Dresser Makeover

Hello there! Hope your week is going well. I have another furniture makeover to show you. My friend, V told me she had an old dresser in her attic and wanted to know if I'd like to have it. Do you think I would turn down a piece of furniture? Not so much. V had her son help her load it into the back of her SUV and she drove it over to my house. So the two of us are trying to lift this big, heavy, solid maple dresser out of her car and carry it into the house. Somehow we got our wires crossed and we both picked up the same end instead of opposite ends (I know, it's hard to imagine, but we did it). So the dresser starts to fall..Anyway, we somehow got it into the house without killing ourselves or destroying the dresser. Too bad I don't have it on video...

Moving right along. So dresser was much nicer than I thought it would be. As noted, it's solid maple--a really nice piece of furniture, but it looked really dated. Now I forgot to take a good picture of it before I started, but this is what the finish and the hardware looked liked.

It had some really nice detailing and I thought it would look really nice in a light gray. So I started with a couple of coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen and gave it a light distressing.

I liked it, but I still felt like it was missing something. The detailing was so pretty, but it wasn't emphasized enough. I decided to add a wash of Old White. I put a couple of tablespoons of paint in a plastic cup and added about a 1/2 cup of water. I brushed it on and then wiped it off immediately. With a technique like this, you don't want it to start dripping. So work in small sections. I really concentrated on working the wash into the detailing.

This was more what I was looking for. I ended up reusing the original hardware. I painted it with Old White (full strength), let it dry a bit, then used a cloth to rub it off in some areas.

The Old White did a great job of emphasizing the detailing. This is another example of a project that ended up going in a different direction than I had originally planned. I think it's important when doing anything creative, to keep an open mind. The best projects are those that seem to evolve.