Today's project...Asian shabby-chic.

[merimask]

Charlotte has the worst time keeping her room neat and the culprit is all those darn clothes!  She just has too many.  Or maybe (and so my thought process went today) she doesn't have enough storage space.  Is it possible that one big dresser and one smallish dresser are just not enough for one teenager?  Hmm!

So, I decided to get her another dresser.  Since my show over the weekend was less than spectacular in the money-making arena (see last entry), I decided to go on the cheap and do some more Asian shabby-chic.  I did her whole room that way and it's pretty spiffy if I do say so myself.  Red painted walls with framed kosode decorating them, and I painted my old giant storage dresser (it's HUGE and blocky) black with gold bamboo all over it.  The floor is carpeted with a plush rug that's a pale straw color, and the windows have bamboo roman-style shades.  Add a fake-cheap tansu nightstand and some paper lanterns and voila! (or banzai!, perhaps), instant perfect Asian-looking room for a teen.

So, the first step was to find a decent dresser.  Salvation Army was no good...everything they had was Colonial-looking and awful.  Likewise Goodwill.  They only had one dresser and the drawers were broken...and they still wanted forty bucks for it.  I found what I was looking for at AmVets.  Simple in design, modern-looking, not broken, and made of real wood.  It cost me all of twelve dollars!   I loaded it into my car with some difficulty (though real wood is nowhere near as heavy as that awful fake pressboard stuff...eww), made a quick stop at a Valu hardware store in the same plaza for paint and new knobs, and headed home with my prize.

Here it is.  I actually thought to get a picture of it "before".

It needed a little cleaning with the 409, but the inside was in awesome shape and still smelled like good clean wood. 

The drawers are probably pine, but the frame is certainly oak.

See how nice and clean it is?  I gave it a swipe of watered-down Murphy's oil soap just to make it smell even better.  I can't believe I got this for just  12.00!

So I removed the crappy-looking hardware and sanded it very lightly (carefully, because the veneer was very thin, but it WAS real wood so that's a good thing) and painted it with Rustoleum gold paint.  One step and no priming needed, but that stuff is NASTY with a capital "N".   It ends up looking like hammered gold, so it has an interesting distressed quality...I love effect paints even though they stink something awful.  This stuff smelled like turbo-powered nail polish.  But, it dries fast and it's quick and easy.

Once that dried a bit, I painted branches in a sumi-e style with some leftover black latex paint from my last project.  I have to admit here that I've NEVER studied Sumi-e formally (and it shows), but I think I got the effect I wanted.  I told Char "I think they're willow saplings"...anyway that's how they feel.   I added butterflies (nothing more than dashes of color...bright "x"es of red paint) which I did with leftover paint from Char's walls.

Finished.

I found these GREAT black iron drawer knobs at Valu...very basic and just the look I wanted.   Not Colonial...minimalist.  I had to use knobs instead of handles on the lower drawers (the old handles were an odd size & I didn't want to re-drill any holes), but I like the way it looks anyway.

This was the first side I painted...

I was just getting a feel for it & it shows.

I did the front last...

The last dresser I did with the bamboo taught me to never paint the drawers separately.  The design's better if it flows naturally from drawer to drawer.

I even painted a branch across the top...

Is that too kitschy?  It probably is but *shrug* this is just a hobby of mine so I guess that I'm allowed to indulge myself.

There are fourteen butterflies, because Char is fourteen dontcha know (and if THAT isn't adorable then I don't know what is).  I signed it inside on the frame, "14 Butterflies", with my name and the date, and once it dried we moved it into Char's room.  She hasn't said too much, but she's been up there all night (odd for her...she's not the type that likes to be alone in her room) happily arranging her clothes in it, setting her favorite lamp on it (it is black wrought-iron in the shape of a spare branch with one leaf on it and it matches perfectly), and actually (here's the kicker) cleaning her room!   I think she likes it.  :-)

The entire project took me about three hours.
 

Comments

[shvetufae.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's lovely. I want such a lovely, hand-painted dresser! :)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm nowhere NEAR as good at this as Rumdiculous is, but with a good eye for viable used furniture & a little vision, you can create interesting furniture for less than 50 dollars.

[moonphased.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, I am so not joking when I say this, but you are totally my hero. :D *absolutely adores you AND your amazing-as-ever art skills!!* I'm always too chicken to try doing anything like that with furniture/home decor. ^^

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Aww...thank you! :-) It's no big thing really...I just know how to pick decent used furniture & I have a little painting skill. Frankly, I wouldn't put any of my shabby-chic in the living room, but it's good enough for bedroom furniture.

[kls-eloise.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is why you're an artist and I'm just a dabbling hobbyist - vision. I just don't look at that old dresser and see that. It's lovely.

And I have to say, to this day getting a new toy inspires me to clean *my* room. Just wait until I can afford the new bookcases for the library! I'm getting them at Ikea, but I need rather a LOT of them...

See how much fun before and after pictures are?

Right now I'm staring at my stacks of files and thinking "Don't WANNA!!!"

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-) I get the same (somewhat smaller) sense of accomplishment from fixing up old junk furniture that I get from restoring my Japanese blades...it's nice to give an old thing a new lease on life.

Check out your local Salvation Army/Goodwill/AmVets for bookcases before you buy new ones. I saw DOZENS of wonderful solid wood bookcases yesterday and if you paint them all with the same color it doesn't matter if they don't match style-wise. Plus you could surely "decorate" them. Black wooden bookcases with "mille fleur" vines chasing up and down the sides would look lovely in a big colonial house like yours.

I'm trying to get better with the before/after pics. :-) I learned from the master!

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I did that to a dresser once! Well, not that, actually. I just mean I enlisted my sister and we painted the face of my dresser with an absolutely gorgoeous white/palegrey/palebluegrey/mediumbluegrey swirling pattern that looked very convincingly like clouds. The handles that came with it had these beautiful swirl shapes that looked a bit like wind blowing clouds at storm speed, so it was just an awesome dresser.

Unfortunately it was also falling apart and very puny in the drawers so I had to give it up for a new one, very large with drawers and slippery runners, which matches my bed, chair and bookcase, so I haven't bothered to paint it.

Anyway the dresser looks great. My bedroom desk is a very improbably shade of brilliant blue-purple called 'grape parfait'. It doesn't look like a piece of furniture are all, in that colour...I didn't paint anything fancy on it though, I am frankly crap with trying to paint stuff that looks like real stuff...I can only do effects.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

I really love painted furniture. Unless you have a lovely high-quality hardwood, it's really almost always an improvement.

OMG I would just LOVE to paint that desk...I'd do green grape leaves and swirly vines...or maybe tall yellow and white irises. The long green leaves would make such a statement against all that purple.

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I made it sound like the desk CAME in purple, didn't I? :) I painted it, actually...so the base is a very smooth medium blue-purple (I did it with one of those mini foam rollers.) It started out a very solid, heavy little desk, all real wood...sort of an auburn shade. But it was a used desk and the finish was quite stained and I hate orangey-toned wood anyway...so purple it became.

I'd paint stuff on...um, stuff...but I honestly can't make things that look like, er...other things. Like, I can't paint leaves because they just come out looking like blobs. (Though actually I might manage a few good leaves...but the vines connecting the leaves would just look like stupid squiggles.) I can't paint animals at ALL for example, and my flowers are always blobby and lopsided. I'm even worse at painting than I am at drawing.

I'm going to see if I can knock the handles off the drawers someday though and replace them with some cooler hardware. And though it can stay purple for now I may someday paint it pale yellow or bright turquoise.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just LOVELY! If Char ever tires of it (yeah right) it would be grand in my Japonisme-shabby-chic front room! *chuckle*

And I am an increasingly huge believer in sufficient USABLE storage spaces making a huge, huge difference in the war on clutter. I'm in a space much less than half the size of the old house, really even smaller than the rowhouse I used to rent the last time I was living alone, and with much more junk than I had then to boot -- yet even though this place still needs a lot of work, and in particular is in dire need of some dressers and more bookshelves, it is ALREADY considerably less cluttered...simply because the built-in closet and shelving situation here is much, much better.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

lol...if I ever come for a visit (and of course you know that works both ways...the door is always open, m'dear) we can spend an afternoon jazzing up any old furniture you might be getting bored with. It's easy & fun!

I saw some BIG old chests yesterday that were VERY tempting...I almost brought one home. The only problem with using chests/trunks for storage is that things invariably get dumped on TOP of them. *sigh*

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heh, and you and Keebster are more than welcome in turn! (I just wish I still had the huge old Doggy-Paradise semi-wild yard for him to go rampaging through...but still there are some decent parks to explore around here, and charmer that he is he'd probably be just as happy with the three-mile hike to Petco, with treats and petting at the end of it!

I've not got a lot of guest space, unless folks like sharing a rather thin convertible futon with an exceptionally snuggly pibble, but I swear I must be located right on the major cheap-lodging corridor leading in to the touristy parts of Old Town proper; out walking Biscuit, I've spotted absolute TONS of inexpensive motels, both chains and little local indies, within walking distance. There's a couple of major highways intersecting here, I'm right on top of a Metro station and the DCA airport is just a few stops down on the trainline, so really if you're ever doing a show in the DC region this neighborhood looks to be an excellent option for affordable rooms.

I've finally found a nearby hardware store, so I'll probably be getting a bit of cheap paint for some of my recent dumpster-dived finds...but I probably won't do anything quite so pretty or ambitious as even unfinished, they really go with each other and the rest of this stuff in this very open, minimalist front space. Mostly I think I'd just do a very few small solid glossy black accents to help tie the honey-pine stuff better to the plain black stuff (and, koff, to cover up the Sharpie scribbles on the top of that otherwise-cool foyer table!).

[indigos-angel.livejournal.com]

!!!!!OMG!

THAT IS SOOOOOOOOOOO GORGEOUS!

It's not kitchy. *what does kitchy mean??* lol

I'm not much into designs and patterns, and I would so have that dresser inside my house. It's gorgeous.

*hmmmmmmm, wants to send you pics of my house. I want decorating help*

[merimask.livejournal.com]

lol...thank you. :-)

"Kitsch" is defined by Webster as ": something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality". I tend to think of it as faddish, badly done art or literature. By that definition, my Asian shabby-chic certainly fits that description...but I don't care. :-) I personally LOVE painted furniture (Rumdiculous has done some wonderful, NOT kitsch pieces that I would love in my house)...I think it's the ultimate definition of utilitarian art & I think that's a good thing.

Too Many Clothes and Not Enough Dressers

[bonnietognetti.livejournal.com]

Jeeeeeeez! I just bought Char a bunch of new clothes!!!! AND I gave her that "fake cheap" Tansu nightstand. Talk about taking a coupla whacks at your mother-in-law! hehehehe

Seriously, that dresser looks great. I can hardly wait until you get out here and we can do my sign projects! And picnic in the redwoods and go to the beach, and go see the otters, sea lions, dolphins, humpbacks and blues!

PS the first blue whale was spotted just yesterday, only 2.5 mi off the coast!!!!

Re: Too Many Clothes and Not Enough Dressers

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Heh! Well, the nightstand isn't a real tansu (those are HUGE and crazy-expensive...thousands of dollars for a new one & hundreds of thousands for a "real" antique), so we all love hers 'cause it's just the right size. :-)

She loves her clothes by the way...the sandals are a huge hit.

[ramblinsuze.livejournal.com]

First, you are the mistress of finding discount furniture. That is a good-looking dresser and only $12?????? You can't find *anything* like that around here. Goodwill almost never has furniture (certainly something of that size) and the Salvation Army charges an arm and a leg for utter crap. *le sigh*

I absolutely love what you did with it! I'm a wee bit scared to try mucking around with my furniture. But you've inspired me. My filing cabinet doesn't match the rest of my "office" decor (light faux wood instead of medium faux wood! lol), and my little side table is still completely unfinished after more than a year (that's just sad right there). Hmmm...

And hey, I would never have known that you hadn't tried the sumi-e style before. It really looks great! I love that style. :D

[merimask.livejournal.com]

I was VERY lucky I know...there was even a second choice at AmVets but it came with a big mirror (which I didn't need) and it was TOO huge for what Char needs. I almost bought it for myself though 'cause it was all of nine dollars.

Eh...I figure with ugly old furniture how can it possibly get uglier? :-) It's good to have a theme in mind though, 'cause otherwise none of the stuff has anything that ties it together.