A Wardrobe for Baby

This is the last of the BIG unfinished projects that’s been sitting in my workshop waiting for attention since I got pregnant and SICK in December.  It feels really good to have it tackled and finished!  I really wanted to get all the backlogged projects done before the Arizona weather gets hot, and my belly gets too big for me to do much of this kind of work.  :)

This sucker was actually given to me FREE by my furniture hookup guy.  I’ve told people about him before, but not sure if I’ve mentioned him here.  I know someone in town who buys people’s old storage units that they’ve defaulted on from the storage unit owners at auction.  Then he sells off the contents on CL and makes pretty decent money doing so.  I always thought the prospect of buying these units at auction was interesting for me as a furniture refabber, but risky, since you most likely end up with a bunch of crap that you don’t need or want.  Well, since I know this guy who does it, I don’t have to take any risk, but I get to reap the rewards of cheap, and sometimes quite awesome (and did I mention cheap?) furniture.  Since he knows that I redo furniture, he gives me first dibs on any furniture in his purchased units!  It’s a really great and completely serendipitous business relationship!

Anyways, here it was before I began work on it.

It had so much going for it, but really needed a LOT of work (which is why it ended up the LAST unfinished project in the workshop, and how it came my way free.)  There was a lot of gluing of peeling veneer, or removing of it all together, lots of filling, lots of sanding.  The prep work on this piece was a job in itself, for sure!  I added the paintable wallpaper that looks like tin ceiling tiles to the side panels and the bottom panel on the front to cover over where I had to remove the peeling veneer.  I thought the closet panel was a big blank slate that needed some interest, so I decided to use a really great product that I’ve utilized before: Deco Art Texture Stucco.

This stuff is fantastic!  I used it to add some interest to some flat and boring doors on this armoire as well.  I taped a damask stencil that I got at Michaels to the door.

Then, using a putty knife, applied the texture medium to the stencil.

Then, removed the stencil, leaving a lovely, raised design!

You can knock down some of the sharper edges on the stucco after it’s completely dried with a fine sandpaper.  Then it’s ready to paint over.  It leaves such a nice, subtle design element to your pieces, and is a much, MUCH cheaper alternative to those pricey wooden appliques that give you a similar effect.

So, here’s the piece after all my hard prep work, ready for some paint!

It was about at this point I started saying to myself, “Self?  You have a new person that’s going to be added to this family in a few months.  A new person brings with it a lot of stuff!  You’re going to need more storage to keep all that new stuff, and guess what?  You don’t have any right now!!”  To which I replied back to myself, “Hey!  This wardrobe would be a lot of new storage!”  So, it was practically a no-brainer that I really need to keep this piece.  It doesn’t hurt that I love it and would have cried to let it go.  ;)

So, my daughter’s room is a buttery yellow and sage green (thankfully I decided not to go too girly with her room in the first place), and her new baby brother will (eventually) be in there with her.  It’s a small house, and frankly the only option for him.  :)  So I decided to paint the piece the sage green, since it was the most masculine option.  :D

I added some tea stained glaze to the ceiling tile panels and to the stucco damask design to bring out those details and did some subtle distressing around the edges.  I love how it turned out!!

I also added some pretty wallpaper as liner in the bottom of all the compartments.  (P.S. – I picked up 18 yards of this wallpaper at the Fraser Fields Swap last fall, so you might just be seeing more of this in projects to come.)

I’m sure it won’t take long to fill up all those nooks and crannies with baby goodies!  It never does.  :)

Hope you all have a beautiful, springy weekend!

Linking to:

Primitive and Proper, The Shabby Chic Cottage, Domestically Speaking, Miss Mustard Seed, Chic on a Shoestring, My Repurposed Life, The Shabby Nest, Finding Fabulous, Sassy Sites