I LOVE color. Vibrant, rich color. Color that makes my heart sing and makes me want to raise my arms and twirl around in a circle.

I just have a hard time living with it.  Vibrant color, that is.  The interior walls of my house are either a super light yellow, a warm shade of tan, or a light slate gray, depending upon which room you are in.

So when it was time for me to give a golden oak trundle bed a make-over, and since it was for one of our guest rooms (where I wouldn’t have to see it every day), I decided to “do color.” Bright colors and bold and fun colors.

The first thing I do when I am going to paint a piece of furniture is take a photo of it and bring that photo into Photoshop. I grab a Photoshop brush and paint the piece. It helps me visualize what I have in mind.

My goal was to create a Mary Engelbreit look. I liked this well enough so I got to work. Once I started painting though, I didn’t like the green and replaced that with yellow.

I’m not sure how many hours it took to paint the entire bed frame. I painted the large pieces with a 2″ paintbrush but did all of the smaller work with a 1″ artist brush. So it took a while. With the COVID-19 lock-down, I was tired of cooking anyway, so the kitchen table and the kitchen island became fair game for my project.

When I was finished with all of the paint, it just didn’t feel “done” to me.  I wanted to keep it crisp and clean. I really did. But I was having a hard not grabbing my sandpaper and distressing it. And antique stain? Yeah… maybe.

I texted photos to my daughter and a few friends, asking their opinion. Leave it as it is or distress it? I was hoping they could convince me to leave it alone.

They all said the distressed version looked more like me. Yeah. That was it. That’s why I couldn’t leave the bright, crisp, clean version alone.

So I went back to work. I distressed the piece with sandpaper and then decided to antique it as well. The stain settled nicely into the grooves in the wood, giving this piece a warm, worn, and used look.

We bought this trundle bed at a yard sale 2 years ago, so our memories weren’t too clear on how it came apart… or rather how to put it back together.  But we got it done!

The walls in this room are a pale yellow, although they don’t look like it in this photo. The flooring will be replaced within the next few months. 

I’m a fan of Fusion Mineral Paint (FMP) and that’s what I used on this project. 

While in quarantine, I might as well get some of my projects done.  Here’s my trash-to-treasure pile:

The question now is what to tackle next. And I think I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll just start out knowing the piece will be distressed. It will save me a lot of time and mental anguish.