The Plant Stand

Painting a Classic

Not much has been done at 173 since last summer.  Life has a way of getting crazy, and it has! Nonetheless, one small project got done this winter - the plant stand.

173 inherited this stand from Mosher - the granddaughter of the family from whom we bought the house, and a dear friend.  I remember the first time I saw this stand when Mosher had a tiny little basement apartment.  When she married and moved away (booooo), she gave me this stand, I'm thinking I must have commented on it at some point in that basement.  If I remember correctly, when I took possession there were a few minor water marks on it, the rest of the damage was me.

Here you can see it in the corner - before the painting (that's the new table before being painted):

After all the work on the dining room last year, I really wanted to re-stain the stand, but I thought it might look best if it matched the new dining room table and the hutch.  Anytime you choose to paint an antique it stings a bit, but.....  Anyway, the decision was made.  As with the table and hutch, the color was Valspar's Polar Star.

After priming and painting, each of the furniture pieces looked bright white.  While that's a decent enough look, it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  That's how I decided to use Valspar's Antiquing Glaze.  It really calmed the white down, and added architectural highlights on each piece.  Here are the products I used:

In the end, it turned out just how I thought it would.

And here's the plant stand in its new habitat:

So, simple project - done in a couple days - one more dining room project done.  Speaking of which, here's a pic of what we did with the top of the hutch: