Sandpapered Vintage Beauty - and I'm not talking about me.

I've been reading all the DIY blogs to figure out how to vintagify the cupboard I wrote about it in my last blog post. You can read about it here. And still I did so many things wrong.

First, lemme tell you it was hard work! You have to do a lot of little things like

- tape over the hinges so you don't paint them
- cover the glass doors with newspaper so you don't paint over them

As you can see in the picture above, I painted one coat in grey - that was a totally unnecessary step unless you wanted the cupboard to be grey with touches of white. But I made the mistake of using too much paint for the 2nd coat of white. So the cupboard is now white with a little grey showing through. Sigh.


I also painted the inside white (again unnecessary - who's gonna look inside?) and as you can see one coat of white is not enough.
Bear in mind you have to wait for the sun to dry each coat of paint...and you don't wanna do this during the rainy season. Each time it threatened to rain, I had to call for help so somebody would carry the heavy lady inside with me....(altogether now..sighhhhhhhh)

Husband also helped me to re-hinge the two glass doors that the carpenter did a shoddy job of - they didn't even meet at the right point, at first.

After painting the whole cupboard white, here are the curvy legs mentioned earlier, with no character.


Then I used sandpaper to distress it. See how they look more vintage now? Oo la la...


Then I painted wood wax over the cupboard in strategic places while wiping it off immediately with a cloth (just like the DIY bloggers told me to - such obedience)
So much more character now! However, this was the tricky part. Overdo the wax thing and your cupboard will only look - dirty. Which it did. I had to sandpaper several spots where I thought it looked dirty instead of vintage.

Whichever way, my Mum is gonna say, "Why would you strip paint off the cupboard that was old and dirty and re-paint it to look old and dirty?"

It's ok. She's 78.


More work. The original knobs were missing. I didn't like the colour of the hardware knobs I'd bought (they looked too 'new'), so I just stained them with the same wood stain I had...(right pic is after staining)



Look at the beautiful knobs now...
Since I knew I'd be using it for my daughter's homeschool books, I wanted the inside of the glass doors covered with a curtain. Cos I didn't want the books seen. Really, all those pics you see of gorgeous bookshelves with books displayed on them? Now c'mon, does anybody really have collections of books that come in almost the same colours so that it matches with everything else? Look. Here's my point.





















Or have all books in almost the same if not the same size?



















It's just not real. So I wanted to cover the glass with curtains cos I didn't want the books to be seen.

Here's the before and after.




The terrible BEFORE






The Terrific AFTER!



I was so pleased with it, that I kept turning to admire it during every commercial break while watching American Idol (and trust me, nobody gets my attention when I'm watching American Idol)

BEFORE - One-eyed Jack.

.............................................................


AFTER - Lady Victoria (yes, I named her cos I get personal like that)


And yes, my husband will be very pleased to hear me say he was right to bring the before home.

What do you think about my sandpapered vintage beauty? and I'm not talking about me.