A Bit of a Brit : A Union Flag Bureau

After: Union Flag Bureau

I've always been in love with the British flag.  Even before I married an Englishman probably even before I visited during my Junior year abroad.  I love the colors, I love the stripes, I love the pomp and circumstance of all things British.  I remember my mom waking me up before the marriage of Princess Di and Prince Charles and watching it along with a royal breakfast - I was 4.  We did this very same thing with our kids last April when Prince William married Katherine.

I'm so proud of Britain and my family and friends there.  I am so proud that my sons are half English.  I thought it would be nice to bring a part of Britain to our 5 year old's room.  This bureau was mine growing up.  It is an old Ethan Allen maple - probably 40 years old and very heavy.

Before

There were scratches on it and wear and tear from age.  John also got hold of a sharks tooth and, for some reason, decided to scratch his name on the front.

Can you see those scratches above?  Anyway, I decided that this piece would be a perfect candidate to be repainted with the Union Flag.  I'm saying Union Flag because a Union Jack is only on Navy ships, as my very proper English husband has taught me.

I started by painting the top and sides in three coats of ASCP in Napoleonic Blue.  It is a beautiful, traditional, regal blue.  It is almost like lapis or that perfect type of sapphire, you know the very blue one.  Then when it got time for the front, I was a little scared.  How do you go about paint the Union Flag?  We found this great site on how to draw the Union Jack accurately:

As you can see from this site, the red on the diagonal stripes is not in the center and this is what makes it so difficult to draw or paint.  The Union flag is a superposition of the flags of Saint George (for England), St. Andrew (for Scotland) and Saint Patrick (for Ireland).  I don't like measuring much so I called on my very accurate husband to help me with all the tape (and we used a lot of tape).

First we did this.  This was just to paint the blue.  

I did three coats of blue:

The he re-taped and I painted the white stripes.  I used ASCP in Old White.  I decided to do all the areas, under the red, white because the ASCP Emperor's Silk is thin and I wanted a base of something underneath:

The the diagonal stripes:

Then he re-taped for the red stripes:

The taping was hard and intricate and I used a lot of paint.  Four coats of the red.  To finish I added two coats of clear wax on the front and top and one on the sides and buffed it.

Here is a close-up of the finished bureau:

I decided to leave the knobs wooden to match his bed and the wooden mirror above the bureau.

And here is a view of the side:

A bit of Britain in America for my little guy.  I asked if he liked it and he gave it "100 thumbs up".  Now I just need to keep that sharks tooth away from him!

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