A Painted French Armoire

Hands up if you love a French armoire!  (both mine are up and waving!)

I am absolutely in love and swooning over this latest furniture makeover in my home. I have wanted an armoire in our house for the longest time and I was lucky enough to pick this this beauty at auction.  It was in desperate need of painting as it was a mustard colour. Some time ago it would have been painted a cream colour but the alkyds in oil paint discolour over time. I thought for a while I may just paint it white but wanted a more classical French country look.

This is an awful room and almost impossible to take photos in so please excuse the quality.  The floor isn't even level in this room so that's why there is bits of wood under the front on the armoire to keep it level. This is one of the rooms that will be gutted when we renovate. 

I decided on a lovely putty colour with white for the raised mouldings. I have just used clear wax as a top coat but I may add some dark wax for detail and added patina.  To get the putty colour I first checked out all the paint desk cards at the hardware shop and finally decided on a Taubman's taupe colour but in this room with it's low light the contrast with the white mouldings just wasn't the effect I wanted so I did a little paint mixing with colours in my shed and came up with this beautiful putty colour.

I love how the white details pop against the beautiful french putty colour.  I painted the whole armoire in the putty first and then with an artists' brush I painted the raised mouldings.  It actually was time consuming and hard to get neat. or maybe it was just that I was doing it at 1am the other morning to have the armoire finished for the magazine photo shoot.

here's the before photo. super shiny and mustard.

and this is the before photo of the matching chest of French drawers just to show you the disgusting colour.  This has been white for a while and is in my daughter's bedroom. It is such great storage especially for a little girl who changes her outfit five times a day.

 and now

I'm super happy with the kids' bedrooms now - I'll blog later in the week about the changes. So nice to have the house all tidy - although with it being school holidays and all, I'm sure it won't last long.

Check back tomorrow for another furniture makeover. Another keeper, for sure...

So what do you think: Do you love armoires? or do you prefer a built in wardrobe?

Would you have painted it white or two toned?

Fiona xx

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