If Valentine’s Day had a Grinch, it would be me. Or us.
Michelle and I, we agree, it’s a contrived holiday on which people overspend on flowers and prix-fixed menus. Ok, a bit harsh there. It really can be lovely in its own way.
But, point is, we’ve quietly sat it out for 17 years.
Except for one year.
One year we celebrated by going to Lowe’s on February 14 - an evening where it turns out you can have the entire 116,000 square feet to yourself.
“Romantic Valentine’s Day, huh?” Michelle remarked as we stepped inside.
We had just purchased a rather plain and unremarkable composite-wood dresser from Craigslist. It was the perfect template for a Pinterest-inspired vision, and we were going for it.
At this particular moment, we were hunting for wallpaper, paint, and various other art supplies. The goal: transform the dresser into “vintage chic.”
By 2014, the vintage chic look had become the well-established Holy Grail of contemporary spaces ranging from coffee shops to clothing stores to bedrooms.
It was one of those movements like baseball card collecting. Who could possibly have foreseen that pieces of rectangular cardboard once used in the bicycle wheel spokes of 10-year olds would (50 years later) lay carefully labeled and jealously protected under glass encasements with grown men spending their entire weekend peering closely at each of them and wondering how many hundreds (or thousands) they might put down for one?
Old window frames and doors were the new baseball card, the key difference being that nobody wanted mint condition. Unless the paint was visibly peeling and the wood had the distinct possibility of providing you with a splinter or tetanus, then it simply was not vintage enough.
A few years back we hired a contractor to finish our basement, and he was lamenting how many projects he had done over the years where he discovered and then soon discarded old window frames and doors.
“I tell you what…if I had even $1 for every tired rotting-wood window frame I have thrown out, I could retire right now!”
“Yeah… I hear folks pay well for that stuff.”
“It’s you millennials! All y’all pay like $300 for a door that honestly I suspect has termites.”
“Yeah, but the door is vintage,” I said, knowing full well I really didn’t know what that means or why I or anyone could possibly be so enchanted by it.
Being that it was not very old and quite plain, our dresser was a far cry from anything “vintage” or “chic.” Our work was cut out for us, but thanks to our timely trip to Lowe’s, we were well-positioned to make the transformation happen.
We covered our bedroom carpet with a clear paint tarp, pulled out the paintbrushes, and popped open our newly purchased cans of gray paint.
First Step: paint the dresser, right? No.
First Step: apply wallpaper to the front of the dresser drawers.
You see, one of the more beloved features of the vintage chic look was textured wallpaper, particularly textures that seem French-influenced with fleur-de-lie’s and other like floral-and-royalty designs covering the paper.
In fact, next time you are in a coffee shop or hair salon or restaurant founded in the last decade – look up at the ceiling. See if you don’t see squares of fleur-de-lie-like textured designs covering the ceiling. There is a whole sector of society today who love ceiling paneling which lends an aura of understated royalty. Of course, most of these places then also hang industrial Edison bulbs from that same ceiling, suggesting a gritty, old-time-factory flavor.
Princely ceilings, pauper-like lights. Call it paradox or contradiction, indecision or truth – we eat this stuff up.
Michelle pulled out our plain white, slightly textured wall-paper, which we then glued to the front of each drawer. “Nice,” we nodded as the drawers took on a subtle mix of antique and class, without announcing either.
Second Step: Mix the gray paint with a chalk-like substance.
The bag Michelle found online looked like an enormous shipment of cocaine. That, or she had raided an entire elementary school’s creative art supply for the year.
Truly, it was an enormous bag. But who can skimp on such critical pursuits? Indeed, our purposes were far loftier than kingpins or kindergarteners. Where their uses for powder inevitably just cause a really big mess, we were endowing wood with a permanent gift. Paint + chalk makes for an earthy texture announcing both gravitas and grittiness.
A worldly-wise dresser.
Who does not want their clothing held in the recesses of such presence for hours upon hours each day? Maybe it rubs off on the clothing?
Yes, I nod, I do very much look forward to placing my folded jeans here in the coming days.
Third Step: Paint the dresser with their new look. We did. We painted both the portions of wood that remained visible as well as the wallpaper-covered drawers.
Fourth Step: Let them dry. The chalk makes the paint dry pretty quickly, which meant we were going to be able to complete the whole project in one, singular Valentine evening.
Fifth Step: Use dresser for clothing. No. Not hardly.
Remember, we are going for vintage chic – so far we have only begun making in-roads toward the Grail. The ‘vintage’ quality remains barely present. Ah, but thanks be to the fifth step! Step five promises to transform the “little-bit-old” and make it vintage-aged, all in about 20 minutes time.
Fifth Step: Sand the wood surface areas.
With the paint now dry, we pull out pieces of soft sandpaper and begin selectively blemishing our newly protective paint from the surface of the dresser. It’s unnatural to rub small, sharp rocks against a perfectly good surface, and so it really is quite difficult to know how to start. Plus, there is no manual for vintage-chic-ifying something that otherwise would take four to eight decades to get there on its own.
I began rubbing back and forth so that just enough paint came off of a section that it might pass for “loving wear-and-tear” to the untrained (or just not terribly observant) eye. I also rubbed the wallpaper portion, but only ever-so-lightly. Paper tears really easily, and nobody wants a vintage dresser with chads of new paper dangling off the front.
In under a half hour, we had grazed the surface of a few areas and successfully sped up the vintage-look process by a few decades.
Sixth Step: Now use the dresser for clothing. Ha! So close. Five steps in we have vintage-ified the composite wood dresser. “Chic” remains muted, however. Step six is critical for this.
Sixth Step: Install large, aqua-turquoise, translucent plastic door handles.
To be sure, they do not look plastic. They look like crystals, but with just enough fade and faux that one would never assume we had made such an ostentatious choice. There’s that understated royalty thing again. I have no idea why this was a thing. What I do know is that the muted, bright ways of those handles upon the newly distressed shades of gray perfectly rounded out an honest-to-goodness vintage chic look.
Seventh Step: Use the dresser for its stated, functional purpose: store the clothing.
We spent the remainder of the Valentine’s evening piling our drawers full of clothing that would soon know continual refuge in an enviably-aged abode, if I don’t say so myself.
“This was fun,” Michelle smiled.
“It was,” as I nodded my head in genuine agreement.
We’d spent so many of our recent days running from one thing to the next, and it felt really good to slow and enjoy a creative effort together.
As Valentine’s Day 2014 neared its end, I stood over our sink washing the brushes of their chalk paint. It took awhile. The paint was every bit as thick as that evening’s irony: the Day I had decried was also the day that had etched an upward-bending line upon my cheek.
Small though it was, I had to admit - that night was some real craftsmanship.
And I could not help wondering if we kept at it that maybe we’d eventually prove the kind of worldly-wise couple that younger folks would want in their homes one day many years down the line.
“Vintage chic, those two.”