French Baronet in Charcoal

I picked up an adorable solid wood Baronet french style set the other day.  And it was FREE.  Yay!  It was painted in that off white that would have looked adorable in a little girls room 40 years ago.

I picked up a tall 4-drawer dresser, a nightstand, and a six drawer dresser.  I thought about repainting them white and keeping with the little girls theme.  But I just didn't feel like it.  Nope, I wanted to do it in a deep charcoal.

Well, I did the nightstand and the tall dresser in charcoal, but I did the six-drawer in mint and white (pics to come soon). I had low expectations of what was going to lie beneath that old white finish, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it was solid wood!  Nice!

I left the inside of the nightstand white to add a little contrast with the charcoal gray.

I painted out the hardware white, it was originally a two-toned white/gold finish, and I didn't mind it, but I wanted the contrast of the white.  

This charcoal gray I used is a flat paint, and it just doesn't accept wax well.  The wax doesn't absorb into it the way it does chalk paint.  I knew I wanted to top coat with wax on this piece, not poly, so I did two coats of my regular gray flat paint, and the third coat I turned into DIY chalkpaint using PoP.  I worked perfectly!

After the chalkpaint coat dried, I sanded it down to smooth out the roughness and applied the wax. The lustre is perfect, a great hand-rubbed sheen.

Here is the pair of them together.  Aren't they handsome!

Here are a couple of before pics.  Although they look like they are in great condition, the finish was chipping and scratched.  In short, they looked their age (and not in a good way).