This was an old bockety (turns out the two people I said that word to today, who are both irish, have never heard that word, it is an irish idiom for something that is a bit wobbly and unstable) gentlemans wardrobe.
It was designed to take shirts and jackets in either side on the hanging rails, shirts to the right, because there is a tie rail on the door, and trousers and jackets to the left.
Four drawers for jocks and socks and the bottom ‘drawer’ flips down for shoes. When you open the lid it has these three compartments
It is really charming, but when I saw it it was damp and bockety in a neglected corner of the salvage yard. I don’t remember what I paid for it, but it was definitely less than $20.
I had thought it would be good for my husband’s clothing, but he couldn’t see the potential, so it was originally destined for the shed, but I guess walking around it for a few months must have worked some kind of magic on him because he asked me to paint it for him.
I sanded, primed and gave it three coats of a matt paint (not chalk paint, because the price of the stuff is just silly) The stencils came from aliexpress and I had what I modestly think was a genius bit of whimsy to have one of the bees escaping from the stencil. So then I had to give that bee some friends, and so it goes.
To stick with the bee theme, I used glass etch paste to etch a bee on the mirror inside. I was really pleased that this worked, but not 100% sure it would as I didn’t want to remove the mirror because the screws on all the hardware are really rusty.
For a pop of colour, I put this funky lemur wallpaper inside the doors
and then as a final touch of whimsey I added this little gecko inside the top.
The legs originally would have had brass caps on the ends of the black painted wood, but they were really corroded and nothing would bring them back to life, so I gold leafed the ends, and then added some gold to the bee crowns to balance out the gold at the end,
Rather than replace the hardware, which was also fairly tired, I painted it black.
I sanded back some of the stencils and the edges of the piece to make it look slightly distressed. The then whole thing got a coat of a glaze to which I added a small amount of black paint. I wanted it to look old and the paint finish was too new looking.
I really like it, as does he. There may be a fight for it now.