Turquoise is the new black - my refinished console

Lately, I've been loving the color turquoise.  One of my favorite stores in Honolulu is Pacific Home and they have these beautiful vintage turquoise pieces there that cost upwards of $2000.  Well, I've been on the hunt for a dresser that can serve as a console in the room that my parents use as their living room at our house.  I'll post pics of that soon.  I've found craig's list here in Hawaii is nowhere as good as it is on the mainland, but the key is to keep looking, even when you're not really looking.

I finally found this item for $50.

 All wood, dovetail construction, I saw the beauty in this piece.  Jeff was not so convinced. He saw the scuff marks, the fact that none of the drawers on the third row closed all the way and the missing hardware.  But, I saw a gem.  Originally, I was going to paint it white, but when I was talking to the very nice man, Richard, who sold it to me, he suggested an aqua blue and once he mentioned that I was sold. 

I scoured the blogosphere for tips on how to glaze furniture since I've refinished lots of pieces in my life, but have never glazed before.  I found this inspiration pic which I pinned on my pinterest board.

I emailed Julie from Less than Perfect Life of Bliss blog, and she helped me with suggestions of how to glaze.  Don't you love the color green she chose for her console? Thanks Julie!

So, originally, I went on maternity leave at 38 weeks, leaving 2 weeks to do all these awesome DIY projects.  Of course, Taj wasn't in on the plan, so he arrived just 2 days after my last day of work, which meant I didn't get to do anything before he was born.  So, my father was a huge help.  He did all the boring stuff - sanded the whole dresser, fixed the drawers so that they shut properly, cleaned all the original hardware (since I wanted to keep it) and primed it.  That left me able to do the fun stuff, paint and glaze.

Here's what I used.  The paint color is Hotel Cincinnati Abbey by Valspar.  We primed (or Dad primed) with 2 coats and then I did 2 coats of the paint.  Then I mixed in a 3:1 ratio, clear mixing glaze to stain (I was going to just eyeball it, but my dad being the retired electrical engineer that he is actually measured everything exactly).  We applied the glaze with a paint brush, left it on for about 10 minutes and then wiped it off.  We reapplied a little more in areas where we thought it was needed.



Here we are, hard at work. And, the finished result was well worth the effort.

I love how the glaze really makes the details of the dresser pop. And, since one of the drawer pulls was broken, I just moved the top center one down and bought a simple bronze, antique knob at Lowe's to replace it.

And, I'm loving the color.  I think I'm going to repaint a bunch of other furniture pieces this color.  It's turquoise, but not an in your face turquoise, which is great.