Vanity Rehab

Once upon a time, I found this vanity by the side of the road.  There are multiple things I love about our neighborhood, but people's willingness to put furniture out by the side of the road is high up on my list.  If the furniture doesn't have any damage, I don't care how ugly it is, I want it to be mine.  Free=fabulous in my mind.  So I found this weird green vanity.  It wasn't too cute, but it had some great bones, so I took it home with me.  

 It also came with this mirror & the pieces to attach it to the vanity, which totally shocked me.  

So I started taking apart this sucker so I could paint it.  

 I wish I had taken more pictures of the process of me painting this thing, but I actually found it the night before I was having a yard sale, so I was in a crunch to get it finished so I could try & sell it.  I covered it first with some Kilz general purpose primer.  I love this stuff.  It is so legit.   After I covered that, I just took some leftover paint that I had used to paint the guestroom walls when I updated that room (see here for pics of that remodel) & painted the vanity.

After painting the vanity, I used one of my most favorite products to glaze it.

I don't know how well you can actually read the labels since I use the crap out of this stuff, bu tit is Valspar Antiquing Glaze in the color/shade of Asphaltum.  I LOVE it.  I have used it on my dining room table & countless DIY projects.  I am hoping to be able to start the nursery posts tomorrow & you will see how much I used this stuff.  The best thing is, a little goes a long way.  I have used one 8 fl oz container on this vanity, several nightstands, a dining room table, a huge dresser/changing table, a tall dresser, a shelf & a few other smaller projects.  It lasts FOREVER & I am pretty liberal with it.

You can find all kinds of tutorials of how to use this antiquing glaze on Pinterest.  I will tell you the method that works the best for me is to cut up pieces of an old T-shirt & use that to apply the glaze to the furniture.  I have tried the paintbrush effect before & I just don't love it.  I love to use a T-shirt because you can really feel the grooves in the furniture & you can figure out the right amount of pressure to get just the right amount of glaze kept on the furniture vs. being wiped back off.  I just put a dab of the glaze on the t-shirt & start glazing along with the grain of the furniture.  If you look at it & the glaze looks too dark, just rub the shirt on there a little more to blend it a little better or lighten it up.  

 So here is the vanity after it had been distressed.  This was probably one of my more liberal glazing projects, but I really liked it with the blue.  I also spray painted the handles with another of my favorite products...the Rustoleum Universal Hammered Spray Paint in brown.  I bought a can of that stuff & went nuts spray painting lamps, frames, handles, you name it & I spray painted it.  I get a little obsessive, can you tell?  ; )  

 Anyway, here is the dresser.  I desperately wish I would have found it sooner so I could have actually set it up in decent lighting to take pictures of it, but the yard sale was the next day & much to my delight, it sold for $75.  $75!  For a vanity I got for free off the side of the road & painted with stuff that I already had.  I was quite proud of myself & it gave me a little bit of a furlough of having to hear the hubby complain that my "side of the road furniture finds" were taking up space in his man-garage.  : )