I picked up this set as an entire bedset for FREE off a kind gentleman who was moving out of province: 2 nightstands, tallboy and longboy. Unfortunately the long boy was in such bad structural condition that I donated it to goodwill. It was bowed and sagging in the middle and all the drawers banged into each other. Too bad, because it was pretty cool looking. I have worked on pieces before with bad bones, and it always drives me bonkers in the end. It drives Mr. Chuckles bonkers too as he is the one who ends up helping me fix them!
But alas, I rescued the other three pieces. I went for deep charcoal as my base. I knew I wanted to do a fun little detail, but I didn't have much time to get these guys done before I go away on holidays, so I needed to keep it simple.
I love striping on MCM pieces, I think it really suits the trendiness of them and compliments their clean lines. I was inspired by some pieces in blogland that had large and small stripes side-by-side. I thought this looked cool, yet still pretty simple, so I opted for that.
I custom mixed up the 'white' - it is actually pure white ASCP with a tiny bit of the charcoal grey mixed in, just to take the edge of the brilliance a bit. I used painters tape to do the stripes, doing a coat of my base colour first (charcoal), and then doing two coats of the white (helps prevent bleed through to do the basecoat colour first). Little tip for ya!
This set has pretty cool wood pulls. When I have all 3 dressers lined up together for a picture they remind me of Batman! Something about the way the curve. They are almost a bit Gothic looking.
That's all for me today. It has a busy and super-duper hot week. Its amazing the paint even dried on these bad-boys! Our humidex was consistently above 40 celcius.
This dresser was a long and drawn out affair (think Victor and Nikky from Y&R) I began by painting it a light blue, but the finished effect looked ill suited to anything but a nursery. The plan was to have it in our bedroom, so nursery was definitely out of the question.
Phase two was to paint over the blue with grey. It looked better. A little. But it still didn't have any pazzaz and it just didn't quite get me excited.
Phase three was to whitewash over the grey, ok I started to like it a little more, but it needed some extra contrast in my mind, bring on Phase four..
Phase four was to stain the top a very very dark chocolate (almost black) to amp up the contrast a bit.
It is a great addition to the muted tones of our bedroom and provides ample storage for Mr. Chuckles' unmentionables.
The cute vintage pictures are framed advertisements from old 1950s 'Life' magazines passed down to us from Mr. Chuckle's grandfather. I love the one of Santa holding a typewriter.
A close up of the whitewash technique. I painted over the knobs as well, and then did some light distressing to show the brass through.
I haven't decided if I will distress the dresser. What do you think?
I painted this for a lovely girl who wanted to preserve the heritage of the piece, yet update it with some bright colour.
This ornate little cupboard was a family heirloom passed down from her grandmother who received it as a wedding present many years ago.
She picked up the adorable knob at a market in NYC and thought it would look great, I think she is right.
It truly is adorable, and although it was cute before the transformation, I think it will be a show stopper now.
I hope she likes the finished piece as much as I do.
I loved doing this piece. I had a vision that of a muted grey with a lovely diamond (harlequin) top. I was inspired to use the diamond top by Crystal at THESHABBIESTCHICK and am so happy with the results.
It has found its way as a feature piece in an expectant mother's nursery which makes me very happy.
I customed mixed the grey and used white ASCP for the diamonds. I then gave everything a good distressing and a coat of clear wax.
