Furniture Makeovers

I've seen to come into possession with some furniture that's needed a little bit of lovin'. To be honest, a lot of the furniture in our house could use some lovin'. Most of it has either been given to us freely or purchased for pennies at thrift stores & I seem to have a slight addiction to acquiring lonely goodwill pieces (um, we have at least 6 mis-matched wooden chairs, not including our 4 that go with our dining room table...)

Lately, I purchased one dresser & was given another right around the time that I saw something inspiring on Pinterest (shocking, I know). I've wanted to paint our kitchen table for some time, so I thought I would experiment first on a dresser & then make my way through painting all 3 pieces. I failed to take a "before" picture of both dressers, but thanks to ebay, found some similar-looking pieces. I'll show you the pics first & then go into some detail for what I did.

Dresser #1

Before

After

Check out the shiny top

Kitchen Table

Before

After

Dresser #2

A similar-looking dresser for this before pic

After

The majority of my inspiration came from Centsational Girl (check out her detailed instructions for what primer, paint, brushes, rollers & finishing wax to use, as well as very clear instructions). I echo her high quality choice for materials. I was very happy with the Benjamin Moore paint that I used for the 2 dressers (they are the same color) but was EXTREMELY disappointed with the other paint we chose for the dresser **(I will get back to you with the brand- it was from Menards). My frugality got the best of me on that one, so I hereby swear on Benjamin Moore paint for all other future projects. Believe me, the extra cash you put towards it will be worth it! The paint we got from Menards didn't cover well & it wasn't as black as we were expecting, whereas with Benjamin Moore, I only had to do 1 coat, with just a few touch ups. I also fell in love with Zinsser primer-- it's so thick, covers evenly, & dries extremely fast.

OK, so for the 2nd dresser, I got the idea from California Callahans to add texture to my dresser to make it look more antique-y. I didn't exactly follow the same process they did, (they used wallpaper & did a more intense process), but the results came out to be similar. I first primed the dresser, then mod podged lace onto the drawers, & then painted it (btw, you can make your own mod podge by adding equal parts white glue & water, who knew?)

For both of my dressers, I got the knobs/handles at hobby lobby. If you do something like this, just make sure you bring your old knobs with you so you get ones that will be the exact measurements (whoopsie).

I'm pretty happy with the results & now Ruby has a dresser in her room (finally), we have a nice way to organize some of her toys & dinner linens, & we have a way less crappy looking kitchen table (even if it didn't turn out the way I was hoping). If you have any questions on the process or materials I used, please post in the comments below. I might have been distracted by a cranky 17-month-old while writing this post!

**Edit 1.22.2013: The paint that I would NOT recommend is Pittsburg's Grand Distinction. I would not recommend this paint at all (I just realized that is the same brand that we used for our horribly painted bathroom), but especially on furniture. Stick with the good stuff & you won't be disappointed!