When I found this piece...it looked tragic. It was covered in brown paint with faux wood grain contact paper on the shelves. I bought it because I liked the details and well...I was also looking for a nice piece to use Annie Sloan Graphite on. It is such a rich color that I figured it could be used to make anything look elegant.

When I got it home...I was curious as to what kind of wood it was made out of so I decided to strip it. You don't need to strip paint to use Annie Sloan paint mind you...I just wanted to see it in it's original state. So I did it...and was shocked to find that the beautiful wood underneath the horrible paint was none other than rare mahogany.

Wow.

I honestly sat there and stared at it for a long time and then I moved around a bit just so I could make SURE I was doing the right thing by painting it. Then...I decided that hey...no matter what...I could always strip the paint off again if I wanted to right? RIGHT.

So I took the hardware and door off. Then I collapsed the shelves and got to painting. Since it was such a dark piece anyway...I knew I'd have to do a light color inside of it. The hardware was pretty nice but I wanted it to seriously pop so I used a bit of Antique Gold Rub-N-Buff to make the color really stand out.

I put two coats of paint on it and then let it dry for a full day. Next, I used General Finishes top coat for protection and now I'm sitting here debating whether I should wax it too.

This piece is so lovely to me that yeah...it might already be SOLD too. :)