Antique Vanity and Mirror Makeover

Vanity Before

Vanity After

We picked up this vanity at a yard sale in Algonac on one of our numerous camping trips there this summer. It had all the original pieces and hardware. All it needed was some good old-fashioned hard work. Total refinishing. Lots of labor and love. That's truly the only way to give an old beauty such as this another chance at life. My personal pet peeve is restoring spindle legs. They require a LOT of work and time in addition to detailing. This one had four spindle legs in front and four square legs in the back. Needless to say, I spent a great deal of time on the legs. The center drawer had a lovely scroll design, which was likely carved by hand sometime in the 1940s. (It also has a gorgeous mirror, which I'll add to this post one we complete it.) The legs had metal wheels, which proved to be wonderful as I was working on it.

Vanity With Mirror

True craftsmanship such as this is hard to find these days. The top of the vanity was cherry, while the drawer fronts were rosewood. The legs may be hickory or they could be birch. Sometimes it's difficult to tell. It was not uncommon for furniture builders to use a variety of wood in those days. The hard woods were primarily used for flat surfaces. For the legs and drawers a lesser grade was used, but not always. This one is made up of at least three different kinds of wood, all of them beautiful in their own right.

Stripping the vanity was tedious and time-consuming, due to the amount of stains and scratches it had been subjected to over the years. It was evident someone had used this for a writing desk and it was used a lot. There was a large blue ink stain on the top, which took a lot of persuasive patience to remove as the stain was imbedded deeply into the surface. To remove the stain, I used lacquer thinner, stripper and several grits of sandpaper before I felt it was safe to stain over without show evidence of the ink. The finishing on the top of this vanity was long gone, therefore the ink had thoroughly soaked into the wood. 

Once I had finished stripping and sanding the top, I worked on the sides, front drawers and the legs (which took two full days!) Who knew all that gorgeous wood was hiding beneath so many years of scratches and grime? After I had finished stripping and sanding, the true beauty I had envisioned when I first laid eyes on it in that yard sale came shining through. I cleaned off all the sawdust with paint thinner, before I began staining.

I chose a rich mahogany gel stain, which was wonderful to work with. Gel stain doesn’t drip and run, so it’s easier to use on vertical surfaces like the legs and sides. It also got into all those swirls that were carved into the center drawer. It turned out great! The stain gave the vanity several soft, lovely tones, much like the original finish must have looked over sixty plus years ago. I selected semi-gloss polyurethane which looked fabulous! The metal wheels were cleaned up and put back on the legs, which makes the furniture so much easier to move around.

Sometimes when we refinish a piece of furniture, we choose to replace the hardware with something modern, depending on the look we want to achieve. For this old beauty, we kept the same hardware, but polished it until it shone. Hardware is like jewelry, so when it’s polished, it looks like new and gives this grand lady vanity a new identity and hopefully, many more years of use.

Here's another great antique: http://finalefurniture.blogspot.com/2014/08/edwardian-kidney-shaped-desk.html