Nursery Dresser Makeover: From Wild Tween to Vintage Preppy!

When we shared Ben's Vintage Nursery we said the "before" on this dresser was pretty wild...here she is:

Wild is right, yes? That would be neon green, bright purple, and pink, orange mixed in there too!

This was in my sister's room when she was a tween. Her bedroom was painted all crazy. Like, I'm talking Nickelodeon themed colors, and stripes, and neon, with zig zags on the wall. I wish I had a photo to show you. But you will just have to imagine the colors from this dresser--but up the crazy x1000.
Prior to becoming purple beast, this piece had been in the family for awhile. It actually belonged to my great grandparents. I'm not sure what the original dresser color was, but I'm going to guess it wasn't this bright. It's nothing fancy, but it was nice to have a piece from my family for his room.

The plan was to stain the top of the dresser a deep walnut brown, and paint the rest in a bright chalk paint blue. Adam had to strip the top of the dresser for me (paint thinner not pregnant lady friendly!) And scrape all the layers of paint off.  And I'm talking layers. This dresser had been painted several times before the Nickelodeon tween room.

When we got the paint off, we realized the top was not ~real wood~. Adam took the sander to it and lightly sanded the top to make it smooth.

We were ready to begin!

Since the top was not real wood, we used Minwax Gel Stain in Dark Walnut. The gel stain works on fabricated wood.

This was after the first layer of stain...not so bad but needed another coat.

I used Webster's Chalk Powder paint, mixed with Sherwin Williams Blue Plate. The chalk paint powder is all natural, so it was safe for me to use it while I was pregnant.  The nice thing about chalk paint is that the piece doesn't need to be primed or anything, just wiped down and painted! 

I mixed it with Sherwin Williams Blue Plate and used their Harmony brand of paint which has 0 VOC. 

I probably would have been fine with regular SW paint, and a mask, and outside..but I was a spaz about that sort of thing. I also avoided ham sandwiches and JIMMY JOHNS for the whole first trimester. Now that was hard to do!

Anyway, it took me one weekend to paint it. Mostly because I was tired from being pregnant. I had to take 600 breaks. It could have been finished in one day by a non-pregnant person. The paint dries SUPER fast, and there was hardly any sanding involved.  

I finished it with a dark wax by Fiddles N Sons brand... Which Webster's recommends for use with their products.

Here it is all done up in Ben's room.

The pulls were from Menards hardware section. I'm more of an Oil Rubbed Bronze hardware girl, but the brushed dark silver just looked so much nicer.  They also go nice with the DIY bookcase in his room. We'll share about that very soon, along with some other great details!

See the rest of Ben's vintage nursery!

Dresser makeover we can live with...

I picked up an old dresser at an estate auction for less than 20 bucks this past Spring. We needed a place to stick our cable box and blue ray player in the living room.
We were not really getting a fab deal. It was ugly, it was old, it had a broken top drawer. But I figured I could make it work, and possibly give it a little makeover.

dresser in rough shape.

This was not a fancy piece of furniture. It was pretty much made of laminate and particle board. Not real wood. The blonde color wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t really go with all the dark wood tones in our home.

On the hottest afternoon of the summer so far this year, I chose to get this baby out and give it a little makeover.

I hastily taped off part of the dresser.

Then I whipped out my supplies...

• Rust-oleum spray paint in heirloom white (my favorite!)
• Minwax GEL stain in dark walnut 
• Foam Brushed

I chose the Minwax GEL for this project because I read somewhere in blogland that this will stain fake wood products such as laminate.

First I spray painted the top with a few coats of heirloom white. 

It was steamin’ hot and humid as heck outside that day, so I wasn’t sure how it would dry. The DIY gods were shining down on me because that spray paint was super dry, super fast.  I know you aren’t supposed to spray paint when it’s hot and humid, but I am a rule-breaker blogger.

After my spray paint was finished on the top, I removed the painters tape and the grimy old hardware.

(....and this is where I was too busy grumbling about the heat to take photos...)

I applied a thick layer of the goopy gel with a foam brush. I was skeptical from the get go. I’ve never used the gel minwax before, but I wasn’t expecting all the goop. I did not wipe off any excess, just tried to smooth it out as best as possible. Unfortunately, it was not looking good.

Honestly, it looked darn right terrible when it was wet. Yet, I finished the entire thing, wondering why I was still wasting my Thursday evening on a sure fail. Then I went to back into the luxury of the air conditioning for the night and considered this a failed DIY.

The following evening I took a quick look assuming it would be headed for the burn pile. But, to my surprise it looked just fine. Still a little uneven on the color, but without the flash of a camera it looks almost natural.
We decided this project was only a semi-fail.

Adam worked his magic and made the broken drawer a makeshift shelf in about 10 minutes from part of the broken drawer. Basically he just ripped it apart and used the bottom of the drawer as a shelf. We stained this with the Minwax gel too with a few quick swipes.

We attached some new “old” hardware that was floating around inside the drawers when we got it. (I assume someone else considered a dresser makeover but didn’t even attempt!)

We brought this only semi-fail dresser DIY inside and put it back in its spot. It happily holds our cable box and blue-ray player once again, but better, and prettier. And now there is room for the cable box & blue ray player inside...and my birthday sheep on top. Priorities.

Any experience or tips working with the gel stains?