Before and After Dresser

When your family grows, your “stuff” grows too.  I sometimes just sit on the couch or in the chair and marvel at the amount of stuff in our house:  books, games, shoes, toys, games, underwear!  The list goes on and on.  It can overwhelm me, because most times it is not where it is supposed to be.  Most often it is strewn from one end of the house to the other.  When I am on the verge of a meltdown I just sit and look at that same stuff, the stuff that is about to send me into a complete cleaning frenzy, and take a mental inventory of the things that would not be here if the kids were not here either.  The house empties out pretty quickly!  Suddenly, I am on the verge of another melt down…one of a whole different sort.  Oh, how sad it will be when the book shelves are neatly lined and not haphazard because we have to keep the school library books separate from the public library books, and the public library books separate from our personal library books.  Oh, how sad it will be when I open one of the doors of the built-ins and I don’t have to brace myself for the tumbling of puzzle pieces.  Oh, how sad it will be, when the kids leave for school and I am not gathering up jammie tops, bottoms, and slippers from one end of the great room to the other.  Oh, how sad it will be, when the nook under the computer desk isn’t jam packed with dolls, doll carriers, and an assortment of blankets.  I would never wish any of the stuff be gone, I just wish we could contain it!!!  Oh my, I just got off on a tangent!  All of that to say, whenever I bring a piece of furniture into this house, I ask myself this:  Will this help contain the stuff or will it add to it? 

When I spotted this dresser I knew immediately where it was going to go and what was going to go in it.  It was not pretty when I found it, but I knew it had potential.  I loved the curved drawers and the key holes on the front of them. I am also a sucker for curvy legs, which the front ones have a little of.  From the pictures it might look like natural wood, but it was painted an ugly mustard color and then brushed with a darker brown over top to try and make it look like a wood grain.  Under that really bad faux paint job was another coat of rust colored paint.  I stripped the dresser down to the original wood and then painted all but the top.  

I painted the “body” of the dresser in Dover White (Pratt & Lambert), which is what our cabinets and trim color is.  I considered several different colors, but I just love a white, distressed piece of furniture.  I decided to stain the top in an ebony stain to give it a little more character.  I love how the dark top and the distressed marks compliment each other.  You can see the top better in the next picture.  From the pictures it is hard to see the wood grain, it almost looks like I painted it black, but the ebony stain does still let the beautiful wood grain come through. 

The very best part of the dresser….it is multi-purpose!   It serves as an end-table and storage for lots of stuff!  The bottom drawer is filled to the brim with all our wooden puzzles while the top drawer is full of crayons, markers, glue and paper…all organized into baskets, of course.  Great in theory, but we all know where they will end up:) 

 

Cost Breakdown: (I like to do this because this is what the real DIY bloggers do:))

dresser:  $15.00 (from a local second hand store)

Paint:  Free (already owned)

Minwax ebony stain with polyurethane all in one (loved using this product): $8.95 from our local hardware store

Hardware:  free (left over from kitchen remodel)

_________________________________________

Total:  $29.95  $23.95  Thanks B.  Math was never my subject!