The Red Lion

Here he is, in all of his glory, I give you The Red Lion.

I got this piece for a steal off of craigslist. The previous owner had spray painted it red, with gold spots and super glued fabric over it's missing drawers. It had 4 holes for knobs, but 2 were filled by gold buttons that were super glued in the hole, and the other 2 had crystal knobs.
Personally, the red, gold, crystal, and flower fabric was a little too much for me. However what I do love about this is the storage space. It was exactly what I needed for a blanket/game/storage/pantry/junk wardrobe.

So first thing I did was get rid of the fabric. Now I have seen many restored furniture that used this fabric trick of covering missing drawers. This is a great trick if you dont have the wood working skills or tools needed to replace the drawer runners with shelves. However my dad is a wonderful and patient father, who is both brilliant and a great teacher. With his help we ripped out the old drawer runners and replaced them with shelves. This gives the allusion that the piece was never intended to have drawers!

Here he is, gutted. We took the doors off, and sanded him down getting ready to paint. Also something that you dont see in the pictures is that the inside was also spray painted gold...

Sorry the lighting is bad in this picture... I should start using a camera that isn't my iPhone... However what you see in this picture is it all painted! I used a Nutmeg for the bottom and the top, and Yellow Gerbera in the middle. 

Let me just say... if the question is "does it need another coat?" the answer is almost always YES! After the second coat of yellow i was ready to redo the whole thing. I hated it, but after the third coat I was immediately comforted. It looked great and clean. 

A little too clean for my taste.. so I roughed it up some :P

Here he is completed! It really is amazing what a little distressing can do. It did wonders to bring out the details. Another thing that we did was get rid of the 4 holes and drilled new ones for handles instead of knobs. Personally with doors that big, they needed more than a little knob

A big thank you to both my mom and my dad for all their help with this!