A while back my friend/picker Sue gave me a heads up on a Saturday morning garage sale that was happening near me and I came home with a pile of goodies.

You’ve already seen the chairs made over …

This past weekend I worked on the bed.

Now, you might be thinking ‘hey, wait a minute, that bed is already painted! Q is totally cheating!’

But what isn’t entirely apparent in that ‘before’ photo is that it was spray painted.  Sometimes spray paint can leave an uneven sheen, especially on flat surfaces like this one.  Here’s a photo where you can really see what I’m talking about.

See those patchy dull areas?  Not really a good look, so this bed really needed a new paint job.

I briefly toyed with the idea of painting it in a warm white, and it would have been absolutely lovely in that color.  However in the end, I decided to save myself some effort and just go with the black.

I sanded the bed lightly all over to make sure I’d get good adhesion with chalk paint over the spray paint (by the way, just a random tip, milk paint does not adhere well over a shiny spray paint, just in case you were curious about that).  Next I cleaned the surface with a damp rag and then added a coat of Dixie Belle’s Caviar.

Since I was painting black over black, one coat of paint was totally sufficient.  Well … or, it would have been.  Except for the part where I had the headboard leaning against the Carriage House to dry and a stiff wind knocked it over face first onto my gravel driveway.  Ugh!  When will I learn not to do that?  This is not the first time this has happened.  I can only blame myself.

But after a quick sanding of the damaged areas, and another coat of paint, all was well again.

Next I pulled out the Somewhere in France transfer from re.design with prima.

I used about 2/3 of the full transfer on this bed.  I added one section to the headboard …

and another section to the foot board (have any of you also wondered why ‘headboard’ is one word, but ‘foot board’ is two?) …

You can really get a good bang for your buck with the Somewhere in France transfer by splitting it up to be used on 3 or more different projects.

Here’s just a bit of it used on a hat box …

I’ve also used it on a toolbox  …

And on this old wooden box…

It’s also a great transfer to pair with other transfers, like the pretty floral one (Lavender Bush) on this bed.

Or the gold crown from the Gilded Home & Nature transfer that I used on Lulu, my manikin.

Anyway, I digress.  After adding the transfer to the bed, I added a coat of clear wax to everything.

But before calling it good, I also decided to dig out the Vintage Gold Metallique wax from prima …

I used a q-tip to add a bit of the gold wax to the carved wood applique at the top of the headboard.

It was just enough extra gold to tie in with the transfer.

In case any of you are gardeners and are wondering about the hydrangea in the background, that is a Little Lime.  It’s similar to a Limelight, but smaller.  The Little Lime will grow to 5′, while the Limelight will get up to 8′ tall.  So if you’re looking for a hydrangea that will stay a little smaller, go with the Little Lime.

Normally this is the part of my post where I mention that this bed is available to local buyers, etc … but this one is actually already spoken for.  One of my good customers stopped by to pick up the do-over dresser from last Monday, saw the bed and called dibs on it.

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co and to re.design with prima for providing the products used for today’s project.

If you’re looking for Dixie Belle products you can find them here.

If you’re looking for re.design with prima products you can find local retailers here, or online sources here.