During our
master bedroom remodel, we tore down our old closet, and moved it to make two
smaller-but efficient closets. In doing that our bedroom gained a long wall
with negative space. I told my husband
that I desperately wanted to find a small desk that I could make into a custom
vanity (inspiration
from this pinterest-found blog). I
started combing craigslist for free or cheap furniture. I looked and looked, but could not find
anything I really wanted. I knew the
next town over did its yearly large dump day (everyone throws out their
unwanted items onto the curb and they haul it off) and over the weekend just
prior to pick up many people comb the neighborhoods for dumpster finds. It is actually quite a thing to see, so many
are looking for scrap metal, or usable goods, and many people put stuff out
there knowing that us scavengers will be out looking!
Early on a Sunday
morning I loaded my two littles into my suburban, and put a movie on for them
while my husband was sleeping after his overnight shift, and headed over to
scavenge In the corner of my eye I saw something that looked like a dresser and
drawers and I was AMAZED at what I found after only about 10 minutes of searching.
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| Under all that dust is a functional and beautiful piece! |
A 1940s
wartime "art moderne" style vanity built by a mainstream company (it could have even been
manufactured by women during WWII). I had originally hoped to leave some of its
veneer, but it was chipping up in a lot of places, and had quite a bit of water
and residue damage. I shopped pinterest
for ideas, and headed to home depot to decide on spray paint colors. Instead of using regular paint, I chose to
use a high gloss professional enamel spray paint to make sure that it would be
easy to clean and water proof.
For this
project:
- 1 vanity
- 2 cans of professional enamel black spray paint
- 2 cans of key lime green spray paint
- 2 yards of fabric
- 1 large cardboard box (for making drawer inserts )
- Sand paper (fine/medium)
- 1 can of 3m spray adhesive (gets kinda messy but works the best) you will need newspaper to lay down cause this can get messy)
I first
cleaned it up, and awed in its great lines, and fixed the two drawers that weren't
in the best of shape. So we sanded the surface a little bit with a fine/medium
grit sand paper cause it had a bit of finish left on it, removed the damp dust
and spray painted it. It needed two coats to make sure it was even, and be sure
to let it dry thoroughly. If it is nice and warm outside it can sit outside,
and it will harden well, you really don’t want it to be too cold, or it will
stay sticky and take longer.
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| you can kind of see the damage to the veneer, but there was quite a bit, and there was no fixing it |
Once the
black has cured and hardened, you will want to mask off the black face of the
drawers with paper and tape. Measure or trace the inside of the drawers so that
you can begin to make the liners with fabric and cardboard (lining the inside
of the drawers is great because it can protect from makeup spills, and cover
any previous damage. Ours had this sticky resin gunk mess (shown ) that I could not get
off so doing this covered that up)
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| Nasty sticky residue in the drawers that We couldn't get off |
Then spray the interior of the drawers (don’t worry
about doing the bottom, as this may affect the functionality of the drawers),
and while they are drying, work on the inserts.
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| about 1 1/2 inches around and fold smoothly |
We reused,
re-purposed and built all of our bedroom furniture, so to make them match we used
the high gloss black spray paint on all of our furniture, and then gave each
piece a decal by using a stencil by Martha
Stewart from home depot using flat black paint that we already had from a
different project.
After everything
has dried, put the dresser together and place it in the desired place.
As you can see here, we used the extra fabric to cover over this stool that I had in the garage. I used to use it as my hair chair, but a few years ago I got my hands on a professional chair to put in my little hair "salon" down stairs. We also spray painted the chair with the same black spray paint
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| The lighting in our bedroom is not fully adequate. I will have to bring in some lights and take a much better photo. |
