The One With the Vanity

Preslie is a diva.

BAD.

It's cute right now when she is three.

But I'm sure I'll be in for it when she's thirteen.

I look forward to it.

 

I'm not sure what possessed me to think that adding a vanity to her room would help this diva attitude. But I found this hideous little girls vanity on craigslist for $20.

I rarely find ANYTHING on craigslist it seems.

I'll get on there and look around, but everyone wants all this money for their stuff that, let's face it, is crap. I don't like paying money for other people's crap.

I've been looking and looking though for some sort of a coffee table/ottoman thing that I can redo to put in our living room. The space between our new sectional is such a random size and shape that it's proving extremely difficult to be something ready made to fit there.

Bring in Craigslist.

Only problem is the people with stuff that is old and awesome and would look great redone know that their stuff is old, awesome, and would look great redone . . . . and they like to charge you for it as if it already is redone.

Tough one for me because I think of all the time (that I don't have) that will need to be put into it and all of a sudden paying a $100 for a coffee table I will have to buy paint for and put blood, sweat, and most likely many tears into, doesn't seem all that reasonable.

 

In all this looking around for a coffee table I have happened to find two great things.

1 - a midcentury upright grand piano

2 - a hideous little girl's vanity

 

The piano I will go into more detail on later. My original plan upon seeing this thing on Clist was to sand it down and whitewash it - keeping in line with this current obsession with light white things I've had. But then after my husband and five of his greatest guy friends (they are pretty great in my book after doing this) moved it from a little house about 30 minutes away and into our garage I noticed that the aged black look this beauty had was spectacular . . . and all of a sudden I couldn't think of redoing it.

Added bonus - when I started to think of how much time it would take me to sand this sucker down I was more than happy with how it currently looked.

 

Back to the little girl's vanity.

On craigslist it looked like this:

 

In truth it wasn't terrible as is. I'm sure as is it probably would have made some little girl very happy.

But I had grander plans for it.

I've wanted to add aqua into Preslie's room for some time now and this seemed like a great piece to do it with.

 

So after HOURS of sanding (and an entire office full of pick dust) I finally painted it teal.

And then it looked like this:

 

Not terrible either really. But I had wanted it to be aged and look distressed and old. So I went to work dry brushing it with white paint. And then I sanded again and used dark brown stain over the top.  And this was the finished product.

The drawer pull is ending up being a challenge as the pull actually went into the drawer, which I hadn't been planning, but I am sure I will find a little crystal drawer pull around eventually.