Ugly dresser turns CUTE

This is a story of doubt, regret, blood, sweat and tears.

 If you didn't know I have three boys.  I live in a 3 bedroom house.  This means that at any given time 2 of my boys have to share a room.  This has occured in a couple of different configurations, but this summer my oldest moved into his own room.  In the past my two older boys shared a room and in that room was 2 dressers.  The youngest was in a room by himself and since he had little clothes I just folded them and put them on a shelf in the closet.  When my oldest moved into that room the shelves were not going to work, so he needed a dresser.  Now pre-blog reading I would have thought that I had to spend like a thousand dollars on a good dresser.  Now I know that I have the ability to do things, cool things.

One day after dropping the older boys off at school,  the little one and I stopped off at an estate sale.  Believe it or not I had never been to an estate sale before.  The boy and I ventured around the house looking for treasure and I was about to give up, then in the basement there it was.

The ugliest dresser I had ever seen.  But is had dove tails all the way around the drawers and it was solid.  I knew that it would hold up to my 7 year old.  Price $17 and it was going home with me!!

Now I have to tell you that I did this project in August in southern Kansas, in the hottest summer in 31 years.  This is where the sweat comes into the story.

Yes the temperature says 110 degrees!! Nothing will stand in my DIY way.

So I drug the blue dresser to the back yard and began sanding...and sanding...and when I got tired I made the 2 year old sand.

Not really,  he just wanted a turn (because doesn't it look fun?)  Trust me his help lasted as long as it took to take this picture.

Remember the dresser drawers in this picture it will lead to the tears portion of the tutorial.

So when I got it sanded to a point that I was happy with the smoothness I painted it with a black tinted primer.  I don't have pictures of that because I was so hot I was delirious and forgot.  I left them outside to dry that night.  The next morning I headed out back to begin the painting process, at 8:30 am it was a balmy 91 degrees and too hot to paint outside.  My husband was out of town with the military and I had no help getting the dresser in the house.  However the desire to get back into the air conditioning was enough to grant me super human strength and I carried it in by myself. 

Inside I gave it 2 coats of Tuxedo Tie an Eddie Bauer color from Lowes sanding in between coats.  Again no pictures (at this point I just wanted it done and to take a nap).

I didn't want to just have a plain dresser, and I love when things have letters or numbers on them so I decided to add some numbers to the dresser drawers.

 I printed out numbers in a font and size that I liked onto card stock.  I cut out the numbers and made a stencil.  I took a pencil and traced the numbers onto the dresser drawers.  Then I took some cream colored paint and hand painted the numbers onto to the drawers in "order". 

When that was done I gave the whole thing a gazillion coatsof Polyrcyllic, sanding in between coats.  Apparently it is supposed to be better over paint than polyurethane.  Discoloration.  I didn't love the Polycryllic.  I was using a foam roller and it left like a million bubbles that left the surface bumpy when it dried.  Maybe it was user error but whatever I tried nothing fixed the problem.

I love the way that it turned out.  Are you ready for the tears portion?  I thought that I had kept the drawers in order...but at some point the top right and bottom right got switched.  The numbers were supposed to read 03 23 04 my sons birthday.  Oops!!  Someday when the hurt goes away I will sand off the numbers, repaint, and renumber in the right order, it still just hurts too much. 

My husband got regular updates on the "dresser" by phone.  I found out later that he had serious doubts about how cool it would be, but now he totally loves it.

My regret:  I wasted so much time thinking that I had to spend a bunch of money to get my son a cool dresser that would last!!

Hope you enjoyed visiting!!  Feel free to leave a comment...I promise to read them in the right order :) 

Sunny
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 Primitive & Proper Piece of Work Wednesday