Happy Monday! I hope you enjoyed a beautiful weekend wherever you were! I saw flurries this weekend….. enough, I say! Let’s get to a paint project, shall we?
I have an exciting furniture makeover to share today that is for my own home. We have this dresser in the guest room that I painted when we first moved in.
It’s a piece that’s been in our family for years, so I knew that I’d be keeping it in our guest room even though I’ve been working on adding an office space. However, with the changes I have been making, the blue just wasn’t working for me any longer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and then along came Danielle’s tribal dresser to inspire me! Be sure to check it out! Danielle used a stencil on her project, but I didn’t have a stencil or the patience to order one, so I just used her piece as inspiration and ran with scissors my own plan.
I started by painting the dresser with 2 shades of graphite chalk paint. I knew I wanted to distress to show some blue since the room still has touches of blue. And yes, I totally painted it in place in the room, just sliding the bed over so I could slide the dresser to get the other side. Here the second coat is drying.
My plan was to draw in chalk a kilim inspired pattern, and then paint it in by hand. I hopped online and searched for some great kilim rugs- I wanted something off center and not evenly distributed. I ended up coming to this rug from west elm and loved its look. (It’s no longer available, FYI). I used elements of the graphics of this rug to create my design, and used chalk and borrowed Emmy’s ruler to draw the design.
As you can see it’s not perfect, not totally even, but it’s A-Ok by me! I let the design sit for a night so I could be sure of the graphic I wanted. After sleeping on it, I woke up the next morning and went for it, painting in the design. As you can see below, I never finished drawing the design on the bottom of that one section- I just drew a guideline so I knew where the edge needed to be. Additionally, this dresser was going to be distressed, so perfection was not a must. Hand painted flaws can often be masked with distressing.
So of course once this dried, the final steps were to distress and wax. I used super fine paper, 250 grit, ti distress the edges, and to give the entire piece a more time worn look. I finished it off with a coat of Black Bison wax, and then buffed it. I was determined to use hardware I had on hand, and after going through my stash found 4 black drop pulls and two brass beetles, both clearance Anthro items from last month last year 4 years ago. (#hardwarehoarder ). These were the perfect finishing touch for this piece.
I just love the hardware against the pattern.
And as you can see, I kept the top in its existing wood finish to warm the piece up a bit. And you can really see the hints of blue peeking through the graphite.
I can’t get enough of the beetles!
It fits perfectly into the vibe of this space now.
(And click here if you want to learn how to make your own hula hoop dream catcher).
Speaking of catchers, Catcher the pup was following me around as I painted this piece and shot it. He loves to lay in this spot by the foot of the bed.
I’ve also been slowly collecting everything I need for my new office space and hope to share it in the next month or so! I’ve got lots going on at work right now, and have to get stocked up for our own sales plus the Lucketts Spring Market!
But of course, this DIY piece was a keeper…
Have a great day!
Sharing here: Silver Pennies Sundays, Found & Foraged, Inspire Me Monday, Be Inspired, The Inspiration Gallery, Link Party Palooza, TDC Before & After Party, Furniture Feature Friday, Best of the Nest
