Dresser Do-Over

If you will, stop for just a second.  Close your eyes...hey, no peeking!  Okay, okay, you can peek enough to read.  Now picture yourself as an old woman.  If you are a man and you are reading this, I suppose you are allowed to picture yourself as an old man.  Sheesh, troublemakers.  I picture myself happily digging in the garden, playing with grandchildren, and wearing paint-splattered clothes.  I figure by then I will have gotten tired of changing into my "painting clothes" during the few minutes the children are napping, only to have 4.5 seconds in which to actually paint before I have to change back into my really nice bleach-stained-dress-capris, since I am perpetually afraid that I'll forget about the wet black paint on my rear and will promptly sit on my light-colored couch.  No, by the time I am old I will just have decided that ALL my clothes are "painting clothes," and buy a darker couch.  Also, hopefully I won't have young children.

Anyhow, my latest adventure in painting had a very specific goal featuring black paint: to repurpose this dresser from unattractive (and blinding) extra clothing storage for the Hubs to more attractive craft storage for moi.  Sorry, Hubs, that you had to find room in the closet.  My Modge Podge needed a home.

Here's the Before:

Oh, I am so sad.  And I appear to be leaning.  Will someone please help me get over this mountain?
Oh wait, that's the Little Engine That Could.  Its been a long day.

In case you are wondering, yes, I did paint that dresser with those lovely pink and chartreuse stripes.  And it was actually cute except that I don't have any little girls.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Since I am in confession mode, I will also confess that it had been finished once before that as well--with white pickling stain.  Also cute.  Cuter than the stripes, in fact.  Oh, IKEA, what were you thinking, sending me home with unfinished wood?

So, I first sanded the beast down with the Random Orbital Sander, which sounds like some sort of intergalactic torture device but is actually a very handy tool for removing stripes.  Then I slapped on two coats of Sherwin Williams black acrylic All Surface Enamel in a satin finish.  Next, I distressed the edges with some sandpaper:

Then I just couldn't leave well-enough alone.  I am not good at that.  I LOVE to bother well-enough.  It is one of my favorite past times.  So I decided to stencil the drawers with numbers, and being the picky and stingy person I am, I didn't want to buy stencils.  So I made some.  I just picked out a font I liked (in this case, Vivaldi) and printed the numbers out in the size I needed on cardstock.  Then I carefully cut them out.  I like to use my mat knife, but you could easily use any sharp utility knife for this:

I really like cutting out my own stencils because then I can use whatever font I want, and am not stuck with these pricey stencils in the drawer feeling like I need to use them on every surface in my house forevermore.  But this technique is not perfect:

See how there are little rough edges?  Don't worry about it!  Many times they won't show up in your final result, and if they do, acrylic paint is very forgiving and can be removed easily from a painted surface.  I know because I did the "1" in this project 3 times.  Then I taped 'em where I wanted them and stenciled them with my new favoritest paint color in the world, Folk Art's Metallic Taupe craft paint.

Disregard those pulls up top.  I was trying on a new outfit but Mommy told me "No."  Whah.

Also, because well-enough was getting cocky again and needed to be brought down a peg, I decided to paint the existing metal pulls rather than buying all new ones.  I just took an extremely dry paintbrush and very small amounts of that lovely Metallic Taupe to create a burnished look on the pulls:

Lucky you: what you are witnessing in this picture is not just a burnished drawer pull, but also my laziness!  Rather than take all the pulls off and paint them, I unscrewed them just enough to pull out from the drawer, then used a wooden skewer to stabilize them.  What's that saying?  Laziness is the mother of invention?

That was it!  So here for your viewing pleasure is the final result:

Phew!  At least I am not leaning like a drunkard anymore.

Much cuter, don't you think?  Or should I paint this thing one more time?  I can hear you chanting ONE MORE TIME ONE MORE TIME in your head.  But this is not a frat party and I'm afraid the Hubs might run away if I re-re-re-re-do this dresser.





Linking up at Miss Mustard Seed, Finding Fabulous, and The Shabby Nest.  Phew!

Updated on 11/15/10 to link to the fabulous:

Funky Junk Interiors