking which we're very good at and my director of innovative program stephanie is the best at networking so that's how it started where i was making donations to stony brook and it was for food programs and resident programs things to keep them busy during pandemic we got donations of from books and we got donations for programming that you know software microsoft i mean these people are wonderful to us when they know what we're doing to keep them going and keep them their mind going obviously you need good fresh food that's the most important it was the food they didn't want to go to shaw's and wear a mask and go to shops and get cove they didn't do that so we brought the food to them and we delivered it to their apartment and now we have a much better system for doing it that was all grocery bags and luggage got a much better system going for them now we still deliver food we work with two organizations that deliver meals on holidays for us um it's called served kitchens out of stoughton and love lasagna people donate any furniture don't need furniture to me because they know that i'm going to sell it then i give the proceeds to them but i have a skill that will generate some cash and i think in you know in crafters worlds and diy worlds people don't realize they can use their hobbies for good whether it be you know making an income for their family or raising money for a you know a certain thing it's just something like amazing that you can take something that is so unloved and so ugly and so nasty and you turn it into something beautiful and give it new life exactly that's what i say give it a new life serve kitchen they came over here they were holding a fundraiser it was going to be in december but kovitz started coming back up and they're scheduled for later i think sometime this month and i'd say annual fundraiser and i told them come on over i've got you know you can take a pic they're having an auction left here with seven things and i'm like go for it take your time oh that's awesome because it's only going to help them which in turn helps our residents get a free meal at thanksgiving and christmas they're generous to us why wouldn't we be generous back have the ability to do it and i don't care what they take shook a few small things she took a nice big table she took a tilt top table that i did go for it i hope you can make a ton of money because it's all for a good cause it's all about networking you know you one hand feeds the other so to speak there's something special in that keeping it in like local businesses small businesses and not these huge corporations but huge corporations can help somewhat but i feel like when it's something like what you're doing i think it just it means so much more when it's all in the community and everybody has like a feeling like they help it's just more of a community you know bonding it's a small world and everybody can help everybody if everybody is willing to do it but if you can help yeah somebody just a little bit it means the world it does you have no idea how excited people get at the smallest things you think it's not even going to count they're probably going to going to notice it or but every single thing every little thing that you do is noticed by these people and the elderly and they're the forgot to me forgotten generation in this country unfortunately but over time these people became important to me i got to know them and some of them are still there from when i joined this 21 years ago so it's wonderful to see them every week when i go in and i love them they're just wonderful people and if we can help them i would say do everything i can do for them you know thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video please give it a big thumbs up i want to thank my friend velma from the bottom of my heart for doing this video with me she is such an amazing friend and such a good person i have linked all the charities she spoke about today down in my description if you are able to donate please do so if you are looking to utilize the services please look into these resources velma also takes donations and sells her pieces if you are local and would like to look at what's for sale contact belma through the link below i'm so blessed to have amazing friends like her i'm also so grateful to know such an amazing woman who has lived a beautiful happy life helping others i have more local businesses and artists to share with you in the coming months as always if you enjoy crafting videos diy gifts and decor thrift flipping and more go ahead and subscribe to my channel freckled mom diy and don't forget to hit the bell so you'll be notified every time i post a new video you can find me on instagram and facebook as freckled mom and i'd love to connect with you over there too again i want to thank my friend velma for taking the time to show me her garage and beautiful home we would have never met if i hadn't gone out of my comfort zone and started a youtube channel and if velma didn't go out of her way to meet a stranger life is short live in the moment be a good human and do what brings you joy there are so many good people in this world and especially now during these unprecedented times that we need to rally together to bring peace and joy thank you for being here and watching please share this video with your friends and your family you might just spark some good work in your community keep crafting and i'll see you soon have a great night
2022-02-09 14:34
