Vintage Vanity and Dresser Transformation

When Mr. home.made. found this vanity set on Craigslist, I was quite excited.  When he called to tell me someone else was looking at it first, I was panicked.  When he called back to say the other person changed his mind, I drove as fast as I could to pick it up!!

I mean, really?  How could you pass these up?!

The extra surprise when I got there was the mirror that came with the vanity – it’s amazing and really gives the piece a very special touch.  So, you wanna see them now?!

I love them… so much so, in fact, that I decided to keep these for my daughter’s room rather than sell them, which had been my original intent.

Now, let’s talk details, shall we?

Some of the drawer glides were in need of repair, so we took care of those and I vacuumed up A LOT of cobwebs and cat hair before getting to the fun stuff.  Blech!

I knew there was wood hiding under all of that white paint so the first thing I did was strip the old paint from the tops of both pieces.  This was not an easy process, as lurking beneath the white was a layer of lime green paint that adhered like super glue!  It took multiple applications of Citrasolve, some sanding and my loving husband to get through all of the paint layers to the wood surface. 

Real men refinish furniture, yo.

But I digress.

The tops were then refinished with a walnut stain (after a healthy bath in wood conditioner) and polyurethane.  The sheen of the wood is beautiful.

With all of the grooved details I figured it’d be next to impossible to remove all of that paint, so out came my trusty Annie Sloan chalk paint, this time in Duck Egg Blue (which may just be my new favorite color).  There is a local shop that just became an Annie Sloan stockist, so I’m quite excited about being able to make a five minute trip to pick up some paint!

I originally painted the drawers to match, but then decided to change them to Old White to provide a nice contrast between the dark top and the blue-green color of the desk.  I’m very happy I made that little change, as I think it completely changed the look of these pieces.

This was my first experience using the AS dark wax for antiquing rather than a glaze.  It was definitely a learning process, but I’m happy with the end result.  The thing I had to keep reminding myself was that if all else fails, just repaint with chalk paint!  (Thankfully it didn’t come to that…)

I kept the original hardware – just cleaned them up a bit.  I like that they don’t match exactly, so it’s a set, but each piece could stand on its own without a problem.

Another detail I love is the arched detail at the bottom of both pieces.  They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.  *sigh*

And let’s not forget about that mirror, right?

I was all loaded up and about to leave when the seller said, “Oh wait!  There’s a mirror too!”

A beautiful round mirror that nestles into a lovely, scalloped cradle.  Heaven.

Can you blame me for keeping them?

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