Better late than never

So I'm a smidge late posting this one. I finished it the Friday before last but have been soooo busy I just didn't have the time or energy to write a new post. Anywho, the last dresser I posted about and this one I'm about to show you I bought together. They were both older dressers and showed it. This one was interesting to say the least. Here's the before.

It  doesn't look terrible but the white paint was matte and uneven and scratched up, yadda yadda. It needed to be stripped, no doubt. I started with the sander but realized that even with electricity it just was going to be too much work so I caved and bought chemicals. The upside to that is that I used Citristrip which is greener than the typical strippers so I didn't feel too bad about it.

By my count this dresser has been painted at least 7 times. And if you look at the picture below you can see that on the very bottom of all the paint there were graphics on the dresser. I made one out as a rocking horse and another was children, which I couldn't tell until I was actually scraping the paint off. I always think it's neat when you get a little bit of the history of a piece.

Can you see the rocking horse?

I actually had to apply stripper more than once in a few places. The paint was stubborn in some places.

 After stripping off as much of the paint as I could I went back to sanding and FINALLY painting! I cleaned the original glass knobs and she was finally ready for her closeup! Yay!

I've got several pieces I'll be working on over the next few weeks. I think this week's reveal is going to be an old bench I've had for at least 10 years and a night stand I picked up for free on Craigslist. You can see the other pieces I've worked on on my Facebook page. Head on over there and "Like" my page! See you again this Friday!

Refinishing furniture!

So I've stumbled across this awesome thing called "refinishing furniture". I've only done one piece so far but I am thrilled with the results and about nine days after setting it up for sale it's sold to a wonderful lady who will be giving it to her daughter. I'm so happy for them. It's going to look great in her room from what she described.

Here are my befores and afters. I found it one Craigslist. It was dirty, had stickers all over it and was missing some of the knobs with the ones it had being mismatched and cheap. I felt like the lines were feminine and I had a stencil I'd been dying to try. I mixed up some paint to create a new color and bought some knobs then went to work!

I'm pleased and I know the little girl is going to love it!