Because Grandma Gave It To Me, That's why!

Years ago my grandmother gave me a three drawer dresser because I happened to mention that I thought it was cute...

Right away she said, "You like it? Take it." She says that all the time, so you have to be careful about what you complement her on. If you tell her you like her blouse or earrings, same thing. "You like it? Take it" Suddenly she's insisting you pack a bag with all the things you said you liked. Aye, Grandma!

Anyway, she gave me this dresser and for years it served as my tv stand in my bedroom. When I got married, it was one of the things I wanted to take with me, but I knew it needed a little bit of a makeover.

Here it is before: (I forgot to take a picture of it before taking the drawers out)

See? It has a cute shape, but the paint has got to go!! Pronto! Grandma says that a friend of hers painted it black for her. The paint looked like a dark chocolate color..somewhere between black & brown..closer to yuck, after all these years of tv holding... It looked so beat up & old that several people told me I should just junk it and buy a new one.

Of course I said, NO. As in no way Jose..uh-uh! Not gonna happen! Grandma had given me this dresser & I was going to make it beautiful...even if it killed me. In case you haven't realized yet, I don't like being told what to do or not to do for that matter...I have a bit of a problem with authority if you must know. lol..just kidding..I'm a total sweetheart...hmm..what to believe, right?

So if I was going to prove people wrong...it was time to get down to business.

I took the drawers out and stripped the paint off. My plan was to strip the whole dresser body & drawers so that I could stain it to match our other pieces of furniture in our bedroom. Our other stuff is a deep red mohogany.

three drawers & ugly brown knobs

that bubbly stuff is the paint stripper going to work

So after many, many, many coats of stripper on the drawers, I realized that stripping the dresser body was going to take waaaay too long..

So PLAN B was born...I decided painting the dresser body & drawers was the way to go. When DIYing, you have to have a plan B because plan A doesn't always work. In fact, I find that it hardly ever does, but that's ok.

I decided to paint the body the same color of the accent wall in our bedroom, Valspar's Flint (a deep grey,) partly because it would stand out against the lighter wall color & mostly because that happened to be the paint I had handy. Now I mentioned that this is an old dresser, right?  So the drawers were a bit...umm..we'll say..falling apart, crumbling in my hands...loose?...Nothing this DIYer can't fix & definitely nothing I'll admit to the "non-believers!" Those people that said it couldn't be done; that is wasn't worth the effort..ppfuh! What do they know?? Nothing, I tell ya!

So I glued all the seams so that they would be re-enforced and my undies wouldn't fall out the bottom..That would be bad! After the glue dried, I started painting the drawers first since they were already stripped & sanded. I had sanded out all the dings & scratches using a 220 grade sandpaper for my Black & Decker Mouse sander...I love that thing. Its the only kind of mouse I don't mind having in my house. The others send me running!!
Here's what I used:

After setting the drawers aside to dry, I started in on the body of the dresser. I still wanted a bit of the red mohogany, so that this piece wouldn't completely clash with the other furniture in the room. I decided that no matter what the top of the dresser looked like, I was going to stain it. I stripped it, sanded it &...found a bunch of permanent stains. Grrr..I knew they were permanent because I tried, repeatedly, to sand them out...didn't happen. Oh well, I had already said I was going to stain it no matter what, so I wasn't going to move on to plan C. I was sticking to plan B & that was that!! After sanding the top,  I lightly sanded the body & then painted the body it's cool new "flint" color.

This is what the top looked like:

Can you see the stains??

Ahh..there they are! Still, they aren't that bad...really!

Especially when you compare them to this other beauty mark:

Maybe the new drawer pulls will distract the eye from the missing corner..you think??

See? What missing corner?? Barely even noticable!

I don't see it anyway..

This project took a bit of time since the rain and my CTEBVI conference got in the way, but I think it was so worth it. I love having something that belonged to my grandmother. I mean, I know its not from when she was a girl & it really has no sentimental value for her, but it does for me now..it was grandma's & now it's mine..someday it'll go to...I don't know..some possible child yet to be born, who knows?!

For the time being, it'll live here:

Lots better, right? I certainly think so..I bet Grandma will too...

Ahh...feels good to be finished..

Wonder what else I can re-finish...hmmm...

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