We received a phone call from a young lady just moving into her new place in the Metro Atlanta area who needed help bringing an old dresser back to life. She had recently purchased this piece off Craigslist, and when she reached out to us for help, we had no idea how bad of shape the dresser was actually in.
Feast your eyes on this French Provincial ugly duckling!!!
First things first, we had to clean this baby up! I started by wiping down the entire piece with a mixture of 1/2 denatured alcohol & 1/2 water solution. I can’t even begin to describe to you how dirty this dresser was!
Now, if you follow any of my posts, you know that I am use to working with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint or General Finishes Milk Paint. Both of which do not demand any major sanding or prep work before painting. However, this dresser had so many nicks and scratches that Chris then had to do a good sanding over the entire piece.
Even the inside and outside of the drawers needed some serious love.
After a good sanding, the drawers and entire piece was ready for a new lease on life.
The customer decided on a rich Annie Sloan “Cream” Chalk Paint to freshen up this dresser.
We then added a pop of metallic gold on the hardware and legs for an added unique finish.
This was the first time I had experimented with metallic paints, so after talking with a few other “painter friends”, I was advised to get my metallic gold from either Target’s line called “Devine” or online through Modern Masters Metallic Paints. But….I was in a hurry and the nearest store was Hobby Lobby, so I ended up just buying a small 10 ounce jar of DecoArt Elegant Finish in Metallic Emperor Gold (on sale for $4.79). That ended up not being the best decision for this project, I found DecoArt to apply very thin and a tad runny. It definitely was hard to work with. As you can see below, it showed every imperfection and I actually had to use numerous coats of paint to get that perfectly smooth finish I was looking for. In the end, it turned out amazing…but I think if I would have listened to everyone’s advise, I wouldn’t have had the added frustration.
Once finished bringing this beauty back to life, it was definitely worth all the hard work!
She loved her “new” French Provincial dresser and I felt pretty accomplished! 🙂
On to our next project!
Creatively Yours….
“Custom…Reclaimed…Restored. We do it all! Send us a note.”
