The Art of Dress(ers)

My poor husband has been using a podium shelf for a dresser for almost a year. When I saw a gaudy bright yellow dresser at Goodwill for $7, I thought I might know just the man who could use it. But the yellow had to go. I collected inspiration photos for what I wanted to do on the dresser for awhile before I finally decided to go with inspiration that was already in our bedroom - our bedspread.



Here's how the magic happened. Check out what the dresser looked like before:

When we took the drawers out to sand them we found this message inside:

Baby D - 1982. I have some 30 year old baby's dresser. :-) I actually really appreciate this little note. It makes me imagine an expecting couple out in their garage getting their new nursery ready - such a cute picture, until they chose this way overstimulating yellow. I wonder if that baby ever slept a wink. Where is Baby D now??

The knobs were all painted on so I had to knock them off with the end of a screwdriver. TJ had to fill some holes in the top of the dresser with wood filler to level things out.

I love the stark difference in the color comparison in these pictures. The gray is just so much more relaxing!

After the dresser was all painted gray (the same gray as the walls in our bedroom - Behr's Gentle Rain) it was time to make some artsy magic.

Needless to say I was very anxious especially when it comes to painting skinny lines. I took solace in the fact that the flowers on our bedspread look sort of wiggly and hand drawn so if it turned out awful I could just claim it was the look I was going for. I decided to just go for it and made a quick drawing of a flower on the bedspread to use as a reference as a drew the flowers out on the drawer fronts.
 

I used pencil first, then went over my lines with metallic paint and a skinny paintbrush. I used a polka-dotter (seen 2 pictures down) to make the dots in the centers.

The last step was painting the knobs and putting them back on. I used Krylon metallic silver spray paint to quickly cover them.

See the resemblance?

I think the actual drawers are much appreciated in TJ's closet - not to mention how much cleaner it looks to not have open shelves in there any more! And it sure looks good with that swanky new floor. :-)