Hi guys!  Last week, I posted about several projects I hadn’t had a chance to write about and asked you all which one you’d like to see first.  Well, this little gal won the survey so, as promised… here’s the story behind the little girl’s dream bed.

Sometimes in life you find yourself at the right place at the right time.  That happened to me recently when I stumbled upon this beautiful antique princess bed.

The previous owners were literally packing up and moving the day I found out about it and as luck would have it, I ended up with a pretty good deal.

I was immediately drawn to the beautiful curves and details having never seen anything quite like it before.  It was white when I bought it but it had the worst sprayed finish I had ever seen on a piece of furniture.

I don’t know what they painted it with but it was bumpy, rough and horrible to the touch.  It almost felt like course sand paper.

I sanded and sanded and SANDED to smooth it all down.  I think it was made out of diamonds, well…. ok, not that tough but it was a serious chore to sand down whatever they sprayed on it.  It’s not like I could take a belt sander and go to town because there are way too many curves and detailed wood pieces so I used a combination of my orbital sander, mouse sander and then did everything else by hand.

Speaking of details, one of the trim pieces was missing on the headboard (you can see it in the first picture).  I can’t believe I didn’t notice it when I picked it up ~ ugh… now what?  If it was in a more discrete place, I could  remove the molding on the opposite side but this was a large piece on the headboard.

I could see the outline from the original piece so using wood fill with with my fingers, an old screwdriver and a nut pick, I re-built the missing piece.  After several rounds of fine-tuning, I was it pretty close.  I only have one picture of it during the repair because my fingers will covered in goo, but I basically did it like you would with silly putty or Play dough.

It’s not perfect by any means, but it will fade away by the time it’s draped with pretty linens, pillows and stuff animals ~ you probably won’t even notice it.

I painted everything with two coats of crisp coats of American Paint Company’s Navajo White.  I usually go for APC’s Home Plate which is a more creamy antique white, but this bed was screaming for a whiter white.

I could have use American Paint Company’s Top Coat to finish it, but I chose to use use American Paint Company’s Clear Wax instead.  I buffed it out as soon as I applied the wax using our drill buffing brush which creates the most amazing finish.

I just wrote a post about why I love American Paint Company’s Waxes and shared some Great Tips for Waxing Painted Furniture.

for more of my tips on waxing made easy, click HERE.

It sold before I had a chance to get it into the store and will be making it’s way back to it’s new owner this weekend.

A hui hou!!  Shelly

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a hui hou ~ Shelly