Mid century vanity desk

Hello everyone!
It has been a while, I will admit. But I have been working on some things for our house.
We got a new dining table (free!) and so I have been putting my self AND my husband at work so that it would be finished and ready by the holidays (wich by the way are creeping up on us fast!)

Now, on to my latest make.
I bought a very cheap teak vanity desk. The formal owner had allready painted it white, so there was nothing I could do to savour the teak wood.
I knew right away that I wanted to play with this piece of furniture, and actually use some color for a change. I usually play it safe with neutrals, so this was absolutely out of my comfort zone. But I think I did a good job, and hey! It sold within two days, so I could`nt be happier!

Here is the before

The paint was in very bad shape, with thick brush strokes. Not a very good paint job...

But the mirrors were in lovely condition! No stripes or spots (except from the one down to the left there. Thats an old sticker I removed).

And the after:

I used Miss Mustard Seeds Leylas Mint. It was the perfect green minty color for this piece and it gave it a sort of 60`s feeling. 

  

The inside of the two side compartments and the drawer was in perfect condition, so I did not go in there with the paint brush. I lined the drawer and the fronts with this awsome wallpaper with matching colors. Is`nt that cool??

I was very suprised to find out that the fronts flip down, instead of out like regular doors. An interesting touch!

And finally, just to make it a LITTLE bit more interesting, I spray painted  bronze "socks" on the legs.

What do you think?

This mid century vanity makeover makes me happy! And I really got to test my self by going out of the  box and think in other directions. 

There`s one lucky girl out there who is getting this for christmas! The guy who bought it wanted to give it for his girlfriend as a present. 

On to the next one!

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Can you paint hardware? Sure you can! { How to paint and distress hardware with chalkpaint }

In my obsession with chalkpaint I continue to try it out on different material.
No need to say my husband has layed down the law when it comes to chalkpainting every single furniture, a long time ago.
As I told earlier, this secretaire was missing drawer pullers after I removed the old, ugly ones, and the hunt for the perfect pullers had begun. I searched and searched through the obvious internet dealers. But I am kind of cheap when it comes to buying stuff, and since this blog is about frugal furbishing after all, I couldnt make my self by new "old" drawer handles for over $30-40.
And it is in moments like these when you really find out who payes attention to what you say and do, because a recently acquaintance of mine, who I actually bought one of my makeovers with, saw my announcement on facebook and said she had six pullers she wanted to GIVE me! Now, if youre in to that kind of stuff, you know thats a BIG DEAL! And whats even better, they had the perfect look! I just had to paint them.

 So I mixed up a batch of my homemade chalkpaint, using the color duck egg blue (my favourit!) and started painting. But I had to make shure that they did`nt look completely new, so I distressed them, using sandpaper. and gave them a go with first the clear wax, then the dark to give them an aged look. If I can say so myself, I think I succeded.

And they looked perfect!

Now I only need to find the time to put them on. I suck at finding time to finnish up on last details.
How are you with finishing projects? Sorry to say, but I tend to drag things out by starting on a new project before the old one is completely finished.


(You can read about this post over at Songbirds Vintage Inspirational Party! and at From my front porch to yours )

How to whitewash - A make over of our second-hand dining table -

Right before our big move to our house last desember, my husband was given a laaaarge dining table from his workplace. There it had been used as a conference table. It was big, had rounded ends, metal legs and two extra feeder plates. It had a brown-orange-like color, not so bad. But it did not fit the style I was going for. But it would actually take me about six months before I did anything about it. Our kids use it for homework, playing, drawing, painting and we have our dinners there. So eventually it had sustained quite a lot of "injury" on the top. It had come to the point were I couldnt focus on eating my dinner anymore. All I saw was the staines and cuts on the table top. Something HAD to be done, soon!

This picture was taken at christmas last year, 

before anything was done with the table.

I really didnt know what to do with it, I just knew (and heard) that its not easy to paint a big surface like that without having all those brush strokes showing. Besides, I wanted an old and distressed look on the wood. So, my first thought was to sand it down and give it a turn with homemade staining. You know, the kind you make yourself. "Project sanding down insanely amount of wood" was on. My first thought was: "pft... I can do this with sanding paper! No problemo!" Way problemo!
It was too time consuming and my arms was killing me. So we had to find a sanding machine.
(should have done that the first time....) It made the work a lot better, but unfortunately, we still had to do a lot of manuell sanding to get all the way "in there".

Then, when I thought we had done enough sanding (obviously NOT), I startet putting on the DIY staining. I am shure this is a suuuuper good idea on light/new wood. But for this sucker, not so mutc. It was horrible! I even tried waiting several days to let the stain get settled. But that never happeden.
Burned-out furniture was not the look I was going for. So..... what to do?

Obviously, I had`nt done enough sanding. But at this point, looking at the results, 

I had given up...

I spent a couple of nights searching Pinterest for ideas and tips, and came up whit drypainting!
Obviously, there are different ways to do it, but I came up with the right formula for my paint.
I used 1 part paint and 1part water, stired it well and used a wide pencil and just slightly dipped the tip in the paint. Then I went bananas! Haha... Since there is only a tiny amount of paint on the pencil, I used a little force to get it on. Just brush it! Brush it reeeeaaal good! Up and down in big movements. And preferably without lifting the pencil halfway on the table. You want the pencil stroke to go all the way from one end to the other. A rag is allso a very good tool here to wipe of excess paint. Remember, its supposed to be dry!

See the difference?? The strips of light there is actually my chandelier.

Now, THIS is what I was going for!

I actually did this three or four times (I lost count...) before I was satisfied.
Now I had to come up with some thing to look it all in, and protect it against new injuries. I read up a little on that to, and the solution was simple. Floor lacquer. It is strong, sustainable and see-through. Perfect! Another good advise I was given her was to use the matt kind. Not the shiny one. Then the white paint most lightly will turn yellow! And we did not want that! Another tip here is to apply it with a roller! No brush strokes:)
After two coats of matt floor lacquer, it was done! And we had a shiny new dining table!
It was a lot of tryal and failing, but it was worth it in the end. And no it sits much better in our dining room. And it can take a lot of beating to, thanks to the lacquer!

Mutch better!

Have you ever tryed drypainting? What is youre experience with it?