Janice’s Sideboard

Do you have stereotypes for different countries?

The people of the country I mean.

I am embarrassed to admit that I do.

Nothing negative, more along the lines of Australians are beach babes and partyers and Irish are fun and love a pint.

My stereotypes are based solely on what I’ve seen on Pinterest or Instagram – not from any real-world experience.  In fact, my Dad and I travelled through Ireland years ago and I believe he drank more pints and had more fun than any Irish people we met.

Hmmm, may have to re-evaluate my stereotype-determination methods.

Regardless – Janice is Irish, and Janice is fun (I have yet to see her drink).

Case in point, check out her knobs;

She has a great pair right?  Nice knobs Janice!

Well, Janice also had a sideboard in need of some fun, so she asked me to refinish it in a three-tone to coordinate with the bookshelf of last week.

I forgot to take a photo before I removed the hardware and started sanding the drawer, but you get the idea… someone has had too much fun on this piece and the top was completely destroyed.

You can’t show off gorgeous knobs in an ugly top right?

Time to strip the surface down to bare wood and start fresh – fortunately, this sideboard is solid wood, so I had room to sand it down without worrying about breaching the veneer that a lot of pieces have nowadays.

Watermarks removed and scratches smoothed out – perfection!

To keep with the look of the bookshelf, and because stain and varnish show far fewer scuffs than paint does, I talked Janice into staining the top of her sideboard in a warm-almost-yellow.

To protect the fresh surface from paint spatter, I then finished it with two coats of triple-thick varnish (sanding between coats).  By doing this, even if I spilled an entire can of paint on the surface, I’d have time to wipe it up with a damp cloth.  Spilling paint on unprotected stain just means I’d have to strip the whole thing down again.

The body of the sideboard got a light sanding to remove any scratches and to roughen up the surface so the next coat of paint would adhere better.

Normally at this point I’d prime the piece for strength, adhesion and durability – but Janice brought over her own paint for this piece and it professed to work without primer.

This is called Laurentian from Fusion Mineral Paints and is supposed to be a variation of robin’s egg blue – but it looked a bit more mint to me?  Mint, Irish – totally fun right?!

The stuff went on so smoothly and covered beautifully – I only needed two coats to get a fantastic finish…

BUT – and this is typical of most chalk, mud, mineral, milk paints – it is intended to be scuffed off.  People tend to choose these paints to avoid sanding and priming, and to create a more vintage-y look by roughing up the edges like antiques might be.

Because of this, the paint has a chalky feel to it and comes off very easily.

Even in waxing the surfaces to try and protect it from scuffs and wear, some of the paint came off and had to be touched up.

I’m not a big fan of chalk/mineral/mud/milk paints – when I go to the effort to refinish something, I want it to look new and not worse for wear than when it came to me.  Just a personal opinion.

Back to Janice’s knobs – check out those beauts!

The little green buttons complimented the paint colour beautifully, and Janice chose these off-white vintage handles to tie the three-tone (Laurentian, stain and off-white) together.

Would you have guessed this was the same sideboard we started with?

Would you totally agree that Janice has a great sense of fun?

And she’s Irish, so I think my argument stands.

If there are any Australian Beach Babes (men only please) that want to invite me to a party – I’d be happy to publicly announce I was right on that front as well.

Have a great one!

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Linked to:

• Between Naps on the Porch

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