Friday, April 1, 2011

38 Flowers

The first piece of furniture I bought to kick off my spring-painting-frenzy was NOT the first piece of furniture I finished!

My first purchase was this Bassett dresser. I looked at it a couple of times before I broke down and bought it...after all, my husband did leave town...and his space in the garage empty! :-)

Here she is with all her drawers taken out and the handles off...my camera and I still need to develop a better relationship.
Maybe we would if I didn't keep having affairs with furniture...



It's definitely a little bit "retro."

I picked up a quart of "oops" paint in a beautiful aqua blue. My plan was simple...paint the wood blue, paint the pulls and metal trim silver, and spray on a coat of polyacrylic to protect it all.

It didn't quite work out.

EPIC FAIL!!!

I wish I knew exactly what happened. The paint went on beautifully, and all was dandy until I sprayed on the polyacrylic. Then, without warning, ugly yellow stains started to seep up through the paint! It didn't happen everywhere...but it looked awful wherever it did.

I almost swore.

I wasn't willing to give up at that point.
I thought to myself,
"Maybe I can still work with this! I'll make it look like it was on purpose!"

So I decided to glaze it with my Minwax polyshades, just like I used for the cute side table.

The above was a result of that so-NOT-inspired decision. Need a reminder? Here it is again:

It looked like it had been dragged through the mud.

There was nothing left to try. I had to let it dry for several days to let the poly cure--so I could sand it off . And I started over.

Since I had to do all that work over again, though, this time I decided to step it up a notch.

I used my Silhouette (I never mentioned I got a Silhouette for Christmas?? Well, I did!) to cut out dozens of vinyl flowers...


...and I randomly placed them in a cascade across the top and down the front of the dresser.


I liked it. I thought about leaving it like that...but in order to protect the vinyl, I would have had to have tried the polyacrylic again. THAT I was not willing to do!

So using a metallic white acrylic paint, I carefully painted in all of the little vinyl stickers...38 of them, to be exact! It was cold in the garage at 10 o'clock at night. But it was quiet!


The result was a cascade of lovely, shimmery, barely-there flowers.

The "bluer" pictures were taken with the flash on. Those show the flowers better, but it makes the dresser look brighter than it is.




As you may have noticed, I used the original hardware, but I sprayed it all silver. It was missing two of the tiny knobs, so I used two cute blue flower pulls from Hobby Lobby.


I gave up on the polyacrylic idea completely, and, for the first time, tried furniture wax. That was an epic adventure in and of itself! But after many, many, many applications and LOTS of rubbing, I am very pleased with the final outcome!


So there she is...38 Flowers. What do you think?

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16 comments:

Chrissie said...

I absolutely adore this piece! The 38 flowers are the perfect touch!

Pudel-design said...

I LOVE that piece of furniture!
Looks great in blue;)
I`m stopping by from the DIY Show Off linky.
Please visit my blog too:)

http://pudel-design.blogspot.com/

Lovely greetings...

Sue@Uniquely Chic said...

It turned out so pretty....love the vinyl flowers.

Jamie @ DIY Home Sweet Home said...

That turned out beautiful. I would love for you to share it on More The Merrier Monday's Link Party!!

http://diyhshp.blogspot.com/

Kristina said...

Gorgeous! The flowers give it the perfect touch. I'm also totally digging your cute candle holder on top.

Kate said...

Nice! I love the little flowers.

Rachel said...

I think, as always, that you are one patient brilliant woman! And good job on the no swearing........ I'll get there...... soon I hope.....

Unknown said...

Cute! I love the flowers and new knobs. And the retro legs are great! Love it!

Libby said...

This looks really cute! I love the color you picked out and the little flowers. Very nice!

Kim @ A Brush of Whimsy said...

Your story cracked me up...drug through the mud, ha ha!!! It turned out just darling! I think wax is tricky, too! I hear people say it's so simple to apply, but not for me either! :)

Janelle said...

Same thing happened to me with the yellow seeping through on my coffee table and I used PRIMER! What's up with that??? I still can't figure it out...maybe better primer? I have yet to remedy the problem by sanding, re-priming with something else and repainting. sorry for rambling on, just havent found anyone who had the same problem! I love your end product! Super cute!

Jacqueline said...

They have a great primer out there called Stix which can prime over anything pretty much....but that's why paint is great easy to fix...love your transformation....I'd love for you to join my simply creations link party this Friday :o)
My simple home life

Ginger said...

Pretty! Visiting from HOH. Come visit me sometime!

http://superstinkyboys.blogspot.com
xoxo
Ginger

Katie said...

I love how this turned out! Well worth all the trouble!! I love that color!

Anonymous said...

Completely charming! I too would have been horrified at that unexpected outcome with the acrylic spray. So glad you persevered - the result is totally fabulous!!

ranestorm said...

It's not yellow seeping through - spray poly has a nasty habit of turning lighter colors yellow. Ask how I know (I sprayed it on WHITE) - BAD idea. Since that episode now I only use wax. It won't turn any paint yellow. Ever.