Put On Your Face, Girlfriend

Back in May I decided with this new house I finally needed a proper makeup vanity to get primped at.  Until this point, I always sat in front of a floor length mirror and did my thang.  I’m pretty minimalist with my makeup (we’re talking less than 10 minutes) and my curled hair is done in fewer than 20.  Given the relatively short time, it wasn’t a big deal to pop a squat and git ‘er done.  But now with our more spacious master bedroom, a makeup vanity sounded like a nice upgrade from not only a comfort perspective, but also from an aesthetics perspective because we needed more furniture in the room to balance things out.




Insert my Craigslist search.  Once or twice a week I’d check to see what was out there, but for the longest time nothing worthy popped up.  Finally about six weeks in, I found a mid-century modern walnut desk listing.  It was priced $40 AND the seller was less than five minutes from our house.  Double score.  Even if it sucked in person, I wouldn’t have wasted much time looking at it. 

Turns out it was just what I needed.  As is typical of Craigslist finds, though, it wasn’t perfect.  It definitely had its share of dings and even a small chunk was missing from one lower corner, but overall, it had the main requirements:

•    Drawers for girly-stuff containment
•    A flat top without an attached mirror
•    Preferably a mid-century modern design
•    If in rough-ish shape, made of either paintable or re-stainable materials

Four of four = SOLD.  It was listed for $40, I offered $30 and the seller accepted.

Here she is in our bedroom:

It’s hard to show the flaws even while using our DSLR camera, but here’s my best attempt.  There’s even a sweet outline of a remote control on the inside of one of the drawers.

It has nice dove tail construction:

Well, laziness (and life) took its toll and here we are about three months later finally tackling this project.  I opted to paint the whole shebang.  It’s kind of my think lately.  Also, we have a large walnut dresser and mirror in our room and Eric’s started to build us some matching bedside tables, so having the makeup vanity painted sounded like a good idea to avoid the too matchy-matchy syndrome.  So began the day the makeup vanity (finally!) put its face on.

I followed the same process I always do for furniture painting which is detailed out on the half bath vanity post.  Hop on over there for the full details, but I’ll give you the abridged version here and let ya in on a few minor tweaks I did on this particular project, too. 

1.    Fill any holes/crevices with wood putty
2.    Sand
3.    Clean
4.    Degloss
5.    Prime
6.    Paint
7.    Apply Protective Finish Coat (new for this project)
8.    Re-assemble

Here’s a shot of it outside right before I started.  This shot shows more of the flaws the indoor pics didn't capture. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

And here it is sanded and deglossed:

Then it was prime time where Sebastian got in on this action, too.  Sidebar: The majority of my project work is done during naps or after they’re in bed for the night, but not always.  Occasionally, Eric and I tag team hanging out with them and other times they just join in on whatever we’re doing.  And if you know little boys – heck, little kids period – they’re VERY interested in everything and almost always want to help.  I’m usually game for letting them in on the fun as long as it’s safe and such.  #teachthemyoung

I also opted this time to try two coats of primer versus my usual one.  Shellac based primer dries so quickly – we’re talking within 10 minutes or so.  The coverage with the second coat was awesome.  I'll definitely be doing two prime coats on my projects from here on out.  

Once everything was primed, though, it was obvious I needed to go back and fill in a bunch of dings that weren’t visible to the eye before sanding and priming happened.  So I busted out the trusty putty knife and got to work.  It was also very obvious my problem child for this project was going to be the drawer fronts.  By design, they have a recessed pull that was INSANELY hard to paint with any precision.  So I gotsta thinking about what in the world I would do to get a crisp coat inside those nooks.  Duh.  Use my favorite DIY thing ever – spray paint. 

This realization/solution was a game changer of sorts, though.  I wanted the entire piece (minus the legs) to be one solid color (i.e. no two toned business), so if the drawers were spray painted, the rest would have to be sprayed as well since there’s no way I’d be able to easily color match it.  I’m sure I’d get close, but I wasn’t willing to not have it perfect.  Who’s got time for re-dos?!

Once the drawers were sprayed, I moved on to the meat of the project.  And please learn from my mistakes!!  Extra super duper light coats are key.  Since all the pieces except the top surface are vertical, you’re much more prone to dripping.  Which I was victim to.  Ruh roh.  Thankfully, they’re on the back so it’s not an issue (with one small one on the side which I rarely see either), but still.  I wasn’t pleased with myself.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  I could go back and sand them and re-spray, but again, they’re not in noticeable places so I probably won’t.

Once the body was dry, Eric helped me flip it over to remove the six legs which were just screwed in.  Since the vanity stool I purchased had espresso legs, I thought it would look nice to have the vanity legs match the stool legs.  After all, there’s a total of 10 legs going on down there (hubba hubba), so two colors might be visual chaos (is that a thing?).

Last but not least was the protective finish for the main surface of the vanity.  Since this piece gets lots of wear and tear, I wanted to ensure the top surface could stand the test of time.  Enter Minwax water-based polycrylic protective finish in “clear gloss”.  I carefully brushed on a thin coat of this, let everything dry up for another day as per the instructions on the back of the Minwax can, and then reassembled.  Here she is now…with her full face on:

I added some fun shelf liner as well.  I think it gives a fun pop of color when you open the drawers.

Total Project Cost: $53 {including the vanity itself!}
Makeup vanity: $30
Rust-Oleum’s Slate Blue spray paint, satin finish: $5
Rust-Oleum’s Espresso spray paint, satin finish: $5
Minwax Protective Finish (clear gloss): $13
Shelf Liner: $0 (used credit card points on Amazon.com, but would’ve been $12)
Zinsser’s “BIN” shellac-based primer: $0, already had
Disposable paint tray liners: $0, already had some
Foam rollers (6-pack) plus roller holder: $0, already had
Sand paper (220 and 60 grit): $0, already had
Sanding block: $0, already had
Liquid Deglosser: $0, already had
Elmer’s wood putty: $0, already had
Putty knife: $0, already had one
Denatured alcohol: $0, already had
Old rags (for applying deglosser): $0, already had
Angled paint brush: $0, already had

I’ll definitely have to report back on the how the spray paint + protective finish hold up over much use.  Stay tuned!

♥,
Anne