When it comes to restoring a beautiful antique sometimes bringing it back to it’s former beauty is the best possible outcome. While I love painted furniture as much as the next gal (more than some gals!) there are times when the piece is either too unique to paint or could be restored easily.
My personal rule of thumb is this: if it’s going in your home and you would love it more painted than unpainted… then paint it! You have to look at it everyday so do what you love. BUT if it’s not going in your home and the piece can be restored then restore it! While plenty of problems can be fixed unless a piece is sentimental hard to fix pieces are getting painted in my house.
So when Mama and I found this gorgeous toddler be we decided to skip the paint and fix this baby up. The women we bought it from said she bought it in Kentucky 30 years ago and was told it was 85 years old. It looks like a bench but it’s actually a toddler bed so it’s a great size.
It’s in great shape for being 85 years old and really just needed a little TLC. So we set about taking off the green striped fabric and restoring the wood.
The wood is actually in great condition and just needed to be hydrated so we cleaned the wood with soap and water to clean off years of dust and grime. Once the piece was clean we ran a tack cloth over all of the pieces to make sure there weren’t any bits of dust or fuzz sticking anywhere.
This is really the easiest bit of the entire project!
Once we had the prep work finished we used a bit of Miss Mustard Seed’s hemp oil to re-hydrate the wood. I absolutely love how beautiful the wood looks once it’s re-hydrated… it really just looks like you’ve brought it back to life.
Now it’s time to re-upholster the top. Since this little toddler bed has it’s fabric stapled to the bottom it’s a really easy project.
Since this little toddler bed was 85 years old it had original nails holding the fabric in place… so we broke out the upholstery nail remover to pull these babies out! Then it’s as easy as cutting a new piece of fabric the same size as the old piece of fabric and re-attaching it with the staple gun.
Volia! Now it’s finished! and absolutely beautiful!
This little project was so simple but the toddler bed is really a one of a kind find… my Mama really wants to keep it for the foot of her bed but so far that’s not happening. We’ve brought it over to the antique store and it looks absolutely adorable!
What do you think of it’s transformation? It’s not super dramatic but I love how it looks so close to how it would have looked back in it’s glory days. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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