Bassett French Chest

It's a new week and new project to share.  I apologize now for not having many "before" or "during" pictures.  I just get into the "zone" once I start and forget to grab my camera.  Forgive me, please?

This old gal appeared on CL and was currently residing in a thrift store in a rather low income part of town.  

Hmmm...a 30 minute ride to check out a French piece.  Let's go for it.  The faux painted finish was awful!  I'm not sure what your next steps are while inspecting a piece for purchase, but I go for the drawers...all four of them get yanked out.  Looking good:  dovetailed joints, wood on wood drawer guides.  I'm starting to warm up to the little lady.  Who made you?  

Ah...Old Bassett, not new Bassett.  RPK, what's the difference?  We carried 'old Bassett' in our family store back in the day.  Remember, I come from a furniture family...and quality was of the utmost importance to us.  We dropped the line in the early 70s as they started to take short cuts and their quality didn't meet our standards.  The red raised emblem is from "Old Bassett" when their quality was still good.

But as I am snooping through the drawers, there is tacky drawer liner glued down in some of the drawers.  And the little darling who owned this chest previously had a taken a magic marker and proclaimed her love to her boyfriends!  Yes, plural!  There were many "I love John, I love Bob, etc" notations on the inside of the drawers.  Oh my goodness.  And again, sorry about not having any pictures.  But you can imagine, right???

She was looking good...strong, good bones, so she came home with me.

The old hair dryer trick helped me remove the glued down drawer liner.  And Zip Strip, with some intense scrubbing helped remove all of "her proclaimed love"!  Ha!

I had been working with layering paints on other projects and decided to use a similar technique.  So after some serious sanding to smooth out the paint strokes from the tacky faux wood grain, my first layer was ASCP Old Ochre.  And then a custom mix of ASCP Duck Egg, Paris Gray, Old Ochre (ratio: 5:2:1).

Some distressing, clear wax...and enough chit chatting.  Let's get to the pictures!

This is the only shot I have of the drawers.  They cleaned up nicely...no more proclamation of love!

There she is all prettied up. Anna took her home and is awaiting for Baby to arrive!

Thanks for stopping by!

Robin

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