Dresser Re-do: Part 2

Part two of the dresser re-do as promised. It took a little longer than I anticipated due to a heat wave which made swimming priority number one! But here goes it...

The next thing I had to do was prime this bad-mamma-jamma. It took a little chunk of time because of all the trim that is on the drawers front and there is also some wood detailing on the front side of the dresser that I had to be careful with...nobody likes drip marks! I went with one coat of primer didn't seem necessary to do anymore than that. Here's a picture of the pieces all primed and gross looking.




Then it was time to paint. I used the Ace Hardware brand of paint in the color "Cannonball" with a flat sheen. Two coats of paint was definitely necessary. Again, it was too horribly time consuming but I wanted to make sure that I did a really good job and covered all the surfaces evenly. After two coats of paint, I was starting to get excited! I could see it starting to slowly but surely come together.




Now the scary part...polyurethane is scary stuff to me. I don't know why but I always feel like it's going to mess up all my hard work. Plus the water-based poly that I have is sortof white in color (it looks like fat-free milk) so that made me even more scared. I decided to just try it out on one drawer in case it was horrible and then go from there. I have to say, that after the first coat of poly I was disappointed, almost crying disappointed. I felt tired and defeated and like I didn't want to have to start all over again to try and figure this out. Here's the scary proof:



I decided to forge ahead and tried a second coat. It made all the difference. So then I had one drawer front done and just had to get busy with the rest of pieces. It didn't take a super long time to finish but then it had to dry. It was easy to be patient since Loren was out of town; I wasn't going to carry this big ol' thing into the house by myself!



While the poly was drying I got started on the new draw pulls. I had found some really great square pulls at Lowe's but they were way more money than I was willing to spend. This was a bummer because once I get my mind stuck on something I don't move away from it too easy. I went to Target to browse their knobs and found some great options but not available in the color I needed. I decided to go ahead and buy them and whip out my handy spray paint. I know it's kind of silly to buy something brand new and paint it but it was the easiest solution for me. It was real easy...just laid out all the knobs and started spraying!





By the time Loren got home everything was dry and he put the pulls on the drawers for me. Nothing too exciting there, just screw them on. That was it! All done! Here it is in the dining room!





And because I know sometimes people like to see a before and after, and I aim to please...

Before:


After:


I love it! I'm incredibly happy with the way it turned out. We already started loading it up with goodies! I do plan to line the drawers but I needed a little break from this project. So...what do you think?!

And you can catch part one of the makeover here.