Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Nothing is Impossible - A Swedish Chest Recreated

Some months ago, I had a group of girlfriends come to the shop who were enjoying a "girls' trip" to New Orleans. They were from New Jersey and all of them lived within a block from each other. They ate and shopped their way through New Orleans and we all became fast friends.

One of them had been looking for a pair of Swedish style painted nightstands for her bedroom. She loved this pair that I had (and which was featured in Edward's and Bella's wedding cottage in the new Twilight: Breaking Dawn Movie).
However, after discussing the size of her master bedroom, we decided that they were way too small for her space. She had been hunting for the perfect pair for quite a while without any luck so I decided to take on the challenge of finding them. After she forwarded me photos of her magnificent and huge bedroom, I suggested that we go with a pair of matching chests for her nightstands. However, she did not want anything too tall as her bed was lower to the ground than mosts. After searching and searching, I found a photo (and I do not know where or how I came across this photo -- so if someone knows, please let me know) of a Swedish antique piece that I fell in love with. I sent her the photo of it and she thought it was perfect. What do you think?




Gorgeous, huh????

The problem was that although we had found the perfect photo, we needed the real piece, two identical ones at that, and in very specific custom sizes to fit her space (namely, 30" tall x 34" wide x 20" deep).

As many of you know by now, I love challenges and I love to make dreams become reality. So I put all of my resources to work. I was determine to make this happen and to make it happen in the most absolutely beautiful way I know how -- by personally overseeing the design and construction of the pieces, and hand painting and finishing them myself down to the last detail of the antique hardware. Of course, because of the smaller size of the matching nightstands, there were some design alterations involved (such as two drawers instead of three). But basically, the overall look was kept.

After weeks of planning and working, here is the result.

The original Swedish Commode ...



My recreated custom version:











What do you think?

Hope you are making your own dreams a reality.

3 comments:

  1. I am speechless.

    Your Swedish commodes look so authentic.

    They are SO beautiful.

    I think the commodes will become the focal point of the master bedroom.

    Thank-you so much for sharing your creative process with us. I appreciate it.

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  2. Thanks so much for your comment, Sandra. It was a lot of work to recreate that piece but I so enjoyed the journey.

    Karina

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  3. I pinned your work quite a while ago (32 weeks ago!) and am finally about to refinish a little chest of drawers I have. Do you share your colors? I would love to do my piece like yours. I am going to experiment with gesso and also making my own chalk paint. It's so much fun to make something that is pretty ugly into a work of art....addictive, isn't it?

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