I just love these drawers

When one of my lovely regular customers showed me these sweet little drawers to quote for painting, I just fell in love with them. Designed to sit at the base of a bed, they are about knee high. I was thrilled to paint them, to experience them even just to work on. They are really lovely.

They were a honey oak colour, nice enough, but no good in my clients bedroom. We decided to paint them with a lightened mix of ASCP Paris Grey. Below you can see them after two even coats of the grey.

I thought that in order to look authentic, they needed some antiquing in the form of dark wax. I applied clear wax first and then dark wax on the detail and the corners of the drawers. To read my tutorials on dark waxing click though to these links:  

How to add patina with dark wax

A video on adding patina with dark wax

You can see how the dark wax subtlety highlights the grooves and adds a depth and patina. If you find that you have added too much dark wax for your liking, just take a little clear wax on a cloth and wipe across the area that is too dark and it will lighten it up by removing the the dark wax. It's always good to stand back from your work regularly as you go to see how it is progressing from a more natural distance. What looks good (or doesn't look good) from your working distance of 20-30 cm may look the opposite from a normally viewing distance of a metre or so.

You can see the dark wax below on the grooves and where I feel that the paint would have aged and darkened naturally: on the corners, grooves and around the handles.

To photograph the finished chest of drawers, I decided to style next to my bed (where I'd been waxing it) and with some lovely cushions on top.

The cushions were hiding my sleeping pup! He likes to sit near me while I work and was sleeping on the bed. Such a gorgeous little soul. Notice the pink mark on his ear. The other day the kids were sitting in the lounge room with Charlie and were colouring in. I noticed the pink texta mark on Charlie and the pink texta was right next to the kids, so I asked who had drawn on the dog. They both denied it but I didn't believe them and was upset with them for lying to me.  Well that night, Phil came home and I was telling him about our afternoon and how I was a bit upset about the kids not owning up to drawing on the dog. Phil looked at me and said "oh no I did that!" What?? How old is my husband? LOL. I had to apologise to me kids the next morning :)

The chest of drawers is now back in my client's bedroom at the foot of her bad and it all looks very gorgeous. She also has one of my painted sideboards as her dresser and I feel very honoured she likes my furniture so much.

The texta is still on the dog. I'll bath him later today...
Fiona xx