DIY Vanity Makeover

Good Morning Everyone!

I hope you all had a great weekend and for those of you who went to the JITT Market this past Saturday- I hope you enjoyed it and found some really great items! It looked amazing!

Over the weekend I re-finished a vanity that I use to do my hair and makeup at in the morning. My husband found it for me at a thrift store and I love it! But, the coloring was a little off. It was a little too yellow and gold for me. So, I’ve been meaning to refinish it into something new and clean.

I decided I wanted to paint it white, but didn’t want it to be too stark white. After reading several different how-to’s on furniture re-do’s I decided that an “antique white” would be a great choice. An antique white is closer to a cream than a stark-white, it also seems a lot softer. The paint I really wanted was Annie Sloan… but since Annie Sloan is extremely difficult for me to get my hands on where I’m currently located, I had to do a little research to figure out what I should get. I just re-finished my night-stand in Valspar paint and I was so happy with how it turned out! (You can see the night-stand makeover over on my blog <here>) So, I decided to use Valspar paint for the vanity as well. To keep my life a lot easier I thought I’d keep it simple and just choose the Valspar Antique White- have you seen the wall of paint options at Lowe’s?? There are like a thousand whites it seemed like and it was a little overwhelming for me. haha.

I was a bad blogger and forgot to take a good ‘before’ picture, so I apologize. But, here is a picture of what the vanity used to look like in my room.

And here’s a quick shot I remembered to take right before I started painting it

Here is a close-up of it, you can see it was an interesting cream with a gold finish.

BTW, that gold filagree was definitely NOT as easy to remove as I thought it would be. haha

To begin, I sanded the whole piece really well and then started applying the paint. I quickly realized that I should have primed it before I painted it. But hind-sight is 20-20, right? So, I just kept adding layers until it was covered really well. It’s been pretty hot here in Oklahoma, so I didn’t have to wait long in between layers. I think I applied about 4 layers of paint, so again, next time I’ll figure out if I should prime it before I go-to-it with the paint.

Once the paint was dried completely I went to town sanding the piece to achieve a distressed, shabby-chic look with a sanding block. I had let the vanity dry overnight before I sanded because I ran out of daylight, but you can start sanding as soon as the paint seems dry. The sanding and distressing is the fun part. There is no such thing as a mistake and it’s fun to scrub away until you get the desired look of distressing

When I decided I was done sanding, I got my Minwax Clear Wax out. You can apply the wax with either a stiff brush or a soft, lint-free cloth. Waxing is really new to me, but I’ve decided that I love it. It dries hard and grease-less and leaves a butter finish. The best way I’ve found to use the Minwax, is to apply a thin layer to the entire piece and wait about 10-15 minutes until the wax has dried and hardened. Then buff away the excess wax with a clean, lint-free cloth. So easy, right??

I had removed the pulls on the drawers and decided to spray paint them with Rustoleum Spray Paint in Satin Black. Once I was finished with the vanity, I re-fastened the pulls onto the drawers and I was finished!

Here it is back in my room.