The year was 2018 and I found this wooden wardrobe online on a second-hand sales website. I went to see it in person and bought it. Although it looked pretty battered by time and by the previous owner who had hidden such beautiful wood with a glossy brown enamel paint (!!!), I looked at this piece of furniture and saw immense potential.
So I called in my illustrator friend Jessica Leigh to help me on my mission to rescue this piece and give it a new chance.
These first photos are from when I started sanding the wardrobe and discovered how beautiful the wood underneath was. At this point, I even considered leaving the wood exposed, but as not all the spots were so well preserved, the alternative that seemed wisest to me was to cover everything with paint. But in a color that would bring the furniture back to life.
As well as sanding, I also applied a product to remove all the previous paint more easily. At the end of the preparation process, it looked like this:
At the time I was in a hurry to renovate the wardrobe and put it up for sale, so I concentrated more on the renovation process than on photographing all the stages.
But in a nutshell, I had to replace some damaged wood, replace the mirror that had chipped parts and paint the entire wardrobe inside and outside with specialized wood paint.
To ensure that the enamel paint would stick well to the wood, I first gave the whole piece a coat of white latex paint.
Once the furniture was fully painted and looking like new, my friend Jessie went into action to put the finishing touches on and also work her magic: painting flowers on the doors. This process took a few days, as it was done meticulously, with a lot of attention and care and, of course, with a lot of love. We put all our energy into this renovation project and the result couldn't have made us prouder.
In the end, as usual, I took photos of the finished and revamped wardrobe to promote it and sell it. It didn't take long for it to find a new owner, someone who fell in love with what we'd done with the piece.
Here the wardrobe was already packed and ready to go to its new home and was transported by my father, who was still alive at the time and supported all my projects and ideas.
The story of this piece, all the value that our work has added to it and all the details always move me very much. It was beautiful to see an ugly, abandoned wardrobe turn into such a romantic and lively piece. I'm very happy for the day that I had this idea and put it into practice, even though I wasn't sure that the sale of the piece would actually happen. I accepted the risk and also set out to put fear aside in order to do something new. And that, for sure, was the biggest gain I had from this renovation.
I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time.
