DRESSED TO IMPRESS

I have owned my dressing table for more than 40 years. It is beautifully made, with dovetail joints to the drawers and inlaid stringing on the drawer fronts. However, it was battered when I bought it for £20 all those years ago, before painting furniture was a 'thing'. Well, Covid and lockdowns have given me far more time than I have ever had, so no excuse to not get on with doing something with it.  I also had a chair I use at my dressing table. It belonged to my husband's mother, so is probably over 100 years old. Its a little unusual as its a corner chair. It too had seen better days, with a sagging seat and the wood coated in hair spray! I decided on a colour in my curtains that picks up the grey/green of leaves.  Here is the process:

I wiped down the whole dressing table with white spirit. I removed the handles and knobs. These I painted with pewter gilding wax and left to dry. Really easy and no buffing needed!  You can see the damage to the wood!

The chair was stripped, scraped and sanded and then reupholstered with new webbing, padding and calico before covering in some of the curtain fabric saved for about 40 years!

The paint I used is standard wall emulsion because I could not find a chalk paint in the colour I wanted. It is by Little Green in a colour called Livid, which I thought was appropriate as that is how I feel a lot of the time! After two coats of paint, it was finished with a coat of Sadolins Exterior Matt Varnish, which is incredibly hard wearing and invisible when dry.  I had previously used it on a butchers block, which is wiped down daily and it is still the same as the day it was applied.

I have made one decision. I won't be using hair spray in the bedroom in the future!