Fab Furniture Flipping Contest: Vintage TV Stand Inspired by Mom

I have wanted to try my hand at the latest craze of redoing furniture.  We have a lot of wood furniture in our home, various old pieces that I believe would be enhanced with some painting.  Then I met a group of ladies who do Furniture Flipping a lot, enough to do a contest each month and compete for prizes donated by various sponsors.  This month is the first month of contests, inspired by Mother's Day with the theme: Inspired by Mom.  This month's sponsor is CeCe Caldwell Paints.

Two hosts completed a project earlier this month and you should really go see them!  Check them out at Evey's Creations and Anatasia Vintage.

When the contest and theme was announced, I knew the perfect piece to use.  My mother recently moved from her home of 50 years to an apartment.  This meant she purged over 50 years of stuff, mostly by herself as my sister and I live on opposite sides of the state.  We got a lot of phone calls about various things and so in that way we were able to help some.  We hosted a big retirement reception in March, as she also retired from being a daycare provider after 50 years, too.  During that time my sister and I went over and looked at the stuff mom was moving to her new apartment.

In the stack was this cute little mid-century cabinet.  I love the legs and the louvered doors. The cabinet itself was a charming green color that mom had painted it during the 70s but she was ready for a change. The paint is faded and scratched.  She also told me that this little cabinet was the first piece of furniture that she and dad purchased.  They used it for a TV stand and she wanted to start using it again as a TV stand in her new apartment.  I asked her if I could do the update and she agreed.  The cabinet had been stored on her back porch for many years, holding scrap paper for her daycare kids to color on.

Mom and Baby Me

This piece is so representative of my mom.  She holds on to things she loves with such passion.  She's sentimental (one of her favorite songs is Sentimental Journey) and most of her things have memories attached.  I heard the story of how she and dad purchased the cabinet from the Sears store and how they had a sleek white couch to go with it.  Even though it was on the back porch and delegated to storage, the little piece still had a lot of memories and love attached to it.

So I brought this cute little cabinet home with me.  It sat in my garage.  It sat some more.  I went to a couple of different stores and bought paint and supplies.  It sat some more.  I watched videos.  Yep, there it sat. 

I just didn't know how to get started!  Did you ever feel like that?

So, I brought it outside to get a good look at it.  I realized that even though it was a simple piece, it was going to take some work to get it the way I envisioned it.  Mom wanted a neutral color to go with a red sofa she purchased for the apartment. I chose a linen color that would work well with her existing furniture and the red sofa. I got out a gentle cleaner and good soft rags and cleaned it up and let it dry outside and put it back in the garage. 

It sat.

I knew the deadline of the contest was approaching and yes, I am one that procrastination lights a fire and helps me get motivated and that happened last week.  Since this was my first piece, I stuck to a basic plan of using milk paint and a wax. I started painting with milk paint, which is a completely different experience.  The paint was thick and doesn't really glide on, it's more of a dab with a glide over the wet paint to create neat brush strokes.  On the first day I painted the top and three sides and one door.  The next day I painted the bottom, the legs, the top and two sides.  The third day I painted the bottom again and the second door.  The fourth day I painted the first door and the side with only one coat and the fifth day I painted both doors.  The weekend came, with busy plans, so I didn't get to it again until the following week.  I waxed the piece and let it dry.  In keeping with the style of the piece, I didn't add any hardware.

Here is the result:

The first time my mom is seeing her newly done cabinet is on this post!  I'll be delivering it this summer to her new apartment and I am sure it is going to be so cute there!  In the meantime, it has been moved from its location in the garage to this spot in our home.  I hope that I won't become too attached to this piece, because after all, like mother, like daughter.

If you are interested in joining in on the fun, contact Stacy at info@anastasiavintage.com or Evey at info@eveyscreations.com.  Future contests are in the making!