Monday, March 17, 2014

An Ebonized Cerused Campaign Dresser

I picked up this very nice Lane campaign chest while stalking CL ;)
Ya know, if you've followed my blog at all, you know I'm into the unique and colorful. 
I hate doing the same old thing with the same old boring paint. I constantly strive to do something outside of the box as well as doing something different. Painting furniture has really gone wild in the last year. I don't know who put out the memo, but it used to be just me and one or two other ladies in my area. Now it's like every other person and their mother is doing it! Slap some chalk paint on a piece of furniture, put it up for sale at some ridiculously low price and voila! Professional furniture painter! 
 So, because of that, I like to mix things up. 
           I wanted to do the ceruse technique again.  If you missed my previous post, click here.....
At the bottom is the original drawer, stripped and at the top, stained with aniline dye in ebony.
 As much as I love these finished pieces, they are quite the pain to transform. It's the hardware!! Do you know much work it is to remove all of these pieces? The handles are bad enough to clean and scrub and polish but then add in all the corner pieces and their screws! There was like, 60 of them!?? Those were sprayed because they are just too small to polish. Everything else got elbow grease and Brasso. Then comes the fun task of putting everything back on! Seriously. Takes forever. Oh, when removing the pieces, I mark all their positions. Stuff just fits better if you put it back in their original spots. IMHO

Like the other one I did, this is a walnut veneer. Still waiting to try this out on an oak piece. 

Here she is! 

                                             Obviously the ceruse just got done to the drawers. 
                                             The body was done in a SW semi-gloss black enamel.
Black is so hard to photograph
 I rolled and brushed the enamel. Numerous times. 
I love this piece because it's not cookie cutter. You won't find another out there like it! 


6 comments:

  1. Fabulous - what a gorgeous effect !!!
    I would imagine it IS a pain with all that hardware but wow is it ever worth the effort!
    XXX

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  2. Oh, yea. Beth, this is really nice. Thanks for sharing.
    Leslie

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  3. I'm with you, everyone who buys a can of paint from Home Depot is now a "professional furniture painter". It makes it hard to have competitive prices when I am selling quality pieces, actually refinished the right way.

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  4. Oh, and I can't photograph black to save my life : )

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  5. Beautiful job and piece. IMO it really is a masterpiece of Art. ☺ -Brenda-

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  6. Love what you have done. It looks great. I recently did the same thing to an oak table but although it looks great, the stain is not stable. A damp cloth will remove it. I eventually had to put poly on top of the wax in order to seal it, something I don't like to do. It hasn't ruined the look but it is shinier. Have you had this problem? I know that aniline dye is water-soluable but I thought that the shellac was supposed to take care of that.

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