Thursday, June 13, 2013

the one with all the upcycling

Until a month ago,
I hadn't owned a real dresser since my freshman year of college. And wait, now that I think about it - my college (Go Dawgs) owned that in the first place. So basically, I've been dresser-less since high school.

But a month ago, my dresser-less fate changed. We found a nice old wooden dresser on the side of the road and we did what any other free-loading, poor campus minister couple would do - we adopted it. And let me tell you, it was an extremely hard piece of furniture to adopt. J had to hop into the trunk and hold it in place. Chivalry is not dead:)


But then came the difficult task of updating the ancient, moth-ball smelling dresser. 

Before:

Our bedroom already has plenty of wood to go around, so we decided to paint the dresser and bring some more color to our relatively neutral room. I've always wanted to do some furniture updating but I've never been brave enough. But lucky for me, I basically married a contractor (not really, but seriously). 

So if you're new to up-cycling, here's what you'll need: 
1. Sandpaper
2. Different sized brushes
3. Quart of paint (and a sample size of accent paint if you are doing detailing)
4. New knobs

After:


This was taken right after we finished painting the dresser. We used Glidden Tropical Lagoon and Muslin (for the accent) and only needed one coat. And one more thing about the knobs - I originally wanted Anthro ones that would have cost $8 a pop - but instead, J convinced me that these $1 knobs from Home Depot were a better deal. I think he was right:) 


The final product in our new bedroom. Hooray for up-cycling and new apartments!

For those of you wondering if you can do something like this - you can! Since this painting adventure, I've taken to painting soooo many things. It's becoming a problem. Really. 

Happy Friday!
xoxo
A+J