Beach House Decor - Because It's Summer in South Florida!

It goes without saying, Summers in South Florida are stupid hot.  And humid.  So when we haven't been away on vacation or hosting family and friends at home, we just haven't been too Gung-ho to get out in the garage and work on the many many projects we have.  We have, however, managed to add to our ever growing "waiting room".

But finally, we kicked our butts into gear and got a couple of projects finished, photographed and listed.

One of them is a lightly distressed, vintage Bassett dresser fit for any beach house. When we first laid eyes on this amazing Mid Century Modern piece from the 1960's, I just knew we had to have it.  Josh on the other hand couldn't have been more uninterested in it.  I convinced him of my vision and he agreed to buy it for me.

After Photo - A warm and sunny yellow gently weathered to give it an updated beach house feel.

Before Photo - Horrid pukish green finish. Dated dated dated.

This sad little dresser went through quite a few procedures before we settled on the slightly distressed yellow finish it ended up with.  The original plan was to sand down the disgusting avocado factory finish and apply a dark walnut stain.  We were going to properly "restore" this piece and bring the classic MCM (Mid Century Modern) lines to the forefront, but things didn't go as planned. 

After laboring for hours and hours with the sander, we were surprised to discover how beautiful the raw wood looked under the original candy coated finish.  If only we had went with our gut and simply sealed the dresser at that point instead of pursuing our original plan...we would have saved ourselves a lot of time!

At this stage, only the drawers had been sanded.

Here, everything had been sanded. Would have looked great like this!

Instead we pushed forward and applied two coats of the dark walnut stain.  Unfortunately, there were at least three different types of wood on this dresser, and all three woods accepted the stain differently.  The end result...not good.

So here we were, back to square one, resanding the undesirable finish off once again.

After applying two coats of stain. Not pretty.

Yada yada yada - we ultimately achieved a look we were happy with.  The cheerful yellow paint gives this dresser a modern feel that will look great in any room.  I'm kind of sad to see it go, because I've grown so attached to it.  But alas, that's the nature of the biz.