While moving all of my painting supplies indoors for winter, I noticed that I had several small jars of the same (or very similar) color.  None of them would paint an entire piece of furniture though.  So it occurred to me to just mix them all together.

Two of these were sample size pots of different brands of chalk paint; the Americana Decor paint is from Home Depot (yep, did you know they are carrying a chalk paint now?) and the Cottage Paint (bottom, back) is from our local Hirschfields.  The Annie Sloan can just had a tiny bit left in the bottom.  I mixed all of these together in a Talenti gelato container.  Not only is their gelato delicious, but the containers have a fab screw on lid and work great for mixing and storing paint in smaller quantities.  I can’t really think of a better excuse for eating banana chocolate swirl gelato, can you?

Once I had these all mixed together, I had more than enough for a dresser.

I bet you don’t even recognize this one.  It’s Humpty Dumpty!  Remember him?  He started out like this…

And then Ken fixed him up to look like this…

Finished, he looks like this …

Now for the choices I made, which were inspired by several comments left on my first post about this piece (thanks CJ, Victoria and Darrielle).  First, I stripped the top using a non-toxic (less toxic?) citrus stripper.  When I decided to do this, I wasn’t sure if I would follow it up with some dark Java gel stain, or just wax.  After removing the old finish, I knew that I didn’t want to go as dark as the Java, so I pulled out a sample size pot of CeCe Caldwell’s Dark Aging Wax.  It is a rich brown color, compared to the MMS antiquing wax, which leans more towards black.

I sanded the top lightly by hand with 220 grit sandpaper, and then rubbed on the wax.  The wax added a beautiful richness to the top of the dresser without going too dark.  See…

Gorgeous, right?

I really debated the color and brand of paint for this one.  I seriously considered the MMS Artissimo.  I’ve done a couple of Eastlake style dressers in it, and they both turned out lovely.  Then, I thought maybe MMS Boxwood, mainly because I thought the dark green would be festive for the Christmas season, and fun to stage with some red and green holiday stuff.  In the end though, I decided to go with a color that I know sells really well.  And why wouldn’t it?  It is a beautiful color.

After painting the body of the dresser in my mixed up paint, I decided to go ahead and paint the hardware.  Darrielle was right, since I had all of the hardware I should make it work rather than replacing it.  And Victoria reminded me that painting the hardware was a good option.  Once I covered the brassy gold color with paint, the hardware was actually quite pretty.

I also decided I had to come up with some keyhole escutcheons as CJ suggested.  The holes for the original escutcheons were just too large to ignore.  Unfortunately I only had two matching escutcheons, not three.  So I improvised by adding a number plate to the top drawer.

Yes, I know that escutcheon is crooked, it’s not permanently adhered yet.  I had to get some pictures done while I could, so I just slapped them on temporarily.  We literally had a 20 minute window of sunshine on Christmas Eve, and otherwise have had nothing but gloomy overcast days for what feels like weeks.

This dresser has the pin and cove dovetail joints that I’ve talked about before, so this piece likely dates to the late Victorian period (late 1800’s).

Ken pulled out all the stops when he put this dresser together.  He even reattached the top using dowels and glue.  The next time he does this for me, I should really get pictures of that process to share with you.  But, my point here is that this dresser is now as solid as can be.  It does not wiggle or jiggle in the slightest.  The drawers slide as smooth as silk. This dresser can easily last someone another 100 years now.  So if any of you local readers need a beautiful Duck Egg blue dresser, let me know!  This one is available.  Sorry, this one is sold.

I’m returning to milk paint on my next dresser, which I hope to get painted this weekend.  Check back next week to see it!