Shabby Chic Dresser

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.