August | 2016 | UpwithFurniture

Three years ago, I wrote a post about waterfall furniture. It certainly is not my favourite style of vintage furniture and I usually avoid painting it. My blog post, however, is very popular ( 20,000 views) so I am guessing that there are a lot of people who want to know about its value or history. You can read it here if you are interested. This waterfall vanity was given to me by a friend who had bought it rather cheaply, so I painted it.

waterfall vanity

The veneer on the top was not in great shape. At first, I tried to patch it but there was just too much peeling so I removed all the veneer in the middle section. The other top sections looked ok but had thin cracks where the wood had dried out. Unfortunately, I decided to paint those sections as is, which was a mistake. The paint made the cracks more noticeable. I had originally wanted to stencil across the top of this table but I decided that might not be the best course. S0, rather than start all over, I chose to conceal the cracks with decoupaged napkins. I had a package of birds and flowers that had a white background which seemed suitable for the feminine look I was going for.

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I used Mod Podge to apply the pieces then I sealed the top with 3 coats of acrylic varnish. The table and the matching chair are painted in Annie Sloan Pure White chalk paint mixed with a bit of grey to give it some pigment. Pure white is a devil to work with so I try to add something to it. Old White is good addition but I wanted a cooler tone. I even painted the seat of the chair which was covered in brown vinyl.

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There was some nice detail on the front of the vanity so I painted it a pale pink to match the roses in the paper and added gold gilding paste on top of that. I also painted the insides of the drawers in pink.

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