Before & After Dresser

I hope everyone is having a great week so far. I thought I would share a project that I did a little while ago that was a great transformation! When my husband and I first moved out together over 5 years ago he had a pine bedroom set. Now although it was a nice set, I am not a huge lover of the tone of wood it was. I decided to give the dresser a bit of a face lift so to speak and freshen it up. Now I know this isn’t the greatest before picture, but it was all I could find.

Now the first thing I did was give the dresser a good clean and light sanding. When I say light there is no exaggeration I literately took a hand cube sander and went over it to just loosen things up, and get anything that was stuck on it off. This dresser had a pretty decent varnish on it but that’s no big deal since I was going to be using my favorite Zinssers Cover Stain. I have talked about this stuff before- bottom line, it’s amazing and sticks to any surface, hence no major sanding needed.

I primed the whole dresser and all the drawers with two coats making sure it was evenly dispersed. While I was waiting for the primer to set I got the hardware ready to refinish. It was originally a brass color but I decided I wanted to lighten it up. I used Krylon’s Spray Paint in Nickel and it had a great soft finish to it. Now the only thing looking back that I should have done was primed the metal for the paint. It has held up well so far but I am sure it would last much longer with a metal primer applied before hand. Often times it seems easy to skip the priming step but trust me guys it will make your piece last and look so much nicer!

Once the primer was set I went in again with spray paint. Guys, I am seriously a spray paint addict like when in doubt, spray it out. It took 4 cans to cover the whole thing and because spray paint is oil based it gives a really nice hard finish which is great for high traffic pieces. Once the spray paint had cured after a few days I finished it off with 2 coats of Polycrylic in Semi-Gloss. Then was the fun part of putting the fresh hardware back on! I love how it turned out and it’s nice that it matches our other bedroom furniture and just the over all feel of the room. Hope you guys enjoyed this diy 🙂

Kind thoughts,

Lauren Elizabeth