A Street-Find Rescue

"Make Me Over! An old bar cabinet, rescued from the street, gets a new life with an imaginative paint job."

Straight from the pages of the July 2008 Country Living Magazine. Here is how we did it:

Step 1: Basecoating

After cleaning the cabinet and letting it dry, we applied Bayberry Textured Basecoat in a very thin layer over the entire piece.

Once dry, we painted the legs and top with Colonial Blue Textured Basecoat, also very thin. (Professional decorative painters know that two layers are always better than one - now you do too!)

We did this so when we sanded over the blue areas, a little green would show through. Layering colors is an easy tip to getting that antique feel.

Step 2: The Stripes!

We did not measure out our stripes for around the middle of the piece. We just let the taping do the job for us.

Starting in the middle of the piece, we began to create a pattern by laying different widths of tape next to each other. When we finished, we pulled out the tapes in the area we wanted to paint. (The tape we pulled out became our "spacers", that's why we didn't have to measure or mark anything with pencil that would later need to be erased.)

Since the area was already undercoated with Bayberry we painted the first stripe Colonial Blue.

For the thin stripe, we mixed 50% of the Colonial Blue Textured Basecoat with 50% Parchment Textured Basecoat to get a lighter blue color and add some variance. Since all of our materials are compatible mixing them is easy.

This is a huge tip for you. When you are doing any project, you don't have to purchase tons of colors, just mix some of your colors together to create variations. Because they are lighter or darker variations of what you have, you instantly know they will work together!

We then distressed the piece by sanding it lightly here and there. (See the Distressing Instructions below.)

Step 3: Gilding and Waxing

Country Living Editor Kirsten Fields did it perfectly on her first attempt and you will too!

For the inside of the cabinet, we applied Imitation Silver Leaf using our Silver Leaf Kit.

Because our Basecoats will stick to almost anything, we could apply the silver leaf over the wood, metal - even over the screws used to attach the brackets.

Next, we applied our Toner over the entire piece.

When it was dry, we waxed the cabinet with our Neutral Liberon Wax for some added protection.

(Follow our Gilding Instructions below.)

Here are the products we used:

Distressing Kit with Colonial Blue Textured Basecoat

Gilding Kit with Silver Leaf

Bayberry Textured Basecoat

Parchment Textured Basecoat