For the love of mom & marble!

Some Birthday wishes are in order! Today we celebrated the birthday of my mother in law, the beautiful Diane.

I have been doubly blessed in the mother department, first when I was assigned in the genetic lottery to Double B and then, again, when I married my husband, Jeff, and gained a mother-in-law.

I don’t know many women, if any, who are so lucky.

You always hear women complaining about their mother in laws. Meddling, sabotaging, disapproving. I’ve never experienced this. On the contrary, Diane has been one of my biggest supporters, a personal confidant and sounding board since day one. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars for this true gift.

I’ve been working like a little house elf to finish up this antique washstand for her birthday gift! Luckily I finished just in the nick of time!

As you’ll remember from my Internet Auctions Are Dangerous post, my in-laws picked up a big load of vintage furniture from an old home in an adjacent county. One of the pieces really caught my eye once it came off the truck, a Victorian (walnut maybe) marble-top washstand with candle stands.

And get this…. Lord only knows why, but a previous owner tried to do a faux marble paint job in red and black on top of PICTURE PERFECT WHITE MARBLE.

MIL2

The process of restoring the marble was sort of annoying given that I totally made it hard on myself. I should have started with sanding since the paint was already flaking off. Instead, I was like, oh sure let’s just dribble some paint stripper on here and it’ll come right off. Uh, no. Duh, Lindsey, marble is porous and all you are going to do is make life harder.

MIL3

Hindsight, people. Always 20/20.

Also, you’d never know it, but the base of this stand has about 6 seriously thick coats of Pure White. Mmmmmm, yeah. That baby sucked the paint up like it was happy hour at the bottle factory. I’m contemplating sealing it one more time and trying again for that pure white. I feel like right now the coolness of the marble is at odds with the richness of the accidental ochre. You be the judge…

Since this piece will most likely be going in my in-law’s guest cottage (more on that later) I outfitted the inside drawers with a mis-match of baskets to hold things like books, blankets or board games. I also had a blast playing around with my favorite shades of green and blue with mini-bar accessories.