Pair of Two-Toned MCM Beauties!

I picked up this beautiful pair of dressers from a very kind gentleman who was moving out of town to be closer to his girlfriend.  He decided to sell up most of his stuff prior to leaving.  I love MCM pieces (doesn’t everyone?) and jumped at the chance to pick up these two beauties. 

First up is the six-drawer which features two drawers with horizontal trim and four drawers with vertical trim for a nice contrast.  I also love the little white piece which separates the bottom drawer halves. 

 They were in very good ‘vintage condition’ already, but the tops and sides had some markings.  Because of this I decided to do a two-tone look which I have done previously (here).  I used an off-white as I find a pure white a bit to stark next to the warmth of the wood.

I removed the drawers and sanded the body of the dresser, I also removed the feet in order to sand and paint them too. I primed first and then did about four coats of white paint (any wonder why I hate painting in white?).  But it was worth it, because I love how good the off-white looks with the walnut drawers.

The drawers were in very good shape with just a few small markings here and there, however, they had a real 70s glossy finish on them.  I decided to lightly sand back the drawer facings to remove that shine, and then do a light coat of gel stain in dark walnut. 

The gel stain didn’t really change the colour much, but the finish is a lot flatter and more contemporary looking now. 

I love the ribbed detailing on the drawer facings, much more unique than just a straight type of panel.

Next up is a frenchy dresser in (what I hope) will be a lovely shade of green!  Have a great weekend.

Midcentury Modern set In Gray

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.