Ok, so after the novel that I wrote for my last post, I thought that I would give you guys a nice and easy DIY project for this one. I am currently head-over-heels in love with the shabby-chic style and I want every room in my house to have a touch of it. Once I saw how easy it was to distress some old frames and turn them into jewelry holders, I figured that a dresser would be no problem at all. However, I am new to this game of do-it-yourself decorating…well, let’s just say that it wasn’t hard, but I definitely learned a few things. Anyway, here is the before picture of said dresser:
I bought this dresser when we lived in Denver off of craigslist – it smelled like smoke and was the original medium-stained wood. So, I painted it with kills, then white paint. This was truly my first DIY furniture project 3 years ago. Anyway, I wanted to fill in all of the cracks and make sure that there was an even coat of paint. That sounds easy enough, right? Not really, I might have put like 10 coats of paint on there so that whenever you set something on it for more than 5 minutes it would get a little stuck…even 3 years later. I also did not have the heart to paint over this little gem on the back of the dresser, if anyone knows anything about this, please let me know, I’ve always been a little curious.
Ok, so what I have learned from the picture frames is that the details are the most important part when shabby-ing it up. And this dresser has some pretty awesome detailing.
So, I started with the same sandpaper sponges that I use for the frames and they worked pretty good for the details, but then I moved onto the sheets of a rougher grain sandpaper for the top of the dresser and for the front of the drawers.
I then proceeded to get a little carried away and thought that the front of the dresser drawers needed some wood showing through. However, once I finished the top drawer, I didn’t like how it looked. That’s ok, I covered it with a little extra white craft paint that I had lying around. It didn’t cover it completely and to be quite honest, I still need to get some truly white paint that matches the dresser to fix it, but in the meantime, it’s not that bad.
I previously had some modern-looking silver drawer pulls on the drawers, but what really helped to transform this dresser was some glass (or really plastic) knobs. I got these at target for $6 I think. Then I wanted to add a little bit of color, so I decided to change out some of the pulls with fabric bows.
To do this, I cut one-inch wide strips of fabric, then tied a knot in the center. I then fished the ends of the fabric through the hole for the knob screw from the back to the front so that the knot was still in the back of the drawer and the ends were hanging through the front.
Once the fabric was in the front of the drawer I tied it in a bow. This is nice too because if I ever wanted to change out the colors in the room, it would be very easy (and cheap) to change out the bows with a different colored fabric .
So, all finished-up, here it is. It still needs a little work on that dang top drawer, but that will have to wait until my procrastinating-butt can get to home depot…
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