Monday, May 20, 2013

Another China Cabinet Re-Doux

I love, love, love my china cabinet so much and since Lucy (that's what I've secretly named her) has brought such beauty into my home and joy into my heart, I decided to try to paint a couple more - and then sell them for some vacation money.
 
Stopped at my favorite thrift shop last week and picked up this immaculate piece of furniture for $65. 


"This is going to be a BREEZE..."is what I said to myself.  Little did I know that I would come to actually loathe this piece of furniture in two days!
 
First things first... By the time I got this home - and the other china cabinet and loaded them into my one car garage - turned workshop, I was pretty much out of room to work!  I have SEVERAL other pieces of furniture that are in need of rapir work and/or paint, not to mention at least 100 other projects that I should be doing first...... But I digress....
 
Somehow I found enough room to get this painted the beachy-turquoise blue I was going for.

 
This is where my love-hate relationship with this piece began.  I hate all this chaos and spent more time walking around looking for things that were buried here and there than I actually did painting.  This was the "I give up" point - ummmm, but look at my garage... Giving up wasn't really an option... So, I pressed on.
 
One thing that I wanted to do was mod podge some cool pattern of paper over the mirror in the back.  I searched high and low and couldn't find what I looking for - mostly because I didn't have a clear idea of what I was looking for. 
 
So, I settled for using paintable wall paper on the back.  First I sprayed some BIN primer/sealer on the mirror like this:

 
Then, after choosing my kitchen island as my wall paper "prepping" station, I got the paper all good and soaked....


then hung it up on the mirror.


It was during this stage that I received an emergency phone call and had to run...literally... out the door... If you've hung wallpaper, then you know that you must run your brush over the seams endlessly...until it's stuck!  I added about 2 hours of additional time to the project because I didn't do that, but finally got it all worked out.  I painted the wallpaper taupe first, then a creamy off white and finally layered with Valspar Mocha glaze.  The outcome was really nice - almost like a weathered tin look.
 
Instead of my normal heavy distressing, I opted to use the Valspar Mocha glaze all over the chalk paint, which I've never done before.  I usually glaze with acrylic craft paint and water.  This technique worked well and looked good though.  I finally sealed the entire piece with wax.
 
We removed the side glass panels and added chicken wire - which looks amazing!!!  The plan was to use chicken wire in the front, as well, but since time started becoming an issue, I put the glass panels back in. 
 
Here is the final outcome - What do you think?


 
As you can tell - I'm still missing one glass shelf - but that's been ordered.  I picked this up 3 days ago and it's almost done...  It is now up for sale and frankly, I can't wait to get rid of it - maybe becuase I just don't LOVE it, like I do LUCY... But - considering I don't need two of them, it's probably good that I DON'T love it - because I may not want to sell it!