The Heirloom Dresser

When we first started refinishing furniture a few years back, we had a very different idea of what "refinishing" meant. To us, it basically involved spray painting everything and then covering it in two or three coats of polyurethane. It was fast, cheap, and it made trying to furnish my very first apartment a relatively easy task. I went to Goodwill almost every day on my lunch break to search for  great pieces of furniture that I could get for relatively cheap. I spent less than $100 and bought a very large dresser I planned on using as an entertainment center, two end tables, and a coffee table - all of which were solid wood and very well-built.

For my bedroom, my parents had given me a hand-me-down dresser, which was gifted to my grandparents for their wedding. The dresser is solid wood with dovetail jointing and wood veneer. During my must-spray-paint-everything phase, I had painted this piece a deep, dark blackish-brown. I kept the original hardware, but spray painted them metallic silver.

The hardware had worn through the years, and because I didn't seal the paint when I had originally sprayed them, they were starting to show their age because the paint was chipping off. Even though I love the patina on the hardware, I didn't like the overall style of the pulls and decided that I was going to replace them.

There are a lot of great new products, like milk paint, chalk / mineral paint, and gel stains available these days, and now I'm over my spray-paint-everything phase. We love the ease of chalk / mineral paints, and have mentioned our favorite brand, Country Chic, several times on this blog. For this piece, I wanted to choose a color that was bright and fresh, but that had a good balance of masculine and feminine vibes. I chose "backyard picnic," which I had originally seen on a dresser for sale at Carriage House Consignment, because I liked the bright tone but the color itself reminded me of the Adirondack and Catskill mountains of upstate New York, where our grandparents had grown up and where we had spent our childhood summers. I thought that this color would compliment the dark hardware that I had in mind.

After three coats of "backyard picnic," I lightly distressed the piece so that the dark spray paint underneath highlighted the clean, straight lines of this piece. I covered the entire dresser in three coats of polyurethane for protection. For the hardware, I choose cup pulls with a "tumbled dark gunmetal" finish, to add a little more masculinity to the piece.

The finished pieced. I love the color, it makes the room brighter and seemingly changes hues throughout the day. In the morning, it's a bright, fresh green and at night and in darker light, it appears to take on more of an evergreen / deep turquoise color. I love the cup pulls and the subtle distressing, which accentuates the clean lines of the piece. I'm glad that I was able to take my grandparent's heirloom dresser and bring it into 2015, and I'm excited to keep this piece in the family for another 70 years. Do you have a hand-me-down piece of furniture that reminds you of family? Does it need a facelift to be brought into the modern world? Comment below!