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

Adding Machine Cake

By
What type of cake do you give a graduating accountant? Why an adding machine/printing calculator cake of course! A friend of mine text me asking me to make one for her husband's graduation party and I accepted the challenge! I was very nervous, as this was my first sculpted cake! The night before I started working on the cake I cut the keys out of fondant. Because I wanted to make it to scale, I used a photo of an actually printing calculator. And then used the algebra my momma taught me! :) The width of almost all of my keys is 5/8 of an inch. I then cut a 2" wide strip of gum paste approximately 6" long and laid it over a quart jar overnight to dry. The next day I started by making 2 9"x13" cakes and placing one on top of the other and shaping the top one (actually only using about 1/3 of it) to make the top of the calculator! I apologize I have no photos, this was a pre-blog cake. Then came butter cream in between the layers and covering the cake! I rolled o
Post a Comment
Read more

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

Caning with Grandpa!

By
Here is what we were working toward! (Aka: the finished product!) I got this chair either out of the trash or very cheap. I cannot actually remember, as we have a host of chairs without seats in them waiting for a new lease on life. I have been wanting to work on a chair like this for some time. I had a dream a few years back of me sitting and caning a chair with my grandfather. Ever since that dream, I have wanted to see it happen. So this last weekend, I made the trek up to Indiana to spend a few wonderful days with my grandparents. The days spent with them are like living in another world. They have no TV, so we spend lots of time talking, reading and playing games. They live out in the country, and you can see the stars up close. It gets darker, since there are no city light or lights from other homes...which means they want to go to bed at 7pm. :-)... AND wake up at 4am. We got started caning the chair in the cold basement. All of Grandpa's tools were down there, so we coul
4 comments
Read more