Part of my preparations for moving included some home-improvement projects that have long been on my list. On the top of this list was to strip my great-grandma's old dresser of it's ugly gray paint and restore it to it's original beauty. I wasn't exactly sure what that original beauty would look like, but it turned out it was in fact quite beautiful.
Stripping paint from old furniture is not a task for the faint of heart though. It is one of the most tedious, mundane tasks you can imagine. It took me 2-3 rounds of glopping stripping agent onto the dresser and chiseling away the paint to get down to the wood. And don't even get me started on the areas that have grooves in them. They were a pain in the butt! I can't even imagine how painfully slow it would be to strip a true antique dresser with detailed carvings. In fact, I'm quite sure I would have given up if my dresser were any more detailed than it was...and it wasn't hardly detailed at all.
I would give you the step-by-step 'how to' of stripping and staining dressers, but honestly, I just don't feel like it. It's been a long day. So this is what you can do instead: Google 'how to strip a dresser.' You will find all you need to know there. When you are finished with that step, you can then type in 'how to stain a dresser,' and all that information will be provided as well, if it wasn't already provided along with the stripping instructions. You can add finishing touches to your project by replacing old-worn out handles and knobs with brand new hardware. I finished my project by replacing the lovely old orange-ish plastic handles that were broken and duct taped together with some nice, new metal detailed handles.
Check out the before and after photos of my project below:
{before}
{after}
{the detail on the hardware}
The next project on the list was to sew one of those plastic bag dispensers. I'm not sure of the proper name, or if there even it one, but they are the hanging bags that you load from the top with plastic bags, and when needed, a plastic bag is pulled out of a hole at the bottom (you'll see in a minute if you're feeling clueless right now). Anyway, I had seen these as finished products before, but never had I seen a sewing plan for one. Nor did I have a sewing machine or any clue how to use elastic in sewing. Nonetheless, I bought the fabric and elastic to make one, and I did it. I thought it all out very thoroughly in my head, but I was still super surprised when it turned out as well as it did. And using the elastic went much smoother than expected. Check it out (and keep in mind this was completely hand-sewn so it's not perfect, by any means).
{you've seen these, right?}
Sadly, I do not have any before photos of this last project. If you can imagine though, the piece of furniture was a shade darker gray than the dresser from the first project, kind of a charcoal gray. This particular piece of furniture is a small night stand (I figure) that I am using for my bathroom. After moving into my new apartment I discovered there was no place in my bathroom to store all of my lotions and hair supplies like curling irons, blow dryers, and brushes, so I bought this stand for that purpose. I found it at a second-hand store in Colorado Springs called Thrifty Ricky's, the same place I found my little dining room table, which I love.
Anywho, dark gray was just not going to work in my relatively bright bathroom, so I decided I was going to paint it all one color, but paint the drawer a different color (an idea I was entertaining with my dresser from project #1; I'm definitely glad I decided to strip that though). I ended up going with white for the majority of the stand and blue for the drawer. The blue matches my shower curtain and rug, the major sources of color in the bathroom. I didn't put quite as much energy into this project, thinking to myself 'it is just a bathroom; who's really going to see it that often?' Also, this lack of effort is really only apparent if you are looking at the stand closely; then you will see the area where paint dripped (from the previous owner's work; I couldn't get it to sand down and like I said, I didn't try too hard) and the fact that the paints are two different finishes (white is glossy, blue is flat; it was cheaper to buy a sample of blue paint and they only come in flat finish). Even though it's not perfect, I'm very happy with it.
Anywho, dark gray was just not going to work in my relatively bright bathroom, so I decided I was going to paint it all one color, but paint the drawer a different color (an idea I was entertaining with my dresser from project #1; I'm definitely glad I decided to strip that though). I ended up going with white for the majority of the stand and blue for the drawer. The blue matches my shower curtain and rug, the major sources of color in the bathroom. I didn't put quite as much energy into this project, thinking to myself 'it is just a bathroom; who's really going to see it that often?' Also, this lack of effort is really only apparent if you are looking at the stand closely; then you will see the area where paint dripped (from the previous owner's work; I couldn't get it to sand down and like I said, I didn't try too hard) and the fact that the paints are two different finishes (white is glossy, blue is flat; it was cheaper to buy a sample of blue paint and they only come in flat finish). Even though it's not perfect, I'm very happy with it.
I'm working on one more major project right now. Who knows how long it will be until that is finished, but you can rest assured, when it is finished there will be pictures.
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