This one took FOREVER. Seven cans of spray paint and about a million trips to Wal-Mart later, our dresser is finally refinished! When we arrived in Florida, I knew it would be my only chance to make it over, so our clothes have been stacked haphazardly around our bedroom waiting to have a home.
We inherited the dresser from the wonderful Kaitlyn, who lived in our VA apartment before us and left it behind because it was a behemoth to move. We didn't want to get rid of it, obviously--it's a free piece of furniture!--but I had to do something with it because it really was not jiving with my style.
The very first thing I did was remove the hard water etching design from the vanity mirror.
I was pretty amazed at how easily it came off. I used a fine-grain sander and some water and it disappeared! (See upper left corner of the mirror for an in-progress section.)
And after:
Ta-da!
Next, I repainted the vanity section that sits on top of the dresser.
There isn't a "before" picture, but the whole thing was painted white and pretty much blended right into our apartment walls. I chose "almond" to give it some color without overtaking our other bedroom decorations--I briefly toyed with a darker brown, but it made our room look gloomy, so back to the almond! This (not very good) picture is somewhere between the white and the almond.
Next step: remove handles from drawers...
...and fill in decorative drawer grooves with wood putty.
(Here you can see the whiteness...and where I sanded off the rejected dark brown paint.)
The wood putty was SUCH a pain. Even after multiple applications and sandings, some areas still looked a little...odd...once painted over, but at that point it was way too late to turn back. At least no one will be looking at my dresser drawers up close, right?
Finally, it was time to paint everything over and attach new handles to the drawers.
Then came the (actual) dresser!
It had some stains that I sanded out and grooves that I filled in with (even more) wood putty. We really abused this thing in VA, probably because there was .2 inches of walking space between the bed and the dresser, leaving no buffer for accidental dings and spills. This is why they invented paint.
Once THAT was finished and re-painted, it was finally time to put everything together!
The finished product:
I wish I had a "before" picture of the whole thing, but this will have to do! Ignore the stuff in the mirror--those are the aforementioned homeless clothes. :)
Wow, reading this post makes it seem like I finished this whole project in like...a day. Maybe even a few hours. It took weeks, people! I had no idea how labor-intensive it would be, but it was totally worth it to save hundreds of dollars on a new dresser and vanity. In any case, I'm glad it's over, and I finished #61!
I remember what it looked like before and this new version of it is much more "you", if that makes sense.
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