The Brick Red Dresser

The live painting demonstration at Homestead Studios went really well this weekend! In case you have no idea what I'm referring to, you can catch up here.

My subject was this lovely piece:

I bought it from a fellow vendor at Morgantown Market (for those who always wonder where I get my pieces from) and I took the goofy shelf off of the top as soon as I got it home. It was the perfect size to paint for a demonstration, so I prepped it ahead of time and then brought it over to the workshop room at Homestead Studios.

Here's the process that I followed to prep it:

You can watch a snippet of my demo below. Tag (who is one of the owners of Homestead Studios) filmed me for a bit and posted it on the shop's Facebook page.

I finished applying most of the products on Sunday by the time the shop closed at 5:00, but I needed to pop back in today to add some finishing touches.

You can see what I did by watching my Instagram live video below. My favorite part of this video is towards the end when a customer walks into my room and we chat for a minute. That's the beauty of going live on social media - you get real time reactions!

Once the drawers were touched up and hydrated, I staged the dresser and took a few photos of the finished piece. I had to snap them strategically in between shoppers enjoying the goodies and the other pieces of furniture I have in my room.

Observe.

Despite the theatrics of the photo shoot, I got some really good pictures of this dresser.

This shade of red looks amazing when topped with Van Dyke Glaze Effects. It's a warm brown color and it adds a lovely antiqued touch.

See how it settled into the recessed areas of the dresser?

You can watch a tutorial on how to apply General Finishes Glaze Effects below.

The most important aspect of using General Finishes glaze is to make sure that you use High Performance Topcoat as an undercoat and overcoat. In other words, lay down a coat of High Performance first, then glaze, then seal it with more coats of High Performance.

I'll do a more in-depth tutorial on how to glaze in the future, so stay tuned for that! Let's get back to the dresser for now...

Here's how those drawers livened up after a treatment with Hemp Oil.

If you're not familiar with this type of joinery, it's called a Knapp joint or cove and pin. It was invented by a man named Charles Knapp and it was used from 1870-1900. Whenever you see joints that look like this, they instantly date the piece to a very specific period of time.

To add some pizazz to the dresser, I staged it with a lovely gold mirror that I found during one of my recent antique trips.

And I added this adorable cast iron rocking horse. Isn't he sweet?

The hardware on the dresser is original and the drawers slide in and out easily. They're in fabulous shape and the casters work well too!

This dresser is in incredible shape and it's a gorgeous piece of antique furniture. It's for sale at Homestead Studios if you're interested for $185 plus tax. It measures 30.5 inches wide, 16 inches deep and 30 inches tall. It's a great height to serve as a bedside table. Several people were eyeing it up today, so I would act fast if you're interested. It may not be there for very long!

If you want to recreate this look on a piece of your own, you can purchase Brick Red Milk Paint, VanDyke Brown Glaze Effects and High Performance Topcoat in Flat from me at Homestead Studios or Morgantown Market.

And then you can recreate this look for yourself!