Looks like I took an accidental little hiatus ..... oops. Life with 2 gets super busy, and before you know it, 2 months have gone by and your little ol' blog has cobwebs on it.
Last summer we transitioned Miss A to a big girl room - she got a new room and we kept the nursery the same for Baby N. I had an idea of how I wanted her room to look and I am pretty pleased with the finished product.... It is a shabby chic, feminine and full of refinished antique furniture. I am waiting on a couple more pillows to be made, but in the meantime, I thought I would do a post on refinishing her dresser. Yes, big and pregnant and in the heat of the summer I was sanding, painting and working on transforming a beat up antique dresser to a perfectly polished piece. I also refinished her bed and a little chair.
Here is the dresser before:
I bought the piece from
Gypsy Soul Interiors. (If you are in Texas or Alabama and want vintage furniture - she is your gal. Check her out
here.)
My first step was to lightly remove all of the hardware and drawers and lightly sand the entire piece. Once I was able to get some of the old paint off, I was better able to see the areas that needed some extra TLC. I am sure you can fill holes and scratches and then prime, but whenever I refinish pieces, I prime and then fill areas with wood filler. I am pretty detailed in this step - why put all of this time and effort into a piece if you are still going to have little dings and scratches?
I worked on the top of the dresser....
Corners....
Filled in the old hardware holes in the drawers....
And used lots of wood glue and putty on the door...
I also removed the old feet and added these new wood ones. I love how these look with the rounded lines on the bottom of the legs.
After all of the wood filler and wood glue was dry, I sanded the entire piece again to have a super smooth painting surface. Tip - After sanding, wipe down the entire piece with a tacky, glue like cheese cloth to remove all of the dust.
I did 3 coats of paint - semi gloss Benjamin Moore Decorators White. After each coat of paint, I would lightly sand with a super fine grit sand paper and then wipe down with the tacky cheese cloth. All of these steps take quite a while to do, but it really results in a professional looking piece of furniture.
Once everything was painted and sanded for the last time, I did a coat of satin polycrylic on everything. Had this been going in an adult room, I might have just done the top of the dresser.... but, since it was going in a little kid room, I decided to do it all.
Since I had filled in all of the hardware holes, I had to drill new holes for new hardware. This part stressed me out - I had done so much work, I was afraid of messing it up. Thank goodness my dad helped me with this part. I was too chicken to drill the holes - I just didn't want to screw it up! I used clear, green glass handles for the drawers and clear, green glass knobs for the door.
And, here is the finished product! I love how it turned out.
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