Furniture Transformation: Sewing Room Dresser

This project has been finished and in use for over a year now, but I kept putting off blogging about it until I cleaned up my sewing room really well for pictures. The room never got completely cleaned, but I wanted to get this documented and stop feeling guilty for not writing about it, so I just took pictures anyway. Now this dresser is no longer even in the same house these photos were taken in, ha ha. So, here's a real life look at another custom piece I made for my sewing room:

I finished my French Provincial dresser! I first started this redo back in May of 2013 and the dresser looked like this:

A week or so after that post, I ran into humidity problems and had to stop my spray painting for the summer (stupid Florida). I bought this dresser years ago for $10 from a friend who was moving to Saudi Arabia (thanks, Brenna!). I love French Provincial style and had a small collection (which will soon be for sale). Sadly, all of the pieces I have are pretty beat up, plus the coloring really doesn't go with any of my decor. I planned to revamp all my pieces eventually, but this was the first one to get the full treatment since I knew I wanted it to match my sewing room.

I gave this piece the full treatment - I started with sanding, then two coats of Kilz spray paint, then two coats of Rustoleum 2X Ultra-Cover in White Satin. Then I decided to get fancy. I wanted this piece to match my desk which has a coral pink top, so I started playing with what parts I wanted to accent with the coral paint. In the end I decided to paint the drawer fronts, so I did 3 coats of Valspar Color Radiance spray paint in Coral on the tops. Things got tricky on those bottom drawers - It looks like the dresser has 4 drawers, right? Not so! The bottom drawers are double deep, so that raised bar in the middle is actually part of that drawer. This only became an issue because I wanted that middle bar to stay white like the others, so I had to do some very precise masking off. I had to touch up a few places with a small paintbrush (no easy feat), but I don't think you would notice if I didn't point them out - so I wont, lol. Once I got all the main colors on, I coated the entire piece with 3 coats of Minwax PolyAcrylic.

Once the dresser was painted, the hardware did not match at all. I grabbed a can of Rustoleum Metallic spray paint in Matte Nickel and gave all the pulls several coats. It was a bit of a challenge to get the hardware off, which mean they were also difficult to put back on. My persuasion caused a few nicks to the new paint (I let them dry for a few days, but it wasn't totally cured apparently). It's not a big deal. I remember I thought it would bug the crap out of me back in April when I finished it up, but I can't remember ever even noticing it over the last year when I look at the dresser.

I'm telling you, after working on this for almost 2 years and storing it around various places for a few years before the work even began, it was a big celebration to finally get this piece in my sewing room. I originally thought I would store fabric in the drawers, but that was naive at best (I have WAY too much fabric for this little thing, lol, luckily the fabric storage situation was solved months ago). When we put this in my room, even though I was super thrilled to have it done, I had no idea what I wanted to put inside it! Isn't that crazy?! Since my original plan of fabric changed, I decided to store notions in it instead. Overtime, I've added more and more things to the drawers and now it is an integral part of my organization in the room. I store my button stash, bias tape maker machine, trims, knitting needle sets, crochet hooks, scale, heat set tool, washi tape, yarn winder, extra pins, etc. I also utilized the area under the dresser to hold more ribbons and trims along with my old tins from my Grammy (this isn't the case in my new sewing room, but I'll still show it here until I do a new sewing room reveal).

So there you have it - my finished dresser! I know the pictures look kinds of junky, but this it the real life I guess. It always looks like this (in fact, it was much worse and I cleared it off for the photos).

I still love my customized furniture I've done, and I'm really glad I made them all for my sewing room so it adds a little touch of extra joy in the room to think that I did all of that work for myself :) Since I've moved, I won't be doing any furniture remakes in the foreseeable future :( At least I got the few things in while I had the space and got to enjoy them. The unfortunate thing is that now I always look at furniture with the creative eye to see what I can remake to fit my needs ... but I won't be able to do that! Bummer. One day, lol. I'm getting my new sewing room situated (it's all together, but I'm deciding where to hang things and making a mini curtain), but I will show that soon!