I Painted a Dresser

It has been awhile.  Nothing much to report on the family front.  We made it through the frigid spring and it is finally HOT outside.  I love it.  I feel so much more motivated when I don't have to bundle up and be miserable outside.  Not that I ever go outside unless I have to.

I made something pretty and thought I would share.  We have these ugly old dressers in our bedroom that I bought at UI Surplus when I first moved here.  They lived through many years of dorm room torture and, needless to say, are not in the best shape, aesthetically anyway.  They are decent as far as dressers go.  Not falling apart.  Hold clothes.

But they are ugly.  Here is one of them (ignore the massive pile of laundry):

The tops are scratched to hell.

We've been using these for, oh... seven plus years.  Since beautiful matching bedroom furniture will not be in our budget until Lucy is a rich, successful doctor who buys it for us, I thought it was time to finally do something about them.  Staining was out of the question.  I was not going to put in the effort to completely strip the dressers to their bare wood.  Besides, paint is so much more fun.  So I sanded it down just to smooth it out.

Sanding with a palm sander makes life so much easier.  It's kind of fun until you have to clean it up.  Speaking of which, mine is still sitting out on the back porch waiting for me to clean it up.

The came time for a trip to the home improvement store.  We needed to buy some replacement wood for our front porch steps (that is Cory's project) and Lowe's is much more "needing to get stuff cut" friendly, so we headed north instead of going up the street to Menard's.  Of course, choosing paint color is the worst thing ever.  Hundreds of shades of every color imaginable.  I had to narrow it down before we got there.  My bedroom walls are a blue gray color.  The color is pretty enough, but also pretty limiting on color coordination - I didn't want a boring brown, black or gray.

So I needed inspiration.  And what is better for inspiration then the holy grail of DIY - Pinterest!  Those of you who are my Pinterest friends know that I pin way too much.  All of the time.  And one pin that I really loved was this one:

The color is perfect.  It is happy, and cheerful, not remotely boring, but it also isn't too overwhelming.  I had to recreate it.

I should have taken a photo of the 700 different shades of yellow Lowe's had to offer.  After staring at them for about 20 minutes, Cory and I managed to narrow it down to this chip:

It is on the National Historic Register of approved colors to paint your house if you live in a historical neighborhood, so I thought I couldn't go wrong.  As I found out when we went through the check-out, apparently choosing a color on the National Historic Register of approved colors to paint your house if you live in a historical neighborhood means the chip is special.  And special paint chips can only be made with special bases.  Special bases that cost $35 a gallon.  Shit, I wish I had asked how much that paint was going to cost before getting it mixed.  Well, on the plus side, my ghetto dressers are going to shine, damnit!

So I primed (Josie helped).

I used one coat of primer on the base of the dresser and ended up needing two coats of paint, so I used two coats on primer on the drawers, thinking I would only need one coat of paint.  Nope, still needed two.

Once the primer dried, it was time for the fun part - color!  I love opening a brand new can of paint.  I am nuts and absolutely love painting walls.  The fumes over the years have probably warped my brain.

I was a little worried at first about the color after the first coat.  Did I like it?  I wasn't sure.  Also, I learned that painting outside sucks when it is hot.  The paint was drying too quickly and my second coat wasn't going on smoothly at all.  I moved inside to paint the drawers.  Temperature control is the best.

So after some more painting, drying, and re-installation of hardware (I kept the original hardware because I sort of liked it and it didn't cost me more to reuse it), I had my finished dresser:

And you know what?  I LOVE IT!  The color looks great with the blue walls, and it just has this brand new shininess to it.  A million times better than what it was for the last 7+ years.  Lucy even likes it.  In fact, she likes it so much that she kissed it.  She was probably just happy that I was finished and she got her mommy back.

I still have to paint the other dresser, but it shouldn't take too long.  After both are painted, I am going to have about 9/10ths of a gallon of yellow semi-gloss left.  At $35, this stuff isn't going to be wasted.  I have the feeling yellow is going to be popping up a lot in my house over the next few months.