French provincial nightstands in general finishes milk paint
The minute I see a pair of nightstands, I scoop them up instantly. They are the most highly sought after furniture pieces in my selling area. So when a sweet dealer at Morgantown Market had a pair of French Provincial nightstands in her garage, you better believe I bought them!
These nightstands were from the 1960’s and had baked-on white laminate paint and gold trim. This type of French Provincial furniture isn’t the best kind to work on, but because nightstands are so difficult for me to find, I embraced their flaws and turned to General Finishes products to make them over.
prepping the french provincial nightstands
The very first thing I needed to do to this pair of nightstands was give them a very thorough cleaning. I used blue Dawn dish detergent and a green Scotch-Brite scrubbie pad to remove all of the grunge that was on them.
After they were clean, I scuff sanded them with 400 grit sandpaper and smoothed out the cracked original paint. After vacuuming them thoroughly, I taped the drawers off and sprayed on two coats of General Finishes Stain Blocker.
There was NO WAY I was going to allow any of the yellowed original paint or the gold details to poke through my new paint finish!
a bespoke mixture of general finishes milk paint
After the Stain Blocker was completely dry, I sprayed two coats of a custom blend of several colors from the General Finishes Milk Paint line. I mixed up leftovers of Seagull Gray, Millstone and Reverent Gray Milk Paint.
This gave me a gorgeous taupey gray shade that suited the lines on these pieces perfectly! Since they’re all right next to one another on the General Finishes color chart, they worked well together all blended up!
If you want to see some other projects I’ve completed in these colors, you can check out the following blog posts:
protecting the nightstands
I added High Performance Topcoat in Flat for extra protection. Since they’re nightstands, I wanted them to have as much protection as possible against lamps, phone chargers and cups of water (on coasters of course).
sprucing the handles
The handles were very gold, which wouldn’t match their new neutral makeover. To tone them down, I mixed up several shades of Rub N Buff – a metallic wax that I LOVE using on my hardware.
I mixed up the Ebony and Silver Leaf and added a bit of the Antique Gold to create my own shade of oil rubbed bronze.
It looks much better than the gaudy original gold color.
These sweet little pieces will most likely be heading out to Homestead Studios. We’re having a lot of rain today, so it’s not the best weather for moving furniture. If you’re interested in purchasing them, shoot me an email!
