Next week is barn sale week here at Life’s Patina and we’ve been running around like busy bees getting all of our new vintage finds ready in the barn for your arrival! As you know, in addition to all of the new home decor accents that grace our barn, we love layering in one-of-a-kind vintage pieces to our collections and offerings. Often before arriving at our barn, these vintage pieces have been either too well-loved or long neglected leaving them with a bit more “patina” than we’d prefer. A lot of the vintage pieces that you see at the barn sales are pieces we’ve fixed up a bit ourselves before selling. We love seeing the process of transformation that occurs as we sand, paint, stain, and peel away the layers so we thought you may too! For this week’s blog, we’re share some behind-the-scenes views of what we’ve been working on this week in preparation for next week’s Summer Barn Sale. These incredible, architectural salvage pieces came from a demolition project on a local farm. We immediately knew they were packed with potential! 

With just a bit of cleaning and sanding, these would be gems!After cleaning them up, we decided to use our orbital sander……to take some of the finish off of the front facing sections and add a bit of dimension…and bring out the beautiful natural wood tone beneath. We’ll have the finished pieces for sale at next week’s Summer Barn Sale (May 30th & June 1st, 2nd, & 3rd).Last year, we found these old school lockers on one of our picking trips. We knew we wanted to give them a bit of a facelift so this week we decided to paint them with chalkboard paint and give them a dual purpose – storage area and message center! You’ll see the finished product at next week’s barn sale!While we had the sander out, we decided to also sand the blue paint off of this pretty bar stool……to reveal the pretty cognac leather beneath. It’s a work in progress but with some additional sanding and a finish wax, this stool will be good to go!A few other things we’re working on this week….Making new seats and cushions for these stunning old chairs…Converting the wiring in this beautiful vintage European chandelier to US hardwiring…
…so it’s ready to go home to whoever decides to purchase it…We love this old door below but it was missing it’s glass center so we decided to add a wooden panel to it’s center instead. We’re going to then paint the center panel with chalkboard paint and it can be used as a chalkboard message center. Perfect for a kitchen, office, or playroom!

We found these pieces from an old school desk and decided to turn them into cool wall shelves! 

We can’t wait to share all of these projects with you in person next week! The celebrations will begin with our Summer Preview Party on Wednesday evening from 6:30pm – 9pm. Pre-register here if you’re joining us! Tickets are $25 and include open bar with 13th Street Cocktails, a seasonal summer food spread, early bird access shopping the barn, and a donation to Tredyffrin Historic Preservation Trust. 

After our preview party, we’ll be opening our barn doors for free general admission on Friday, June 1st, Saturday, June 2nd, and Sunday, June 3rd. Hours below:

Friday, June 1st: 10am – 5pm

Saturday, June 2nd: 9am – 5pm

Sunday, June 3rd: 10am – 4pm

As always, remember to wear comfortable farm attire! Parking will be in our horse fields as usual (you’ll see directional signs when you first arrive). We recommend using Google Maps to find us. We accept all forms of payment – cash, check or credit. 

With much love and anticipation in our hearts, we bid adieu until next week!

Xoxo, Meg and The Life’s Patina Team