Lilly's Home Designs: Triple Treat MCM Bookshelf

I was getting in the car on a Friday morning to take my oldest daughter to school and my neighbor from across the street was having a tag sale. I wish everyday started with a tag sale waiting for you right across from your house. They were just starting to set up and I figured I would check it out on my way back home but my daughters inherited my jeans they can't see a tag sale and not beg me to go. So I said sure lets check it out. I spotted this nice big golden deer made of papermache for $1 and I snatched it up.

I took my princess to school and on my way back they had put out more things so I checked it out again with my youngest. I saw a small bookshelf, it was Mid-century modern (I love mcm), solid wood, had angled shelves and spectacular little feet with metal on the bottom. At first I didn't buy it because I have been trying really hard not to buy anymore furniture because my basement is full. So I went inside my house and tried to go about my day but every time I heard a car stop or door slam I would peek out the window to see if the bookshelf was still there. It wasn't until like the fifth time that I looked out the window that I decided I was going to buy it. After all if I was going to keep looking out the window every couple of minutes just to be sad if it was gone, I may as well just buy it. That's logical, right? I hurried across the street with my little one and told my neighbor I couldn't stop thinking about it so there I was for the third time today.

It was full of dings and scratches

When I brought it inside I tried google-ing it to see if I could find any similar and low and behold I found a few and they were selling for $150 and up in as is condition. I went on Pinterest and found the perfect inspiration piece painted and stained. I new I wanted to do something similar but with different colors.

I wanted to use two different stain colors and white paint. I did the table below, a MCM side table where I used a similar combination of colors and I wanted to do it again. This table was one of my favorite pieces that I have done, I was sad to see it go when I sold it.

I wasn't sure how I was going to incorporate the two stains until I remembered of a piece done by Reeves from The Weathered Door. Jack Pot I've been dying to make a piece like that since I saw it. I knew that combining all three of these inspiration pieces was it. It was going to look amazing.

Reverse Dipped Mid Century Dresser WD-b-10

The Weathered Door

I soon as I new how it was going to look I got started. First I filled all the nicks and scratches with wood filler. Then I sanded the entire thing and in the areas where I was going to stain I sanded the stain completely off.

I worked on the feet separately, sanded the finish off. The metal part of the feet were a little bit rusted so I sanded them as well, and sprayed them with Rust-oleum Universal advanced formula metallic paint and primer in one in the Pure Gold Finish. It took several coats for complete coverage. Then I stained them with Rust-oleum Ultimate wood stain in Kona and sealed them with Minwax water based Polycrylic.

With the help of a ruler and a trinagle I measured out the lines where I wanted the angles for the stains to meet. I used Frog tape and polycrylic between stains to help with preventing bleed through. For the top stain I used was Rust-oleum weathered gray and Kona for the bottom.

I didn't get too much bleed through with the stain, now the paint was a different story. I taped up all the stained areas this was a very tedious and long process. Then I primed all the the areas I was going to paint twice. The white paint took five coats to cover so all together it took seven coats.

I carefully removed all the frog tape, I used a razor and pulled carefully. When I finished removing all the tape I was left with a mess of bleed though.

This was a bit frustrating but I did my best to fix it with a razor blade scraping away and retouching. This happened because I used the poly trick between the coats of stain but I forgot to do it before the painting part. Now I know for next time.