Old furniture-New look

*This post has been edited to add to Furniture Feature Friday at Mustard Seed Creations. This is a wonderful blog with many inspiring ideas, so go check it out!

When I graduated college and got my first teaching job, I decided to buy something with my big fat teacher’s paychecks. ;)

My mom suggested that I buy a bedroom suite with my money. She said it would be a good investment and I could use it for many years.

So taking her advice, like I usually do, I made my first big purchase and bought a bedroom suite. It had three pieces, a queen-sized bed, dresser, and armoire.

I used it until I got married…. after I got married….. and I am using it now. Thanks mom, you were right…again!

Here’s what it looked like in our guest bedroom at our last house five years ago. (I actually made the bed skirt and pillow shams!)

You may have noticed that the dresser was missing. That’s because I painted it red and used it in my boys’ room.

This piece is now in my son, Adam’s room.

Then, when we moved into my current house over four years ago, the other two pieces went into storage because we didn’t have a guest room.

But now that we’ve built our guest house, it was time to get them back out. We couldn’t afford new furniture, so I was going to try to be creative.

I didn’t like the look of the furniture as it was. And I wanted to give it more of a cottage-y feel.

So I bought some white paint, sand paper, and some Valspar mocha glaze.

First, I painted everything white. It took about two or three coats. I would like to say that I waited to full amount of time needed for the paint to dry real good, but that would be a complete lie, so I won’t say it.

I think it’s looking better already!

Then I sanded down all the edges and roughed it up a little bit. It felt a little weird to start sanding off all the paint that took me so long to put on in the first place! I also wasn’t sure if it would give me the “look” I wanted since I had never tried this before!

I thought it was turning out good, but the furniture still didn’t have that “old” look that I was looking for. I had heard about people using a “glaze” on their furniture or kitchen cabinets, but I had no idea what it was or how to use it.

But after a few days of looking at my furniture, I knew I had try it.

I bought some Valspar mocha glaze at Lowe’s. (Doesn’t that just sound delicious?)

I really had no idea how to “glaze”, but I sort of remembered reading a post about someone glazing their kitchen cabinets. And I remembered they said they used a lot of paper towels.

So I started applying the glaze with a sponge brush, and then wiping it off with paper towels. And I was liking it…

It was a subtle difference, but it was definitely what I was looking for. My husband was even impressed!

Now, I am still not finished with the bedding, but I wanted to share it with you anyway. I need to get a bed skirt, probably white. (That’s why I didn’t take a picture of the bottom of the bed…hee, hee.) And I think I want to get a big “puffy” white comforter to fold up on the bottom of the bed instead of the matelasse. And of course, some more pillows…maybe some tan linen or burlap, oh, I don’t know! I’ll know it when I see it! :)

Like I said, the glaze on the white paint is very subtle, but that is exactly what I wanted. It just “toned down” the white.

I am not at ALL done with decorating the top of the armoire, but for these pictures I just put a cute little antique fan that I got at a yard sale for $2.00, an antique Hershey Kisses tin from GW, and a sign from Hobby Lobby that I want to use somewhere in this room. I love the scripture on the sign!

If you would like to see more pictures of our guest house that we have been working on, you can click on my “guest house” posts in my sidebar.

NOW I will officially end my “longest post ever”!!!!!

Blessings to you all,

Traci