Skip to main content

Bold, yet subtle

By
Hello all!

I really love how this turned out and wish I had a little boy so I could decorate his room around this piece. Unfortunately, the little boy I have (my husband) is in a room I have to sleep in too and I already have that one decorated to my taste. Alas, with small houses, you cant have/keep everything! BUT, that just gives me the pleasure of selling, er, I mean sharing it.



This is how she started off. My little boy looked at me askanse when I raised my hand to bid on this dresser. "Really?" his eyes asked me. But I saw something beyond the messed up exterior and mismatched drawer pulls. So I raised my hand for that $1 bid. I saw those 1940 style legs and I wanted to renew the life of this dresser!




I started off with sanding her down. Alot. Some would recommend stripping, but if I am going to paint anyway, I skip that step. Basically, I want the new paint to adhere to the surface, so I have to rough up the original paint job and sand down the scratches.








Then, I had to flip it over and fix the legs. A little wood glue worked that out. (Sneak peak at another piece I did at the same time!) I then painted the whole thing white. Twice. :-) After drying...




I taped it off! I am currently a big fan of patterns. Understated, yet patterns nevertheless. So, I opted for STRIPES! Stripes are fun and vibrant. Why not? The whole dresser measured 32in wide. I devided that by 8 and got 4. So, I would have eight 4in stripes. 4 white and 4 tbd (I didnt know yet).

However, I had a blue batch of paint. It was BRIGHT! So I added a bit to my white paint, until I got a color I liked. I didnt want a huge contrast, but I wanted enough of one to make it stand out.




I missed the next step in a picture, sorry. I basically filled in the "wide" batches of tape to paint the stripes blue. Then after two coats, I let it dry and then pulled the tape off. I was really digging it!






After love comes marriage, after painting comes poly. Poly who? Polyurethane. I use water based poly for the furniture I work with, and I roll most of it on with a foam roller. I use a paint brush for more detailed areas. You want a very thin coat of poly. Thicker coats will dry uneavenly and maybe even leave areas where it conglomerates and leaves a huge glop. (Is glop a word?) Doesnt matter. I let it dry according to directions and then gave it a second thin coat.




Knobs: Sorry, no picture there either. Im just getting started in this blogging thing, give me a bit of slack. There were only seven knobs that matched. They were brass and all chippy. Yet, I went on search of a match. The closest one was not a match at all and it was $5.61. For ONE. I vetoed that and went in search of eight new pulls. I could have gone all funky, but I wanted to save money and get something that was functional. I found wodden pulls at Lowes. Two for $1.50. That I could do! So, I spent another $6 for new drawer pulls. I painted and put poly on them and waited (impatiently) to let them dry. I wanted to see the finished product!






The instructions on poly says to let it cure for 48 hours. I waited 24 before putting the pulls on. Yeah, I got impatient. But, I do really like how it turned out! Let me know what you think!




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Labor of Love (Part 1 of 3)

By
I love lace. I love the delicacy with which it presents itself to the world. That being said, I dont really use it very much. I do have some family doilies, and my wedding dress has some lace, but I dont go too crazy. I like to be able to clean things, and not have dust mites clinging to every available piece of cloth (they cling to everything else anyway.) So, I decided to try a painting technique. Why not paint the lace on the object? Easy to clean, lovely design, what could be better? We got this child's vanity in an old attic pick. Yes, we went into someone's hot and muggy attic for several hours. Yes, they let us jsut dig through things (can you believe it?!?!) unsupervised. Yes, we had to take our own flashlights. And yes, there was mouse droppings and dead birds up there. It was gross, but worth it. My boy LOVED it! American Pickers is his favorite tv show. So this school bus yellow vanity sat there looking at us. Begging for new life! I knew if we left ...
5 comments
Read more

Blind Man Stood on the Road and he

By
First, I need to say that every time I think of this song, I think of one man: Don Strunk. He shaped my middle school years and beyond by singing this song....alot :-) On my way to work yesterday I passed by the subway stop. Usually there is a man with a mohawk at this corner passing out free newspapers. I realized as I was crossing the street that it was a different man (also signaling that it was a different free paper). I also noticed the man had a cane, a cane like blind people normally walk with. As I got onto the sidewalk I was going to continue down the avenue (as opposed to into the train like most people would be doing) and the man asked me if I'd like a newspaper. I was pretty amazed that he heard me walking by in tennis shoes while big trucks zoomed past us. I'm lucky if I can hear the conversation that's meant for me to hear it in these situations.
2 comments
Read more

Me and my shadow!

By
Please feel free to listen (or watch!) this song while reading this post. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyEf1Lp7Byk I have always thought silhouettes were such lovely and understated works of art. I would be fascinated by the people who did it at Disney World, Kings Island, or Central Park. They could cut your silhouette out in minutes! I decided I thought it would be fun art to hang in our humble bedroom. Our bedroom is a work in progress. These silhouettes are only the second thing I have hung on the wall, so I am taking my time with it. We did get around to painting in over the summer. It went from drab and boring, to vibrant and living. It was amazing to me how the paint actually made the room look much bigger! In a house cursed with small rooms, that is indeed a blessing. I started out with some frames and material. The frames were fine as they were, but several accent things in our bedroom are white, so I opted to paint them. The material...well, I want to use it behin...
4 comments
Read more