Metallic purple – and why not?
Again, I stupidly forgot to do a ‘before’ photo. I bought the chest of drawers and mirror off e-bay and collected them from a lady in Glastonbury. Weirdly, she turned out to be the estate agent who showed us around a house we didn’t buy! Anyway, the drawers weren’t exactly as described (who’d have thought it from an estate agent?) and it was melamine covered chipboard; not wood. I didn’t particularly like it. Also, the mirror frame was far too gold for my liking.
Solution – paint them metallic purple. I used ‘Purple Pearl’ in the Opulence pearlised silk range by Craig & Rose from B&Q, but I’m afraid I can’t remember how much it cost. Just a bit more than ordinary wood
Mirror before
paint. Advice: always use an undercoat for this kind of smooth surface. I forgot to buy a tin, and couldn’t be bothered to go back and get one. So instead, it took me 6 coats to cover the chest of drawers! The good news is, if you paint outside on a sunny day, it takes about an hour to dry; not the 8 hours it says on the tin. So; even though it took so many coats, I got it done in one day – slapping the last one on just before having to take the kids to Guides at 7:30pm.
The mirror frame had a rough surface, so it only took 2 coats of the same paint. I am so pleased with the results; especially for the chest of drawers – it looks so much better than I could have hoped for. I didn’t expect modern metallic paint to look good on old-fashioned style furniture, but it does. There is one thing I wish I did differently (apart from the undercoat). There were mouldings round the edges which had been stapled on, but came off fairly
Mirror after
easily with a quick knock with a screwdriver and hammer; but on the top drawer there was an oval plaque type thing with an Edwardian style picture on it which didn’t look good. I don’t know what they’d stuck it on with, but it wouldn’t come off. Eventually I chipped it off in small pieces, but I couldn’t sand off the residue of the glue. I’ve put that drawer at the bottom now, but it still shows and I wish I’d just left it and painted over it. Oh well, you don’t find out these things till it’s too late.
I still need to clean the bird poo off the mirror glass; and it’s a bit useless in its current position, but it will stand on top of the small chest-of-drawers I have yet to find, to go next to the window in the dressing room, and then it will look lovely.