Wardrobe Re-Do Part II: Painting & Staining

Oh how I agonized over these paint choices.  I think part of the problem is I know where it's going to live, so I tried to work with the colors in my closet/dressing room.  I wanted it to pop, but not overwhelmingly so.  And since it's such a big piece (and will be in the space it's intended for) I wanted to try to tone down it's girth a little bit.  

Plus, having recently parted ways with my beloved pink sofa I needed to have at least one piece of pink furniture.

I like to think of this color as more of a blush, rather than a full-on pink.  And how awesome does the blush look with this hardware:

That's the original hardware, just given a new lease on life with a little gold paint.  I'm thrilled with the hardware!
 
But the rest of her?  Meh, she kind of doesn't make my heart sing.  I think the reason why is because of this detail here.

I wanted to keep this detail because, well, duh, it's awesome.  But right now it's unrelated to the rest of the piece and doesn't tie in at all.  I'm hoping once I get the wood doors back on that will help make everything look more cohesive.  

Aaaah, the wardrobe doors.  

You can tell they want to be beautiful.  I knew I didn't want to paint them.  But I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to refinish them.  So I ate a Hostess cupcake or two (the chocolate kind with the squiggle on top and cream in the middle) and thought long and hard about what I wanted the doors to look like.  I really wanted them to be a shade lighter than they currently were, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get them clean enough to make them lighter.  Only one way to find out: 

Much to my relief the doors started to come clean almost immediately.  See the grain peeking through in the picture above?  The stripper was still wet when it started to show, which means that these doors wanted to be stripped as badly as I wanted them to come clean.

Reading that sentence out of context might give you reason to question what this blog is really about.  

Time to find out what was underneath it all:

Perfectly clean, and gorgeous veneer!  

After sanding, I stained and polyed:

And these suckers are done!  I got lucky with this particular project.  With older pieces you never know what you're going to get once you strip it, but these guys cooperated from the beginning.

The doors are going to end up being slightly lighter than the detail in question, but hopefully the natural wood appearance of both will work to provide cohesion to the overall piece.  

Next step:  Shelving