A Grey Armoire for My Guest Room

I’ve been working on our guest room, because sometimes it feels like that’s the very last room to be decorated in my house.  As Amy said about her guest room before her beautiful redo here, it’s where my decor goes to die. But that doesn’t seem fair–after all, we love our guests and want them to be comfortable while they’re here, AND come back again.

This armoire is an old Ethan Allen entertainment center, back from the days when you wanted to hide your ha-yuge 35″ TV away behind closed doors.  When flat panel TVs took over, we were very tempted to sell this on Craigslist–I see them at thrift stores daily so lots of people are getting rid of them.  But then I decided to repurpose it for linen storage in our guest room–after all, it’s a very high-quality piece of furniture.  And our military housing doesn’t have a single linen closet in the entire house, so I needed a place to stash the sheets, pillows, and comforters!

I matched my decor at the time with a coat of pale green paint (read that post here), and my husband nearly died since I–gasp!–painted the wood.  But die-hard DIY’ers realize that you can easily un-paint wood–it’s called paint stripper–and so I chose to do what worked best for our family at the time.  It was cute:

But, as time passed and my taste in decor changed, I wanted our guest room to be full of soothing neutrals more than coastal colors.  So I pulled out the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Paris Grey (my favorite grey ever) and went to work.

The prep work is the best part about chalk paint–I just wiped the dust off the armoire, let it dry, and then started painting.  This is one coat and it covered perfectly.  I didn’t even use a quarter of the quart-sized can.

 Because hardware is the “jewelry” that you put on a piece to perfectly accessorize it, I chose bling-y rhinestone knobs from Hobby Lobby.  They were about $4 each and finish it off perfectly, don’t you think?

This armoire is probably the heaviest piece of furniture in my home and it’s upstairs, so I wasn’t going to take it outside to use my beloved HomeRight FinishMax paint sprayer, so I just elevated it on a few pieces of scrap wood, put a drop cloth underneath, and went for it.

I didn’t paint the inside of the armoire; I decided that if I ever decide to strip the paint off, I don’t want to deal with all the square footage inside.  And since it’s been used for storage right now, the doors don’t stay open.  As you can see in the below picture, I left my collection of antique quilts (lovingly handmade by my grandmothers) on top to show them off.  They serve a practical purpose, too, since guests can grab one for the bed if it gets chilly upstairs.

The rest of the guest room is coming along, and I’ll show you the entire room soon.  Here’s a snap of the head of the bed that I used in my post on how to be a good hostess.  Stay tuned as I’ll also be writing the companion post on how to be a good guest before much longer, because you can’t have one without the other!

Sources:

Entertainment Center:  Ethan AllenKnobs: Hobby LobbyChalk Paint: Paris GreyChair:  Thrift shop; recovered with P. Kaufman Monogram fabricBed: Amazon Chevron throw, matelasse coverlet, bedskirt, vase, and floral pillows on bed:  HomeGoodsSilver Mirror: Pottery Barn (years ago)Anniversary pillow:  see this tutorial

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And this is another one of my favorite projects that I completed using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint–my dining room table and chairs.  This project used Pure White paint, and their clear and dark soft wax.  Be sure to pre-order Upstyle Your Furniture through Amazon–my case study on how I completed this project is featured in the book!

  Have you painted anything lately?