How I transformed this broken and dated buffet into a southwest inspired statement piece!

My step daughter just got her first apartment this summer. This past summer we spent some of the hottest days of the year painting an adorable little kitchen table for her kitchen! Well, I did more instructing than painting. She did the whole thing herself! She’s really been enjoying decorating her first home with bright colors and an overall southwestern theme. So for Christmas I decided I would paint her a one of a kind TV console. 

So we started looking into different color schemes and designs. We found some cool vases that we used as an inspiration photo. 

As for the furniture find, I got this buffet on facebook marketplace. When I first went to the house to buy it I was ready to walk away from it. The sides had veneer issues and so did the front. The bottom bar had to be glued back on. But I seriously have a hard time walking away from a buffet. So I ended up buying it and it only ended up taking me about an hour to fix all the issues with it! I’m happy I got it. The best part is that the people I bought it from go to the same Tae Kwon Do school as my son. We had never seen each other before because my husband takes him to practice.  A couple days after I bought this piece from them they were with their kids at a competition! We laughed at the small town irony!

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So let’s get into how to create this look. The first thing I did was fix all the veneer issues. They weren’t too bad so I glued down the loose veneer with wood glue and clamped them. At the same time I fixed the bottom bar with gorilla glue and bar clamps. Wood glue is great for veneer issues and gorilla glue is great for structural issues. Once the glue was dry I unclamped everything and filled the areas with missing veneer with Dixie Mud. I cleaned this piece with Krud Kutter Gloss off and then primed with clear BOSS from Dixie Belle. I use this as a primer whenever I want some of the wood showing through on the final product. It goes on kind of milky so you can see where you’re painting but it dries clear!

The next step was to create an undertone of pink. I choose Apricot, Plum Crazy, and Flamingo from Dixie Belle for this. I  created a southwestern type pattern and let it dry completely.

Then I added in the blue. I mixed Bunker Hill Blue, Palmetto, and Caviar together to get a warm blue. I don’t measure I just mix it until I think ohh I like this color! Then I applied it in an ombre like fashion to my furniture. I used my spray mister and a damp towel and worked the blue into the piece until it resembled the southwestern pattern on the vases.

The legs were painted in solid apricot with the blue mixture washed over them. When I was done I added bronze gilding wax with a heavy hand. As you can see here the bronze was just too much!

To tone it down I made a wash (meaning I mixed my blue paint with water) and brushed over it with more blue. I also added more blue to the middle to tone down the pink. If I know anything about furniture design its that sometimes you finish your piece and then look at it and know exactly what it needs to be perfect. It doesn’t always pan out on the first time. Just keep going and you’ll get the look you want!

We gave this to our daughter on Christmas and she loved it! If there is one thing I would love to do it is to be sure she has a home full of gorgeous furniture!