Sewing Cabinet to Bedside Table Makeover

 

I have been trying to talk someone into letting me paint something orange since about the time I started painting furniture. “It’ll look great”, I say. “Yeah, it would!”, they say. But no one has ever actually taken me up on it. Until now…

Of course that someone, was me. When we gave our youngest a Big Boy Room Makeover we had a great mix of vintage and modern elements. One of those vintage elements was my grandmother’s small old sewing cabinet that we were using as a bedside table.

Not that it didn’t look great just as it was, sitting there next to his bed, but I always felt like it got lost in all of the darkness of the bed frame. Like it was just an extension of  the bed. And I wanted it to pop.

 I had never even taken all of the things out of it since inheriting it years ago.

Clearly it hadn’t been used as a sewing cabinet in quite sometime. The top pic is of me in highschool driving my grandmother and aunt, the grand marshals of the Odum Day Parade. The bottom one is of me in the 6th grade with a cardboard cutout of Burt Reynolds.

We lived in Palm Beach, FL at the time and Loni and Burt had a home and dinner theater there. Loni’s security guards once tried to confiscate my camera because I tried snapping a pic of her in the mall. After wrestling with my mom over it they finally just ended up taking the film. I haven’t liked Loni since.

My great grandmother’s old copy of The Beloved Invader, part of the St Simon Trilogies, by Eugenia Price. If you haven’t read it and you like historic romance novels, based on real people and set in the old time South or even if you don’t, I highly recommend it. I grew up just 45 mins from St. Simon’s Island Georgia so naturally I found it fascinating when I read it as a teenager.

There were also some old valentines, news paper clipping, my grandmother’s old Bible and my aunt’s diary.

The decision to paint it wasn’t made lightly. I lived with it a while like it was and then I finally decided that part of loving it was not only loving it for what it was but also for what it could become. Highly philosophical for furniture painting but true nonetheless.

I also found it encouraging that the DecoArt® Americana DECOR Chalky Finish Paint that I used to paint it was called, Heritage. Fitting.

I used their Creme Wax and wax brush to seal it.The finished product was just as stunning as I hoped it would be.

It’s bright and happy (and a little edgy, as I’m told my grandmother could be).

And it definitely “pops” now!

Supremely fitting for a super fun happy little boy’s room.

An old gym locker basket rests beneath it with the number 111 that always meant something to my mother though she never knew quite what.

It makes me happy every time I look at it.

Now, who’s next? Let’s paint something orange!

 

 

DecoArt® Americana DECOR Chalky Finish paints and supplies can be purchased online or at your local Home Depot or Micheals stores. I was not compensated for this post.