Compass Rose Beauty

Two weekends ago we went to Ella's dance competition and spent the weekend at my mom's house.  My parents are getting ready to sell their house so they need to get rid of their surplus furniture, decor and knick knacks.  This armoire was one of the many surplus that I got to take home to paint.  I remember my mom bought this when I was still in high school with the intent to paint it red with milk paint.  That never happened so it has continued in its original pine state for 23+ years.  

We have painted quite a few armoires since we began refinishing furniture and Justin wanted to do something special with this blank slate.  Enter the Compass Rose.  

According to Wikipedia, "The compass rose is an old design element found on compasses, maps and even monuments to show cardinal directions and frequently intermediate direction. The "rose" term arises from the fairly ornate figures used with early compasses. Older sources sometimes use the term "compass star", or stella maris ("star of the sea"), to refer to the compass rose.  On our piece, we used the 8-point compass roses uses the eight principal winds—that is, the four cardinal directions (N, E, S, W) plus the four "intercardinal" or "ordinal directions" (NE, SE, SW, NW), at angles of difference of 45°."

Believe it or not, I did not get a good before picture.  I've already kicked my own butt for this a few times before and you'd think I would learn, but Noo! Not me!  I will just describe it to you. . . it was raw pine, no stain, no color, no polyurethane, nothing.  Got it?  Good!  Anyway, in the picture below we have already painted the entire piece with Reclaim's Buttercream.  Reclaim paint has everything you need in one jar, primer, paint and sealer.  It is amazing and so simple to use!  Justin has already traced the compass rose and applied the first coat of Caromal Colours Huckleberry Blue paint .   The other parts of the design were painted with Caromal Colours Colonial Blue.

By the time I got home from work today, Justin had 

already sanded the armoire.  Even though we don't 

need to apply wax as the top coat, we used the Walnut Liberon 

wax more for the color and age it gives the piece.

I love this piece, other than the knobs just don't 

work for me.  They just stand out too much and 

almost look like eyeballs.

Again, love everything but the knobs.

In the pics below we just removed the knobs

altogether to see what it would look like and it made

a huge difference.   We are now on the lookout 

for some fabulous knobs that won't distract from the design.

I really do say this all the time, but this is one of my favorite 

pieces we have done so far.

If you are interested in getting some of this 

fabulous paint for yourself, follow the link on the right

hand side of this blog.  Make sure to use coupon code: BrendaUtah to 

save on shipping.

Have a great day and happy painting!