This Is How I Painted A Dresser

I am not a "crafty" person. Whenever a Relief Society "Super Saturday" event rolls around (in other words, an hours-long arts & crafts marathon for women of the LDS Church), I make plans to be elsewhere. When it's craft time at school, church, wherever...my eyes start to glaze over and my interest wanes.

However...I've discovered that sometimes, I can handle projects if they're completely on my terms. Does this mean they'll turn out well? Maybe, maybe not...but at least I am working with my hands, creating "stuff" that will benefit my family and my home!

This is a long way of introducing my most recent home-improvement project: getting a clothes dresser for Lorelai & Celeste's room. Up until now, our children haven't ever used clothes dressers; instead, we've been buying cheap plastic storage bins from Target & stacking them in our closets, like so:

The brown-bags up top are also full of clothes; as you can see my "system" is a bit haphazard! Our reasons for using the storage bins were mostly space-related; we lived in an apartment for several years, and for a while, all three girls were sharing a bedroom in our rental home. However, we have our own (much bigger!) house now. In addition, our girls are getting bigger, and Lorelai's clothes in particular don't fit well in the storage bins anymore. So, it was time to get a dresser!

I found a used wood dresser at the Rancho Sahuarita community-wide yard sale in June. It was an older dresser, but fairly sturdy and roomy; best of all, it would fit perfectly into the girls' closet (all 4 of our bedrooms have walk-in closets; yay!). However, the dresser was in desperate need of a new paint job:

In addition, it had lots of rough/chipped edges:

So, I squared my shoulders, and declared I would sand & paint the thing MYSELF! Thus began my first foray into furniture renovation.

When I asked the girls what color they wanted their dresser to be, they both insisted, "Fire-engine red!" Hmmm...in a pink bedroom? Oh well, it was worth a try. After all, since this dresser would be spending most of its time in their closet, I figured the color wasn't a matter of life and death.

 

First, via the suggestions of other trusted homemakers, I bought some spray paint, which they assured me would work well on wood. I also bought primer, to smooth out the weathered textures of the drawers.

Finally, I bought some sandpaper, and spent the first day or so rubbing it vigorously along the edges of the dresser, and the edges of each individual drawer. I did most of the sanding up in our spare bedroom, which is currently uninhabited.

I actually primed & painted the dresser itself inside the spare bedroom:

However, it was pretty messy; even with a tarp down, there were paint particles floating all around the room. Even with a window open, I was worried everything in the room would take on a permanent greyish/reddish tinge. So I decided to move the rest of the operation out to our garage:

Once I moved the drawers downstairs, I sprayed them all with primer...

 ...and let them sit overnight to dry off.

 The following day, I sprayed all the drawers red...

...and once again, let them sit in the garage to dry.

This was an important step, since I probably "over-painted" the drawers (I told you I'm not very crafty; this first try was bound to be full of missteps):

Look at all the "ripples" of unevenly applied paint! I got too enthusiastic at times, during my spraying:

There were also lots of drips along the sides. I rationalized that most of the time, nobody would be looking for things like that once the dresser was in use. I hope I was right about that; if not, does anyone out there with more experience than me want to tell me how to avoid this problem in the future?

After everything was completely dry, we reassembled the dresser and moved it into the girls' closet:

Just a couple more quick touch-ups, and then...voila! A big, bright new dresser for the girls...and it holds lots more clothes than those old storage bins ever did. The only slight hiccup I've noticed so far is that occasionally, an article of clothing will come out of the drawer with a slight red smear across it. Yikes! On those occasions, I've found that the smear vanishes quickly with just a little rubbing. I hope this is something that will eventually cease over time, as the paint "settles"--if not, can anyone tell me what I can to to prevent it from happening?

So...my first big renovation project. All told, I used up about two spray-cans of primer, and two and a half cans of paint. It was work, but the "fun" kind. Maybe I will get the itch to do this again, and go seeking another dresser for Aurora's room sometime soon!