Monday 26 January 2015

Mint-Turquoise - On a dresser and on a BEACH!

It's a good day when you wake up to yet another blustery haze.  Snow flakes are knocking on your window, the sun is playing hide and seek for the 23rd day in a row, and to top it all off its a Monday!  Yep, those are great days indeed. Why?.. because, you just booked a trip to sunny paradise!!! - and only have eight days left until you board the plane, grab a cerveza and smile and wave at everything in sight for the next two weeks!

 
Its winter vacation time! Woop woop. Mr. Chuckle's and I have picked sunny Cuba for this year's winter hiatus. We will be crisping on the tennis courts and basking on the beach for a full two weeks.  Yay!  We have never been to Cuba, and the crux of all the reviews I have read have said 'great beach, average food'.  But I'm pretty sure I can manage some drudgery in the food department if it means I have a nice beach to frolic on. Can't wait!

 
In honour of the vacation, this will be my last piece of furniture until we get back toward the end of February. I still have to catch up on posting on a few other finished pieces, but this one here is actually the last one I painted before I called game, set, match to get ready for the vacation. Can anyone say 'New bathing suit!'.

 
I finished it in a very heavy distressed 'time-worn, super-weathered look'.  Like I said in the last post, I was pretty keen to relax and do a piece with a bit of creative flair that I didn't need to worry if it got a scratch here and there.  Undistressed pieces can be quite stressful, especially to move around. One false nudge and your uncured paint can scratch, or one drop of falling water onto uncured paint means repainting the entire top.  This happened to me recently.  I opened the garage door to take some photographs of a finished piece, and the condensation caused a drop of water to fall onto the top of the piece (which was dry to touch, but wasn't fully cured), I wiped it off really quickly but you could still see the ring from the drop a day later.  I ended up repainting the top.

 
I used Cottage Paint sold at Benjamin More for this piece.  I bought it in a cream-taupe colour and I added some tint to it to get this bright minty toned turquoise colour.  I had to alter the colour a bit on my monitor because my laptop monitor shows it as blue, when it is most definitely green.  So, more than likely it will appear differently on other monitors.  It isn't a fluorescent type colour, just a nice minty-come-turquoise, but I suspect it is going to look a bit flouro on other monitors.
 
 
I sanded the piece prior to painting despite Cottage Paint's claim that sanding isn't required.  I used a brush and deliberately left some of the nooks and crannies unpainted to tie in with the distressing I was going to do.  After two coats of paint, I used my orbital to distress on the edges and I also did some hand distressing with a coarse grit paper.
 

I used clear wax for protection and I also used a little bit of dark wax on the drawer facings.  The hardware got a buff with some sand paper to bring out a soft gold.

Lastly I added corner brackets so I could add the custom legs.  The piece now stands at 36" tall.  Love it!

A little shout out to all the people in NYC, New Jersey and the Maritimes here in Canada...The news tell me a whopper of a snow storm is headed your way.  Good luck, stay safe, and keep warm.

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