Rescued Relic to Elegant Eggplant Buffet

Ayayayay, I am so excited to share this makeover with you!

This piece was beautiful when I found it, but it had some flaws, make that lots of character. I purchased it from a family who had pulled it out of a barn in Northern California. Barns don’t typically have temperature control & are not the best places to store your furniture. This piece is quarter sawn oak & made to last forever! Being subjected to the extreme temperatures caused a split down the side of the buffet. The family had lived with it in their house in it’s condition for the past 10 years without problem.

I gave it a good inspection, turned it over, removed all of the drawers, tested the cabinet door, shook it & it was as solid even with the crack.

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My first thought was to keep the “character crack” paint it Razorback Red and go with heavy distressing. A quick poll of my friends returned a mix of color suggestions. Neutrals, red, and one suggestion of Eggplant. After that no other suggestions would work, unfortunately the crack and heavy distressing did not work with the bold purple color either.

First things first the crack needed to be mended and filled. I aligned the crack as much as possible, pumped in wood glue and used ratchet straps while it dried.

Tip: When trying to get glue into the center of a crack, use your shop vac on the other end to pull it through.

After the glue dried the other parts of the crack were filled with wood filler, mainly for cosmetic reasons. Once dry the areas was sanded flat. The repair is still vaguely visible, I like it that way. It can carry a little of it’s story forward to it’s third life.

It didn’t need any other repairs, but it did have a drawer with the original felt lining, under an ugly picnic table looking shelf liner. This definitely needed to go! You can see how we removed that here.

A custom color was mixed using 1:1 ratio of our Sailor Blue, and Cranberry from Kristi Keuhl Pure Home Paints. My fellow PHP partner, Kandice from Just the Woods, is the originator of this paint recipe…it was also her suggestion to go eggplant.

After repairs were made we gave it a good scrubbing with 50/50 vinegar water mix followed by a rinse. Two coats of our eggplant mix were applied to the entire buffet, I followed with Ebony Glaze, then pushed the purple up by wiping on our Purple Gel Stain Vibrant Splatter all over the body. (We love this so much we will be using the mix on my daughter’s upcoming room makeover!)

Original hardware was updated with Onyx Hardware Opulence Gel Paint. It added the perfect amount of metallic black to the piece! Tahoe, a pale snowy gray, was used inside the cabinets to keep the look elegant.