Linen Dresser

     In our new apartment we have a considerable lack of closet space, despite the apartment being twice as large. For me, this was a great opportunity to get my hands on a fresh piece of furniture to refinish. Enter this piece:

(excuse Elena who can't resist climbing on everything that walks through the door!)

     For 14.99 this piece was a steal at our local Red, White, and Blue thrift store (one of my favorites). The drawers opened and closed incredibly smoothly, all the hardware was intact. On the downside, we have some chipping on the edge of one of the drawers, and there was a lot of sticker residue and crayon on the inside of the drawers
     I picked up this piece along with another dresser (my husband also said we weren't buying furniture that day, famous last words!) so I didn't exactly have a plan for it's location until I realized it was the perfect size to act as a buffet piece in our dining room.

     As you can see, the wall behind the table is very blah. We had some white and wood tones going on, with some greige striped cushions, so I began my search for more inspiration.
Enter:

Source: frazzledgrace.com

     I really loved the way the white played with the greys and wood tones, my piece has an incredibly different shape, but I thought the color scheme was on point. As such I collected my products, I used one sample of Valspar Snowcap White, and Rust-oleum Weathered Grey stain. I started by removing the existing varnish and stain with some generic stripper:

     We left the stripper to sit while we ran to the store for our paint and stain; we tried covering the stripper with plastic wrap, but when we returned the stripper was all dried up and didn't allow us to scrape the gunk off, so another coat had to be done. Word to the wise: don't leave your stripper to sit and dry unless you like doing more work. After stripping the wood we cleaned it up, and sanded. I taped off the sides of the dresser to imitate the detailing on the inspiration picture and painted. I love this white! It will definitely become my go-to white color when I don't want to use spray paint. I put on two thin coats and it was great. The drawers were entirely white, and then the panels on the side were white.
     The stain on the other hand was a nightmare. When I put it on, it turned purple instead of grey. The wood doesn't look like it was any kind of cherry colored or mahogany colored stain, but what was left in the wood resulted in purple stain. This is where many people get discouraged, and one of the wisest pieces of advice the blogosphere has given me is that sometimes you just have to go with it. I figured at this point rather than starting over, I would see where the piece took me. I took the leftover white and watered it down and whitewashed all the areas I wanted to look "weathered grey." One thin coat over the whole thing took away the purple hue, and then a few carefully placed heavy white areas produced a result I was happy with:

(We also painted an accent wall behind the dresser, the color is a mixture of many leftover paints)

The wood tone showing through ended up really working for me! 

(Here you can see the tiny chip in the second drawer. I felt it wasn't very noticeable so I left it as is. Here you can also see the detail of the stained stripe down the side, my piece did not have a separate piece of wood like many do, so I faked it!)

     I used some white vinegar, warm water and dish soap to clean off the handles, and used double sided tape and scrapbooking paper to line the drawers and cover the crayon:

     I did not end up covering this in polycrylic like I normally do, and so far it is holding up wonderfully. I strongly encourage everyone to protect their pieces with a good polycrylic if it is going to be a high use item. We sadly do not use our dining room very often as husby and I work opposite schedules. Below is the dining room as it stands today. This room is one of my favorite's in our home, probably because we never use it and it always looks clean!

Until next time,