Living Room Dresser Before & After

This little project was literally months in the making.  It took me so long to finish that The Husband put a deadline on it and if I wasn't done he was going to take it to the curb to be thrown away.  Even thought I know for a fact it is too big and heavy for him to move himself.  It had been sitting unfinished in our garage all winter, which meant I couldn't park my car in the garage.

It started off as a CL find looking like this:

I wanted something with storage to use behind our couch as a sofa table.  I also needed something that was solid, so that I could put a lamp on it and hide the cord that has to run behind the table, under the couch and under a rug to reach an outlet.  Note to self, next time I build a house with a living room that floats in the middle of the room, get some outlets put in the floor.  Anyway, I paid $160 for the dresser, which I know is probably high.  But it is solid wood, the perfect size and I don't have time to look at CL all day and drive around the city so when I found what I wanted, I bought it.  Plus, I sold my old Pottery Barn sofa table for $75, the same amount I bought it for 5 years ago, so I felt pretty good about my new purchase.

When I got it, it looked like it had already been stripped and finished with a nice matte stain.  I wanted to leave the top wood and paint the rest a nice gray blue color.  So I lightly sanded the piece and got to painting.  I was so excited that I forgot about my plan to test one drawer and make sure my painting was working.  Bad move.  The paint did not stick to the wood at all and would practically come off if you looked at it too hard.  The Husband tried to tell me it would be fine, since I was going to "age" it anyway after I was done painting, but I pictured myself hitting it with the vacuum and scratching it all up and being sad.  Ok, let's be honest, I don't vacuum, but my lady does.

So I decided that it had to be stripped, primed, and repainted.  I had never stripped furniture before and let me tell you, I will never be doing it again.  I used paint with built in primer the first time but it obviously did nothing.  So after months of procrastinating I finally stripped the paint, primed it, and repainted.  Which is what I should have done in the first place I just thought I could cheat.

I ended up changing the blue color to be a little less blue by mixing in some tan I already had.  After I painted and aged it a bit, I used a Ralph Lauren glaze to add antique it even more.  It still looks much more blue inside the house than the paint looked outside, but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out and I can't wait to fill the drawers with all kinds of stuff that piles up in other places around the house.  The Husband has already claimed the top 2 for things like sunglasses, hats and man crap that piles up on the kitchen counter.

I think I will be taking a break from furniture painting for awhile.....