Master Makeover: The Dresser

Our master bedroom is SO CLOSE to being done and I am getting very excited to share it! I'm hoping to have it wrapped up in the next week or two. I've still got to sew pillows, and reupholster and paint the ottoman, build brackets for my roman shades, hang roman shades and art, and then we will *sort of* be done!

I want to wrap up some of those projects before I show a picture of the room/bed but for now you can get a sneak peek of the wall colour we just painted. As a refresher, our master used to look like this.

Anyhoo, before you get to see the dresser makeover and wall colour, feast your eyes on this beauty.

Sorry for the terrible photo, but it's the only before photo I have. I found this narsty dresser on craigslist for free. We needed a new dresser, and this one seemed to have some potential. We picked it up and it was about 1000 times heavier than I thought. Even without the drawers.

I was excited to get to work on it, so I used my electric sander and gave her a nice buff. The top was a varnished laminate and I decided that removing the varnish would be too much work, so I just sanded that as well and painted over it. I'm not a "by the books" painter so probably don't follow my lead. I definitely cut corners when it comes to painting furniture, especially free furniture, because I'm just not that attached to them.

I painted the body in the garage, and took the drawers out in the backyard to sand and spray paint.

Then this happened.

Our fur baby Sadie wanted to come play with me in the backyard while I worked away on the drawers. They were standing up so that the face of the drawer was pointing towards the sky, and balancing on the back on the cement patio. Long story short, a drawer fell down and crushed my little girl's foot. It was so heartbreaking hearing her cries and watching her hobble away. I can't even bare to think about it. Must. Stop. Now.

Anyways, along with the emotional pain of injuring her, we also were burdened with the financial pain of fixing her. Almost 500 beans.

This resulted in our "free" dresser costing us $500. In the back of my mind I couldn't help but think if I had just gone out and bought a dresser I actually liked I wouldn't have a broken wiener dog, but oh well, c'est la vie!

Back to the dresser. I used Antique White to paint the body and sprayed using the same colour for the solid wood drawers. Then I spray painted the original handles black to update the look a touch. It was okay. Meh.

I was too exhausted (and too upset from doggy-gate) to do anything else, so into the room she went. Didn't love it, but it did the trick.

When time came to update our bedroom, I knew I wanted to do something with the dresser. I found these pulls on ebay for $1.79 a piece from the Knob Shop.

They are AMAZING. I really love them, and they shipped to our US mailbox in a day. Seriously.

So I tried them out. What a difference! They really changed the whole look of the dresser.

Then I realized I only ordered 6. A bit of a blonde moment; I counted 6 drawers and ordered 6 knobs. Doh! I ordered the rest and again, they shipped insanely fast. Thank you Knob Shop!

Then life took over so I lived with the dresser looking like this for a week or so. I discussed with hubby about painting it white. He suggested a light grey. Mostly because we were out of white paint and we had light grey left over from our bathroom. Sure, why not?

I also thought a quick update would be to cover the curvy toe kick. A piece of wood nailed on and painted would make a world of a difference. I had my plan, just needed to find the time to do it (story of my life!).

Last night I was at a friend's for a Bachelorette viewing party, and when I came home, my hubby had done this.

He propped up the dresser so it could be painted in our room (waaaay too heavy to move back to the garage again) and he painted away in the light grey paint. He also covered the toe kick with the wood and replaced all my pulls.

 It's obviously not a perfect piece of furniture (note the uneven gaps) but can be fixed if we tighten up the tracks a bit I think). It just looks SO much better than that free $500 dresser looked a year ago. Want to see again? Not really? Too bad, here it is.

I will definitely take some more pics once it's cured and once I've had a chance to style it a bit. We have a big bulky TV that usually sits on it so I'm hoping I can get the hubby to wall mount it so it's out of the way. I'm just happy that I can finally say that I like our dresser. And it restores a bit of my faith in getting things from craigslist. Well, as long as you keep your animals out of harms way of course.

xo J