Antique Dresser in Seattle Skies

When a mom in my neighborhood sent an email offering up this antique dresser for free, I jumped on it.  I don’t normally go for pieces that have been previously painted because I’d rather not deal with prior poor paint jobs, but how could I resist free?  And then there’s that voice in my head saying “you have to make this dresser beautiful again!” but let’s not discuss how I hear voices. . .

This dresser had been the victim of a bad flea market paint job.  Okay, maybe “victim” is a bit dramatic, but this lady was definitely suffering.  Despite the messy white paint job, missing applique, and mismatched knobs, this dresser was solid and had a lot to offer.  Here’s how she looks now.

I started by removing the top.  It’s actually very easy to take the tops off these old dressers – just a few screws.  I find it is easier to sand and refinish the tops and paint the body when they are separated.   I stripped the paint from the top using Citristrip.  It took several applications to get through the layers.  Stripping layers of paint is a messy job and definitely not for the faint of heart. After I got down to the wood, I realized that at some point someone had flipped the top so that the original top surface was on bottom.  I ended up completely stripping both sides of the top since the paint was so flaky.   I sanded the original top smooth, stained it with one coat of General Finishes java gel stain and then sealed with with 3 coats of General Finishes poly in satin.   So pretty now.

With the top looking good, I moved on to the rest of the dresser.  The sloppy white paint job was a force to be reckoned with for sure.  I sanded the heck out of it to get a smooth finish and remove as many of the brush strokes as I could.   Even sloppy paint on the parts of the dresser that will never show even bother me, so I sanded the white paint off the back and undersides to clean it up.

The applique on the front of the dresser was missing in one spot.  I contemplated just leaving it and chalking it up to character.  I also considered removing it entirely.  In the end, I decided to replace the missing piece.  After a thorough internet search, I found a close match to the original piece and decided to go with that.  It’s the same size, but a slightly different pattern.  Character, right?

Now on to the color choice.  I had recently painted a pair of night stands in General Finishes Persian Blue.  You can see those here.  The color is very pretty, but for this piece I wanted to go a bit grayer and a bit lighter.  I created a custom mix of General Finishes milk paint using 2 parts Persian Blue, 2 parts Seagull Gray and 1 part Snow White. It’s exactly what I wanted – a soft blue gray that I’m calling Seattle Skies.

I sealed the paint with General Finishes high performance top coat in flat.  Some new knobs from Hobby Lobby and key escutcheons from Etsy and this makeover was complete.

Thank you for stopping by.

Susan

Linking with Miss Mustard Seed