Cottage Style Dresser in "Elegance"

Anyone that knows me, knows my house is a hodge podge of mismatched textures, colors and themes. I find that my interior design skills need some serious work and it's hard to find out what our true style is while you're renting. If only we owned our own house...my husband would hate me since I'd be changing paint colors and probably knocking down walls. Since we've started getting into the whole DIY thing, I've noticed that I've sort of always felt comfortable with a rustic, farmhouse, cottage-ey look. It's timeless, the color palettes tend to be on the neutral side, and the look can be upheld year-round, which is great since I tend to lose track of time easily. So in an effort to transition to that look, we started looking for some REAL furniture.

One of the rooms I wanted to work on was the guest room, and I knew we needed a dresser. So the hunt on craigslist began. This is what I found:

Aside from being surrounded by junk, it looked to be in great condition and the asking price was great! So I sent my super under-excited husband to go pick it up while I cleaned the house. When he returned, I found that the owner did a DIY job of refinishing this piece himself, although he wasn't very meticulous. There was drips of polyurethane, streaks in the stain and he used brown packaging tape to repair the siding. The best part: he applied polyurethane right over the packaging tape. Who does that?!

I knew I wanted a two-toned look for this piece to give it some separation between the dresser and mirror, so my husband stripped and sanded the top. I rough sanded the entire piece, making sure to pay extra attention to those drips, but the trim made it hard to get between the curves and grooves. Once the prep was done it was ready for paint. 

I used Country Chic Paint in "Elegance" as this is such a gorgeous color. I call it a chameleon neutral because in different parts of the day, the color appears a duck egg blue, sometimes a pale teal, and even a light green. It truly is a wonderful color. This piece took about two coats, and I had to use a knife to get the detail in the drawers to appear. The previous owner made sure to layer on the poly thick and after it was painted it disappeared completely, because the poly had seeped into the cracks filling the detail. I didn't want it to lose the charming detail so I carefully traced it with a blade. 

I stained the top in General Finishes "Antique Walnut" and sealed it with their wipe-on urethane. I seriously am in love with their stains and poly products! I did minor distressing around the edges, and sealed it with two coats of Country Chic Paint's "Tough Coat." Gave her some octagon glass knobs and she's the perfect starter piece to our farmhouse transition. 

You can see here in this picture what I mean about the drips in the cracks. The good thing about distressing is that you can easily chalk something up like this to character. 

Did you know wallpaper doubles as a drawer liner? Got this lovely matching paper at Target!