I had meant to post this months and months ago … but it has taken me forever to get around to shooting the after photo. 😉
Better late than never!
Quite a few years ago, well more than that, in college actually, Patrick lived in a run down (to put it nicely) house with five other guys. They called it the Lacrosse House. He and all of his friends who lived there were on the team and the house was the location of many great college parties. Patrick and I first met there actually.
The house was always passed down from the older guys to the younger players. When it was Patrick’s turn to move in, somebody had left this huge dresser behind in his new bedroom. Its a beast of thing, so I can understand why nobody wanted to fool with moving it out.
Flash forward to now, and this hand me down dresser currently resides in our master bedroom.
It is a great piece, very sturdy, and has lots of drawers, which is a plus, but it just doesn’t look very… what should I say… contemporary?
Well, we finally found the time to repaint this beast.
I chose Behr’s Creek Bend, from Home Depot. I didn’t want to bother with sanding the entire piece down so I decided it was best to chalk paint it.
Chalk paint is the EASIEST and most effortless way to paint a piece of furniture. It requires absolutely no sanding and usually only needs one or maybe two coats of paint at the most. Plus, it dries very quickly.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Annie Sloan chalk paint? Well…her paint is about $30 for a quart. You can easily make your own quart of chalk paint for around $5-$7 or so.
Now on to the How To:
You will need:
1/3 cup of Plaster of Paris
1/3 cup of Water
1 cup of Paint
Stir Stick
Mixing Bucket
Plaster of Paris is the stuff that people use to make sculptures or castes of things. Its chalky and thick like flour, which is what will give your paint that chalk paint look.
Once you buy the plaster of paris, you can continue to make your own chalk paint later on for around $2-$3, since you’ll have everything else on hand. I always buy just a sample of paint (which is usually around 1 cup) from Lowe’s or Home Depot. Seriously. So cheap and easy!
For this dresser, I doubled the recipe. It is a pretty big dresser after all.
After leaving the dresser out all day to dry, it was time to apply the poly to seal the paint to finish it off.
Then … we brought it inside!
Ta Da!
I decided to leave the drawer pulls’ original bronzy/gold color. I thought the gold tones would match the antique mirror that I have sitting on top of the dresser.
I can’t believe it took us a year of having this dresser in our house to finally get around to painting it. I am so glad that we did! I am absolutely in love with the way that it looks now.
Like I was saying earlier…we did this project MONTHS ago. Finally getting around to posting it has given me the itch to tackle even more DIY projects.
With that, I’m headed to Lowe’s to pick up some more paint and get started on some random projects around the house.
That is what Saturdays are for, after all.
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