Coral Hollywood Regency Dresser

Coral strikes again!  Kapow!! I have only been brave enough to try coral once before (here)and I loved it!!!  Look all those exclamation marks!  Its obvious I love it!  Apparently coral was the colour of 2012.  So what if Im a year behind. Meh. No biggie

This beauty is a vintage Kroeller dresser and was in ship-shape condition.  I used a white primer as I have learned the hard way that coral gets paltry coverage. The lady at the paint store gave a good analogy when she likened it to the coating on a candy apple.

After priming 2 coats, I painted about 3 or 4 coats of the coral.  It took quite a lot of coats. I also sealed with two coats of satin wipe-on-poly. I distressed all over the front and sides, but opted to leave the top undistressed.  I mixed things up a bit by sometimes distressing through to the wood, and other times going through just to the white primer. 

I also discovered by happy accident, that distressing super lightly actually revealed a burnt yellow colour.  So all up, there about four different layers of colours on this girl.

  

I modpodged some leftover coral and white contemporary paper I had from a previous project.  I love modpodging paper onto drawers, adds such a bit o’ fun!! 

This paper is a medium thickness, and goes on fairly well.  I have used it before (here) and really loved how it looked with the coral.  I distressed it lightly to take the 'newness' out of it and help blend better with the rest of the piece.

I like chunky hardware, and these ones were super cool. But they were so dark and dirty and dingy looking.  I thought about spraypainting gold, but didn’t want them to be perfectly solid.  I tried rubbing Brasso over them, but it didn’t work that well, and it really stunk. Im not sure that its related, but I noticed that Miss Do-As-I-Please passed out for about a ½ hour after one good wiff of the stuff. Hmmm, better than catnip?

In the end I tried a trick that worked before (here)by sanding them.  It kind of works like a buffer, and it shined em up good.  I sealed them with a spray-on acrylic clear coat to help prevent future tarnishing.

***UPDATE

I wasnt quite happy with the hardware, I wanted it a bit bolder, so I decided to add the little backer plates for some extra ooomph!  I gave them a blast of gold spray paint as they were not responding to my sanding technique, and then I actually sanded off some of the gold paint randomly to make them look aged.

What do you think?  Plates on, or plates off?

Mint & Antique

I had a great week of holidays!  I spent some time up at a cottage, and then went camping for a few days with friends.  Everything was great despite the chilly weather, a real change after the scorchers we had the week before.  I was starting to miss my paint brush by the end though and was keen to get back to my workshop (garage) like any good addict.

This little dresser was great fun to work on, and it was nice to do a piece that was smallish and I didn’t have to get Mr. Chuckles every time I needed to shift it around. 

It is definitely an old piece.  The top is planked wood that hooks into each other, something I had only seen once before (see my Ottawa Oldie post)

I sanded everything back and gave a couple of coats of white primer as I wanted some white to poke through when I distressed.  I then custom mixed up some mint using old tins of ASCP and slathered that on.

I gave everything a good sanding with the orbital to get a super smooth finish before doing some distressing. 

I love the way the white shows through the mint adding some layers of goodness.  I finished with clear wax and just a smidge of dark wax.  I wanted to keep it light and fresh.

Linking up to:

http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/