Last week I told you about a whole new direction we’re going with regards to the interior decor of our house. We’re moving from contemporary clean lines to shabby chic and we started it off with the purchase of a few pieces of second-hand furniture. The first were two cute little bedside tables which we painted and distressed using chalk paint. The second project, painting and distressing an old armoire, we completed last night (I use the word ‘we’ when really I mean hubby!). It’s the most beautiful armoire which we picked up from a fabulous shop in Lagoa (it’s like an Aladdin’s cave – I will definitely be writing about the shop and it’s owner, Paulo, soon, I promise). Initially, we’d intended to have the armoire in our bedroom but when we got it home, we realized it would be better suited on the large landing outside our bedroom. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy place to take photos of because it’s quite an awkward space, but I did my best 🙂 Here’s a few pictures of the armoire before we started:
Having bought an azure blue, we painted it that colour first but then figured it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, so then we painted it white. Oddly, though, the dark wood colour seemed to seep through to the white (I know, that makes no sense considering underneath was azure blue but that’s what happened!) so we then went back to the shop and bought some more colours.
The next step was to go sky blue (which was totally cute by the way) and then we put a slightly darker blue on top before distressing it very slightly with sandpaper (the pictures above are before and during we distressed it). As you can see, the lighter blue comes through underneath, giving it a feeling of age.
We even have our own little piece of ‘art’ inside the armoire, because our cat Hermione, decided she wanted to investigate during the painting process and climbed inside, leaving her own little footprints behind:
We are absolutely thrilled with the result and now we can’t wait to move on to the next project – an old pine trunk we bought from the same place, which we’ll be using as a coffee table. I’ll keep you posted!
Oh, here’s a photo of the armoire as seen from our living room below:
