Heavily distressed dresser

This week, I've been planning, painting, and prepping like crazy. I have another week and some change in days before I move into my booth at Lisa's II.

I've been working on a chair, a bench, two dressers, a bed, a mirror, a lamp, and an end table this week. Busy, busy. Today I'm going to show you a dresser. Unfortunately, since my battery was dead while I was working on this, I don't have any great progress or a really great before picture.

Remember my post about all the furniture I picked up at one spot? Well, this little dresser was the one that started it all.

There she is, upside down in all her dirty, cute glory.

Dirty? Did I mean to put that there? Umm, yes. It's amazing what you can't see, until you clean. I went through half a roll of paper towels cleaning her off. I used a scrub brush and a mixture of water with a few drops of dish soap to scrub all the gunk and grime off that had built up over the years.

As I cleaned the little dresser off, I started to see a lot of imperfections. I had glue down veneer, repair/replace the drawer slides, pull old contact paper out of drawers...the list goes on. The most disappointing bit is that I had to fill a big chipped out spot on the dresser top, which meant that I couldn't just stain the top like I had originally planned. It would have to be painted.

Recently, I saw a desk that Little Miss Penney Wenny finished, which led me to the beautiful dresser by the talented Miss Mustard Seed, Marian Parsons. Both really inspired me to paint this little dresser the way I did. I love that Marian allows imperfections show through, and lets an old dresser be just that.  Old.  Imperfect.  Wonderful.

I let this dresser be just that.  I covered the entire dresser in a really thin wash of Louis Blue. Then I hand painted the details and covered the top again with Old White.

I heavily distressed the entire dresser, then went over it with a clear wax, and a dark wax on the details, imperfections, and exposed wood.

So, what do you think? Love it, or hate it? If you love it, tell me! If you hate it, well, be nice.


Until next time,



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