I was heading home from work one day early last spring with the top down on my car (ahhh, I can only dream of this now), and what did I spy out of the corner of my eye??  A garage sale with some beat up looking furniture poking out of the garage.  I screeched to a halt and whipped a u-turn to check them out.

At first I really just wanted the dresser, even though these were being sold as a ‘set’ (you all know by now how I feel about matching sets).  The sellers were a lovely brother/sister duo, and oddly enough, the dresser was his and the desk was hers, but they were selling them together … go figure.  Just as I was about to conclude a tough negotiation for just the dresser, I realized I was being an idiot and just bought them both!  I may have bought them together, but I didn’t have to keep them together!

You can tell by my brown grass that this is truly early spring … forgive me for that.  And you can see that both of these were in pretty tough shape.

I worked on the dresser first, since he was so charming.  He had some issues with  his veneer, so I patched him up with some putty.  Ken worked on the upper doors so they would function smoothly.  Then I painted him white using my own faux chalk paint recipe of 2 parts paint, 1 part hot water and 1 part Plaster of Paris.  Then I added the French words in black and finished with a coat of paste wax.  The drawer pulls were spray painted in Oil Rubbed Bronze, and the two little door knobs were replaced with some very cute ones that I had on hand.

It took me a bit longer to get to the desk.  At first I just wasn’t inspired by it, but then I decided perhaps it would be the perfect canvas for my French poem stencil.

I painted the body of the desk grey and the drawer fronts white, also using my faux chalk paint recipe.  Then I stenciled the drawers in grey with the words of a french poem.  The drawer pulls were painted in Oil Rubbed Bronze on this one too.  Isn’t she pretty?

This was about the time that I was learning to never try and take photos of furniture near a giant red carriage house when the light is bouncing off it.  Everything looks vaguely pink.  Lesson learned.

So there you have it, a classic brother/sister do-over.