The story of a dressing table

So this project started off as a simple dressing table revamp and turned into a four month saga!

(I apologise in advance for the lack of photos – I thought I took lots but it seems that I just got stuck in!).

I inherited this dressing table from my beautiful Grandma. It originally had a large winged mirror attached to the back.  The mirror however, had been removed during transport (and as I didn't want to use it), it stayed unattached (hence no photos).

Sorry about the bad lighting!

The desk is Queen Anne style and had been in service for a good 20+ years (not to mention it had been moved multiple times), so it was not in very good shape by the time the revamp came along.

I decided right at the outset that I wanted to paint it blue. I had found these images that I was taking inspiration from and knew exactly what I wanted: HUGE apologies as I have NO idea where I got these images from!

So after a clean, a sand and a bit of undercoat.

 

Off I went to the paint shop to get my blue paint. 

The paint I brought was just a standard gloss paint in a bright blue that looked just perfect on the paint chip. However when I got home and opened the paint ........I just couldn't do it! – it looked like Smurf blue! Not the look I was going for!!

So back to the paint shop I went.

This time it was suggested to me (by people who will remain unnamed) that maybe blue wasn't the best colour choice.

So this time I decided to get a metallic paint finish. I chose a lovely (light) gold coloured metallic paint and home I came to put it on..... However after two coats of paint, instead of the lovely light gold metallic paint colour I thought I had chosen, I had metallic avocado:

Absolutely not the look I was going for, and a colour that made me cringe every time I looked at it!

Don’t get me wrong, many people couldn't see what I was going on about and thought that it was just fine – but I could not live with it.

The metallic avocado colour lasted for one week - the exact amount of time it took me to get back to the paint shop, where they replaced the metallic avocado with the lovely light gold I originally chose!

So on went the lovely light gold paint........ (sorry - apparently not a single photo of the desk painted gold!).

Nearly three months past and although I was not repulsed by the light gold, and I was in love with the metallic finish, I just didn't like it. This wasn't what I wanted, it wasn't the vision....

Then I stumbled upon Resene Paints.  They have the most amazing selection of metallic paints in so many colours; including a large range of blues, I was in metallic blue paint heaven!

So I brought my blue metallic paint ‘Time Warp’, and one sunny day I finally painted my dressing table, the colour I always wanted.....

You can see the gold colour still on the front.....

And now I am in love....

(Clearly you have to ignore the bare floorboards and the lack of window treatments!)