More Props for the Shop

I have a love and fascination for old furniture, especially old furniture that has the potential to look like new furniture once it has had a touch of Tender Loving Care.

A couple of years ago I had a real stint on painting some of the wooden pieces of furniture I owned simply to give them a new lease of life. It was a very rewarding time for me and in many respects brought healing to my soul as I discovered some things about myself, and played around with creative ideas to find out what I really liked in furnishings for my home. I know there are many people out there who would scream at the thought of painting over wood. Sometimes there is just a need to resurrect a piece of furniture to give it a fresh look, and often when we enter into a new season of life, adding a coat of paint to something that has become all-too-familiar is what it takes to inspire and motivate us with a fresh outlook.

As we head in to Spring I am in that place again. There is something about a new season, especially Spring, that inspires new life. Isaiah 43:18-19 says “Do not call to mind the former things, Or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness…” As we look ahead to the new season we are stepping in to, there is an opportunity to change some things again, which includes restoring more furniture to bring it in to its next phase in our lives.

When we first moved to Cambridge I decided I needed a new dresser to store a few things in. We picked up a beauty from TradeMe for $200 and took a trip to Tauranga to pick it up. At that stage I was playing around with new ideas and so the stained pine was stripped back to bare wood. After much trolling through Pinterest for ideas, we settled on painting the dresser a dark blue/green with a dark walnut stain for the bench top. A lot of sanding was involved and after 3 layers of paint, someone decided that they didn’t actually like the look of this particular piece of furniture in its painted state.

So it was back to the drawing board. The dedicated love of my life sanded back the paint and then stained the dresser in Dark English Walnut which I then finished with a whitewash. The look was okay for a while. The dresser has since hosted our TV and stereo and the drawers have been useful for storing CDs and DVDs, cutlery and placemats.

Now that there is another move ahead, and with thoughts about shop fittings being at the forefront of our minds, we decided that this dresser would make a brilliant shop counter. I am a lot more settled on the kind of look that I like, which sits somewhere between Rustic & French Country, and that just fits with where I am at right now.

So our beloved dresser has recently gone through yet another face lift.

The amazingly dedicated love of my life once more got out sandpaper and paintbrush; this time we can both say we are very happy with the end result. Our dresser has had a fresh coat of ‘Old White’ Annie Sloan Chalk paint, and the counter top has been sanded back to the original wood pine (again) with a beautiful natural grain, finished with clear wax. It is stunning. And because the wood has been sanded so many times, it now has a beautiful smooth finish, ideal for folding fabrics on.

At the moment said dresser is destined to be a counter top, but I love it so much I’m thinking a second dresser may be necessary in our next home. I’ve been trolling Trade Me again this morning, and there just happens to be a dresser for sale in Auckland with the auction closing tonight. As we just happen to be heading to the Gift Fair in Auckland tomorrow to source stock for the shop, I’m thinking the truck could do with a run… and we’ve already stocked up on sandpaper, so the amazingly awesome dedicated love of my life is bracing himself for the inevitable…