How to Pair MCM Furniture to Get one Unified look

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Remember way back, when I shared my ideas and mood board for the bedroom?  It was a while ago.

I had been sitting on top of this project for a while now, feeling very indecisive about the whole bedroom really and in particular the two Mid Century Modern pieces of furniture you see below. Should I paint them grey and which portions should be painted or should all of it be painted one color.  It went on and on… this plethora of choices.

The problem was too much furniture and too many colors in a small room.  I needed to paint these pieces so they would look unified without making too much of a statement.

But I’m back to show you what I have done and how I paired those two pieces of MCM furniture to get one unified look.​

The bottom half of this combo was originally a sideboard and looked like this below.  I had painted it in a soft grey color and left it at that.  But I knew I would eventually have to work on it some more because there was too much of a contrast between the sides and the doors in the front.  I was aiming for a unified look.​

What I Used:

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• Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Snow White the Safepaint formula 
• Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Slate the Safepaint formula
• Sandpaper
• Daddy Van’s All Natural Beeswax and Furniture Polish in Lavender
• Paint brushes
• Brush for waxing
• ​Rags for waxing​​

The How To:

I stared off by going over the soft grey paint first in the snow white color.  

Now would be a good time to mention that this wonderful paint comes in two versions, a regular milk paint, that is perfect for untreated wood, and a safepaint version which is good for surfaces which have already been painted.

You can also add Extra Bond an agent which will help the regular milk paint stick.​

And then going over that with the Slate color, which is a soft blue. I did two coats of the blue and it covered beautifully, using long brushstrokes.​

The doors also got a paint job, sine they were the ones that had been sticking out like a sore thumb in the first place. 

It was really hard for me to decide what to do with the doors since I had been agonizing over the whole look of these two pieces.  In the end I opted to do the outsides in the slate color and the fronts in the white.

I painted the frames with the Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Snow White.​

​For the interior rattan part I did a dry brush technique, where I would put paint on the brush and blot it a little on the white rag.  Once I had applied the paint to the rattan, I went over it with the brush distributing that little bit of paint all over as much as possible before having to add more paint to the brush. 

​In this way the look was soft and the paint did not fully coat the rattan.​

Once I added the wax, to seal it in, it became even softer because some of the paint wiped off.​

​Now let’s look at the other half – the top part.  This is a Mid Century Modern piece.  I would describe it as a small dresser or side table.  It has three drawers.  

By the way, I had rescued this one from my dad, who used it to store his tools.  That seemed such a waste of a pretty dresser to me, so one day I just took it and he has been looking for his tools ever since.

He was quite annoyed with me but I went on and on about the vintage look and how valuable it was and it was a shame to be storing tools.

You know sometimes that works.  But this time he really was not happy… tool storage is very important to him. 

​I repeated the process with this dresser, adding one coat of Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Snow White…​

​… And then finishing it off with three coats of Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Slate.  The last coat was added with long brushstrokes from one end to the other.​

Now it was time to tackle those drawers. 

​After much thought, I decided I would do the drawers in white, just like the doors of the sideboard.  This time I used the snow white milk paint for all the coats.​

The second coat was painted in the opposite direction, and the third and fourth coats were also done this way. 

So across, then up and down, across and up and down. 

This was the result. 

Sort of like a soft pattern. 

​Next I lightly sanded the drawer fronts. Can you see the light and dark variations?  This was deliberate to give a bit of interest to the front.​

I finished the whole thing off with Daddy Van’s All Natural Beeswax and Lavender Furniture Polish, to seal in all that milk paint goodness. I used a round brush for this, it makes the whole process go so much faster.​

​And here is the finished piece of furniture.  Doesn’t it look like one piece now? I needed the right colors in order to make these two look like one piece of furniture. 

The fronts are soft, not like before when the rattan doors were too much of a contrast.

And I just love the dresser drawer fronts which almost look like soft clouds now.

Why, the color even matches my rug (similar)!

​I’ll be using this two piecer to store my paperwork and all the printing paper.  The printer will go on top because this may be pretty but we also have to be practical!​

Of course the icing on the cake for me was when my dad came to inspect his former tool storage!  He looked at it, raised his eyebrows, put a smile on his face (which is rare for him – he only smiles at our dog) and said “It came out very nice!”

Now that is high praise coming from someone who would have been content with misusing this lovely piece of furniture.

And that is the end of this bedroom dilemma.  Just a few more pieces to finish for this room and I should be done. To see what has been completed so far look below.

What do you think, was I successful in creating a unified look by pairing these two pieces of MCM furniture?
​

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