Vintage Buffet, Big Reveal

I found this mud covered, forgotten piece of furniture behind an old shed at one of my favorite local antique stores.  It had seen better days and thanks to the elements and years of neglect I thought maybe it was too far gone even for me!  But thanks to a little encouragement from my fabulous sister in law I bought this gem with the hopes ot giving it a second chance.

And I'm so excited with how it turned out! Believe it or not getting here really wasn't that bad!!! A good scrub and de-bug, a little drying time, paint, wax and some new knobs plus lots of iced coffee for this procrastinating project queen... and the buffet went from forgotten to a star in our house!

As you can see the top was rough, stained, dirty and definitely not loved for a long, long time.  But the "bones" were great and under the goo and gunk, technical terms are my specialty, the shape was exactly what I was looking for to go in my dining room.

To go from dirty to distressed beauty, first everything got a good scrub to get rid of the dirt, and dust so I could at least start with a clean surface.  Once the wood was completely dry I decided to skip the primer and just get to painting, for one reason I am impatient to a fault and second I don't mind if some of that "character" peaks through a little so why do more work than necessary?  Work smarter not harder, right?1? 

For the color I used Krylon spray paint in Pistachio.  After two coats all the imperfections were evenly covered, but the color was a little too bright for me so I covered everything in Annie Sloan clear wax, and then dark wax to give it that antique, aged look. 

 If you have never used Annie Sloan wax, you should.  It is a little more than other waxes on the market, but you don't use much and it's money well spent.  There are many great tutorials out there on waxing, missmustardseed has some of my favorites.

Finally some new brushed copper knobs for the drawers and two glass knobs for the two doors. These are just cheap knobs from Home Depot, because I refuse to pay more for the knobs than the furniture.. but that's just me!  Still, I think they look perfect for this project.

For my $50 dollar investment I think this gem is a keeper!  I hope this inspires you to grab an old piece of furniture, even if it is in really rough shape and give it a second chance.

Enjoy,