Dresser Makeover Before & After.

As you know, we have both been spending the last month working on giving our homes a little makeover! We are getting very close to finishing up and sharing our home tours with you, so until then we thought it would be fun to share a peek into a project that we have both been working on: re-doing our dressers! We weren't very excited about the look of our old dressers so instead of going out and buying new ones, we decided to give them new life with a fresh coat of stain and paint!

I picked this dresser up at a  local Goodwill store about a year ago for only $3! (Seriously. You can't beat that price!) The wood wasn't in the greatest condition so I knew that it would eventually have to be re-done, but it had a great overall shape with cute simple mid-century handles, so I could see that it had a lot of potential. 

First of all, I decided to stain the dresser a darker shade to match the rest of my bedroom furniture (the original blonde wood was sticking out like a sore thumb!) So after lots of sanding, lots of staining, and lots of help from my lovely husband (thanks Emery!), the new dresser was starting to take shape! 

After the stain dried, I knew that I wanted to do something different and not just leave it plain brown, so after brainstorming and looking at 1960's home decor photos for inspiration, I decided on painting coral and turquoise diamonds on the drawers! So we taped off 3 diamonds across 3 sets of drawers using Frog Tape (this is a stronger version of painting tape that won't allow any paint to leak underneath, which was very important for a project like this.) Then I just used leftover paint that from my living room to paint the diamonds. After the paint dried I added on the original tiny circle handles and 2 cute starburst handles that I had found while thrifting. Aren't those starburst handles amazing? I was pretty excited when I stumbled upon those little gems! So after adding on the handles and decorating it with cute vintage radios my makeover was complete! I am so pleased with how it turned out and love how it looks with the rest of the furniture in my bedroom!

I picked up this unit about 4 years ago with full intentions of giving it a major face-lift. I hated the colors, but loved the piece, and knew that with a little love I could make it look the way I wanted it to. 

For the past 2 years this dresser was in my closet room, but I decided to haul it to my bedroom once I had finished painting the room! I painted my bedroom a bright green-y turquoise and knew that I wanted to paint the unit white, to match my fireplace and the rest of my bigger furniture in the room. Lucky for me I had leftover paint in white and the green, so late one night I decided it was finally time to give it the overhaul it so desperately needed! 

I started by giving it a good sanding and then a thick coat of oil primer. I took of all of the knobs and painted them with a small paintbrush from Dollarama while the primer dried. Then I gave the dresser 2 coats of the white and let that dry. Next I measured out the width of one of the drawers and divided that number by 5 to get the measurement of a circle that I would need for tracing the scallops that I would make! I found some Tupperware that was the perfect fit and traced on 5 half circles in pencil. Then I went ahead and carefully painted on 2 coats of the green! I put the knobs back on and waited for that puppy to dry so that I could put all my clothes back in! I think it turned out great! Anything was an improvement from that first photo you see from a couple years ago!