Dresser and Tall-Boy Rehab
It's been a while since I last posted anything, but I'm working on catching up....
After my last post, one of my neighbors connected me with someone who was moving and needing to unload some dressers that were in mild states of disrepair. As it turned out, the dressers were HUGE and I thought, "well...maybe I can work on them and sell them."
Coincidentally, as it also turned out, the dressers were HUGE and contained such amazing storage that I could not bring myself to part with them. I had to move a bunch of other furniture (most of which wound up in my garage) to make space for these beauties, but I don't regret it one bit!
These pieces got dropped in my garage right before I was heading on a road trip, so I quickly got started with repairs and left the glue to dry. The veneer was totally coming off the dresser and a leg had broken on the tall-boy. I didn't take very good "before" photos...but you can almost see how damaged the dresser top was in this photo. That's not dust. Once I got back into town, the pressure was on to get these pieces finished since they were preventing me from parking my car in the garage.
After cleaning and sanding, the wood on top of the dresser was really pretty, but there was some serious damage from ink. That combined with the warping from the whole veneer peeling off meant that the naked wood would never really look quite right. Total bummer. I needed to paint it. This pic doesn't really show the issue...but if I really wanted to have an exposed wood top, I'd have needed to replace the whole top, which I did consider! It would have taken more money, knowledge, and elbow-grease than I currently possess.
I started out with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Paris Grey. Ew. Just...ew. This does nothing for me...and I'm not sure how I even got the whole thing painted before I realized how horrible it was. I think this was when I was still thinking I would be selling this piece, so I wanted to go with a color that was more neutral. The charcoal colored top was not doing anything for me either, so it was back to the drawing board!
Yeah. Double ew. Lavender didn't work either. But hello Florence Teal! We have a winner!
I think I mixed the Florence chalk paint with some of my charcoal black color and a little bit of whatever that horrible lavender mixture was. That's what I used on the top of this piece. It's darker and less saturated than the rest of the piece. This was also my first semi-success with dark wax. Dark wax is still pretty scary to me, but I distressed this, and with the dark wax, it's really pretty nice.
It isn't perfect, but I love it.
For the tall boy, I REALLY wanted to paint it yellow. I still thought maybe I'd sell it...but I just couldn't. I wound up going with Annie Sloan's Provence blue. It's not as bold as Florence, but not as stale as Duck Egg blue. For this piece, the top of it was still in perfect condition. The wood grain wasn't nearly as pretty, but it was refinishable.
I was nervous about tipping this piece up after repairing the broken leg, but I managed to get the whole thing finished, moved inside, and (with some help) eventually upstairs without braking the foot off...so it's holding up pretty well.
I still feel like my dark waxing isn't the greatest...but I like this piece as well. I'm not opposed to painting it yellow some day. This works for now.