Paint A Dresser: New Life For An Old Piece Of Furniture

How do you begin reviving an old piece of furniture? A look at my plans for this paint-a-dresser project can give you a foundation to help you get that special piece you've been wanting to take care of from your workbench to your living space. Grace your home with handiwork that will make guests ask you to paint old furniture for them!

• Evaluate the dresser's structure to see if it needs any repair.

• Evaluate the piece's finish to see what kind of preparation it needs before beginning your techniques.

• Decide what tools and supplies/products you will need to use and get everything on hand before beginning.

• Dedicate the needed work space by thinking through the paint project's time frame--consider other people's schedules, the weather, and unexpected interruptions.

• Plan your steps for reviving an old chest of drawers with decorative paint, then go to work and get it done!

Once upon a time a little chest of drawers lived a sad Cinderella life. It did its job well, yet it was beaten and bruised for its efforts. This petite chest of drawers would have given up all hope but it had a friend with a vision for what it could become. With barely a whisper of a promise from the friend, courage to hold on for the future won the day.

To the dresser’s surprise, the day of its rescue arrived. The envisioned promise became a reality and the small bit of furniture flourished under the transformation that its friend created for it. With insight into what the dresser could become, the friend made a plan and enlisted the help of her handy-dandy husband.

He helped clean the poor thing for it had ages of dust in every nook and cranny. It smelled horrible, but a good wash and dry in the sun refreshed it nicely. However, the already warped drawers became even more crooked. The husband’s skilled hands remade the drawers using the original fronts. Under the care it received, a beautiful change began to take place.

Once it was finished, everyone who knew the dresser was stunned by its metamorphosis. No one would have recognized it if they had not been told that it was the very same dresser, and even then they were incredulous that such a change could be wrought. To be taken from such dilapidation to a charming state seemed impossible. Now, the little chest of drawers is not just serviceable, it is living happily ever after, sharing its beauty with everyone it meets.

Would you like to know how its restyling occurred? The following is the rest of the story:

The photos may not show how dirty this piece of furniture was, but you can be glad that the smell was stopped by the camera lens. It was a real mess. Cleaning it was important if I wanted the primer to be able to do its job. At one point, my husband offered to buy me a new dresser to paint. When I explained why I wanted to make this one beautiful he was on board with me.

Not every piece of furniture will need to be reworked with carpentry tools, but the drawers on this one were obviously ruined. It certainly took some extra time, yet there was no choice but to rebuild most of the drawers' sides and backs. Bravo to my husband for his patience on this project. He's really the hero of the story because my artwork would have been useless without his skills to prepare the piece.

A little sanding along the way, more cleaning and dusting, and then double checking with some tweeking to make sure the drawers worked well put this dresser in order for painting. A good primer would be the first step of that phase. This project, as it turned out, would need more than the usual amount of a primer preparation.

I used a primer product called Kilz to coat every possible surface on this dresser. Turning it upside down and going in from the bottom in order to completely primer underneath the top wasn’t too difficult because the dresser was small enough to set on a table. This enabled me to primer all surfaces of the inside, as well.

Putting primer (and paint) on the drawers was like doing a separate project. Each section had to have plenty of drying time. First, the bottoms and about an inch around those edges were done, then the sides and the top edges, then the fronts and backs as well as those edges, and finally the insides could be done.

Primer coating all the outside surfaces was imperative. The top needed several coats because large oil spots wanted to soak through the layers and the drawer fronts also needed more than one coat. Each of these primer coats needed to dry well before I could move to the next, making this phase of the project a longer process than I thought it would be.

There were open seams along the back’s edges so I used a quick-drying caulk to seal them off. As I put the first coat of primer on small spots that needed extra caulk showed up, giving me a chance to seal those edges well before applying the paint.

Using a high quality wall paint meant that I could be confident of my decorative paints sticking well. The first coat was tinted a light beige, but when I applied it the color was too yellow. I tinted it to the palest of sages, which probably does not show well in the photos. Most people call it a beige when they first see it, but the difference in adding the green tint was huge.

Covering all surfaces of the dresser and its drawers two times with the light sage paint, letting each thoroughly dry between coats, I used new disposable paint brushes for each coat because I wanted to be really careful to get a fine finish on the surface.

Once the base coat was on, the real fun could begin. Planning a design is always difficult for me because there are so many options. A look at faux technique books and videos can give you an idea of how hard it could be to make a decision. I did have a basic idea in mind, and decided pretty quickly that I would go with various colors rather than monotones.

Using a stencil to help me decide on scale and draw part of the design, I filled in the pattern with a bit of whimsy in mind. Although the motif flows up and down the drawer fronts, each is its own vignette. Because I wanted the top of the dresser to be useful I did not carry the design over it, although that was my original plan.

While I used acrylics and brushes, paint pens would have done a good job with this project, and they might have made the work easier. Adding the band of green around the top edge and on the arcs along the bottom edges brightened this little dresser’s small amount of architectural detail.

Once the decorative painting was done, I used a white glaze to soften the colors of the design, and to give some depth to the paint’s surface. It changed the flat look to seem like it would have a velvety feel, but it’s an enhancement that you don’t quite “see.”

Once the white glaze was dry, one more step was required to finish the project’s paint phases. A water based poly clear coat was added to give a hard finish to the surface of the paint and protect it from scratching or chipping. This was important to help the dresser be as serviceable as I wanted it to be. This also gave a nice pop to the piece.

Once the clear coat was completely dry I used a wax brick and rubbed down the bottoms and sides of the drawers, as well as the insides of the drawer’s openings and supports. The old-fashioned way it was built meant that there were no drawer glides. The wax makes the wood drawers slide smoothly on their wood supports. This wax process will likely have to be repeated in the future, but it’s no big deal.

Felt pad strips on the bottom four corners finished the project off. Now, I’m using it in my dining room to hold small items that we want to keep handy, as well as to make my friends laugh with delight. A lovely ending to this dresser's fairytale, don't you think?

• Painting baby bibs could become an addictive project idea when it's this much fun.

• A classy denim handbag project made by recycling a denim skirt.

• This crocheted edge baby blanket makes a lovely gift.

• A fabric bag sewing project that is pretty enough be a gift bag, then to be used as a tote bag.

• An easy paper craft project for making place cards for special meals.

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