A Scary Tumble and a Cheery Mint Desk/Vanity

We are counting blessings in my family this week.  A little get together at my mom's house took a serious turn when my little 18 month old nephew fell down a very steep set of 12 steps down to the basement.  We have a little child gate up, but it wasn't latched properly and when he leant up against it it gave way and he fell all the way to the bottom.  The poor little guy had the wind knocked out of him and couldn't get his breath for about 20 seconds.  It was really scary. Fortunately the stairs have a thick shag carpet typical of 1970s houses and my nephew has an inherited stubborn disposition meaning he pulled through just fine, but for the adults it certainly made us all very aware of how quickly a life can shift. In fact, an old high school friend of my sister and mine just died two weeks earlier from falling down a flight of steps. We had only been talking about it 30 minutes prior.



But onto cheerier things, I love this little piece.  The legs do it for me.  I'm clearly a leg girl, because all of my favorite furniture have legs, and if they don't, I often add them.  This piece came as part of a set.  It is the first of the three pieces to go under the knife and I'm very pleased with the result.  Isn't it the perfect colour for spring?
 

 
I contemplated doing a two-tone on this piece, but I have done about five two-tones in a row recently ( I haven't posted them yet) and I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for another one.  I was contemplating lots of different colour options and I finally was inspired by a piece in my own house.  I have an old plastic laminate MCM tallboy in my basement that I use to store all my fabrics and decorative papers that I painted this spearmint colour a few months ago. Every time I look at it I get a little cheerier.  It is just such a warm smiley colour. Perfect for a little piece like this.
 



 

 I began by giving everything a good sand and destroyed my elbow removing all of the stickers.  I went down to the raw wood in a few places which was cause for breaking out the Zinsser BIN shellac primer.  Woop Woop! That stuff is stickier than honey and can burn the lungs raw, but it really does the trick on stopping bleed through. (note: wear a respirator).
 

 
Next came two coats of the spearmint colour which I custom mixed using a few different paints and some tint I have.  I used my critter sprayer making the process super quick. I finished by spraying on a coat of polyacrylic in satin for extra durability.
 

 
The piece was missing one ring pull, as well as the piece of wood for the top centre drawer.  I managed to source a couple of similar ring pulls and traded out the two lower ones for the new ones, they are not exact matches for the other two, but they are pretty close.  I spray painted them silver, and then glazed them with black to make them look a little more pewter like.  You can read a previous post of mine that details this process here: HOW TO GET A PEWTER LOOK ON HARDWARE.

 
I also cut a new piece of dowel and painted it off white for the top centre pull. I love that you can see the wood grain on the piece through the paint.
 

 
I also lined the top drawers with some decorative paper for a little pop of whimsy.
 

 
And the before.