In my rebellious phase, I decided I was not going to be like my mother...I was going to paint! At that time, my mother thought paint was the devil. She refused to have any painted furniture or woodwork or walls in her house. Only cherry wood & wallpaper was allowed. What a funny teenager I was that this was the way I chose to rebel and since then I've become the one obsessed with wallpaper. In those days, I daydreamed about painting & obsessively collected paint chips at the hardware store. Then came the day I decided to paint an entire secondhand bedroom set. It was the middle of the summer of '04 and I was armed with an orbital sander. Lots of learning happened in those 4 pieces of furniture.
Recently I've been dreaming about painting again. Somewhere out there a piece of furniture was calling out to me for a makeover. I found it in the basement of a pre-war building covered in dust & locked shut. An early 1900's china cabinet... oh Craigslist, I love you. I brought it home, picked the lock & cleaned it like crazy.
oh so lovely looking grainy photo disguising all the dust & damage
lock-picking tools
After cleaning it, I sanded down all the nicked and rough areas & patched the fretwork. Then I primed the whole thing & painted the inside a light grey to match the apartment walls.
damage repaired and getting ready for primer
primed...lots of fumes
Let me just warn you that I had to use some crazy primer (B-I-N primer- it works on any surface oil-based paint, stain, or latex) on this because I'm lazy and didn't want to do any more sanding or stripping. The stuff smelled like I was swimming in a vat of alcohol fumes. While in this vat of fumes I decided I wanted the color to be dramatic & I had some peachy-coral paint left over from another project. When it was dry I realized I must have been high on some paint fumes. The color was Barbie Dream House pink. Not quite the kind of drama I was going for...
pepto pink = not quite right
The great thing about paint-- I decided to paint over the pink. I chose a dark navy with polished nickel knobs. Way classier, but still dramatic. Perfection.
navy & knobs- all done!
