New look for an old chest

Part of the furniture of the guest bedroom is a cedar chest in which I keep my fabric stash. In order to work with the new design of the room, it definitely needed a new look. And since I forgot to snap a Before picture, you simply have to take my word for it that the old dropcloth top just wasn't cutting it anymore.

Oh lucky day, when I found a piece of black and white acanthus leaf swirl fabric in my stash.

[More or less after: New cover is on!]

Upholstering the top with a new piece of fabric took 10 minutes and has been covered in tutorials and rehashed on so many blogs I'm not going to bother going into detail here. Sufficient to say that you straighten out the fabric and then staple it to the wooden part of the top all around.


Just the red cedar wasn't looking too sharp next to the black and white fabric now. Sigh! Does it ever end?
So I gave the the cedar chest a light wash with black paint, pretending it were a stain. This allowed the grain of the wood and some red glow to show through, but the black wash tempered and mellowed the bright red of the cedar which made it a better match for the new top. Phew!

[Close-up]

[After: New color and new upholstery]

So much better, don't you think? And again, a fab freebie since I had all materials on hand.