Best Dressed

Nope, not talking about that title - which I never won :) - in high school. I'm talking about my dresser transformation I was excited about doing in my last post. Well, I'm uber enthusiastic to announce that it's donnnnnnne!


Check it.

Remember the Before?

What a difference, right?!

Here's another angle of the newly dressed dresser. Please excuse the messiness on top. I'm currently brainstorming a way to declutter and neatly organize my perfumes and other lady like, getting ready items.

I'm BEYOND happy with how it turned out. I had a little set back during the transformation of the top of this piece. I thought I was sanding off the blue paint down to real wood when I discovered that it wasn't real wood after all. It's a fiber boardish material that I had to get clever with to make it look like wood.

It's hard to tell in the photo above, but in person you can see movement in the color that looks like real wood even though it's not. At first I hoped simply staining it the dark brown color I had would do the trick - no luck. Then I tried a glaze over top of that - no luck again. Then I got desperate and sprayed it with Rustoleum's oil rubbed bronze metallic spray paint. That looked cheesy.

I was about to give up and paint it the same color as the body of the dresser when I thought I'd try one more thing - another coat of the orginal stain I used, this time over top of the ORB spraypaint. IT WORKED! I don't know how, but it did. It gave it the lines you'd see in real wood, in the dark chocolate brown color I was hoping for. YIPEE!  A coat of polyurethane on top of that sealed and protected it nicely.

After painting the bottom half of the dresser an off-white color, I used a glaze treatment to hightlight the beautiful details this dresser has. See how the glaze just gives those details in the molding a little pop and dimension? Especially in the key hole shown in the photo below. It makes it look as though the piece has been here for a long time and gives it a nice aged look.



Inside the drawers, I lined it with sturdy wrapping paper that expressess how I feel about this new-and-improved dresser :)

Here's my old childhood, too-small-for-a-grown-up dresser:

And here's my new, grown-up antique dresser. Much improved, right? :)



Oh yeah, and you'll notice from the old dresser picture that the paint color in our master bedroom is now different too. It was out with the blue and in with the new when we painted it Flagstone by Martha Stewart about two weeks ago. But that's not all that's new. If you remember my to-do list for making over our master bedroom (from this post here), then you'll be happy to know that 8 of the 12 to-dos are checked off! :)

(red items still need to be done)

1- Paint our walls greige (a beige gray)

2- Paint the spindles on our bed ORB, and the wood parts distressed white.

3- Throw in a white 5x7 rug we currently have in an unused bedroom

4- Find a cool chair for the right corner of the bedroom

5- Find a craigslist dresser and tall wardrobe/armoire to make over

6- Make a starburst mirror similar to the Nester's 

7- Mount our TV to our wall over future dresser (which will be opposite the bed, above the new dresser) and create frame for it (so it looks more like a pice of art) Something like this:
    
8- Bleach the canvas drop cloth curtains a little lighter

9- Hang these JCP lights on either side of the bed (already ordered and got them at a fanTASTIC price!! :)



10- Move the old furniture pieces  into a spare bedroom/future kid's bedroom (done except for tall dresser.

11- Bring up end tables currently not being used downstairs and use them as nightstands 

12- Eventually re-finish the hardwood floors (in the rest of the house too) that are currently speckled orange and stain them a dark, rich, mocha.

Let's do a little before and after, shall we? Here goes...


BEFORE


AFTER
(with the bed centered on the left wall between the two windows)


Here's what was on this wall before moving the bed there:



Head and footboard BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE


AFTER

The other side of the room is a little messy and needs a bit more work. Please don't be offended by the over the shoulder boulder holder hanging from the tall dresser and the other clothes scattered across the arm chair :) That rolled up throw rug needs to get put down on the floor - I'll probably do that tonight actually.

And our woven clothes hamper has seen better days. The lid has caved in and one of the handles has fallen off, making it a bit tricky to carry the basket down to the basement on laundry days.

Here's a before and after of a slight bedding change.



I borrowed the euro shams from the guest bedroom to put on the old large pillows along with the other little white pillow. I got the cute yellow rosette pillow and yellow & gray pillow sham at Tar-jey. I already had the button pillows (they're from Kmart) and I got rid of the body pillow (which now resides in the guest bedroom).

Well, that's all I have for now. I've got a few other projects in the works and I'm waiting on warmer weather to get some of them wrapped up. I'll post about those as I complete them. Hope you enjoyed seeing the dresser transformation as much as I enjoyed doing it. I'll leave you with a room photo that just makes me smile.

Happy Thursday all!

~Amy

Linking up here!