Make Old Into New
I recently started re-furbishing or re-decorating furniture within the last year. I have always been dedicated to making signs and décor but I felt compelled to try my skills elsewhere.
I remember the first dresser I redid a year ago pictured below, was a kids large dresser it was white, stained with sticky juice and candy, it had ants in it, marker and crayon marks all over it. I stared hard at it and how I would get it to be beautiful again. I watch several YouTube videos on supplies needed and decided to just wing it, I went to Lowe's found a suttle charcoal gray and the prettiest hardware pieces I could match. One lesson I learned with the first dresser was, MAKE A BUDGET for your project. I didn't have any sort of budget and just bought the most expensive paint, the most expensive hardware and probably could have found avenues and supplies for less of the same quality.
After I finished this dresser which took about six months as I do work full time, a single momma and was very involved in community activities around this time period. However she is gorgeous, I didn't fix the bottom drawer honestly because I liked the blemish and a reminder of what it once was. I learned at that point in the time the value of certain tools to eliminate tedious tasks such as sanding!
About a year later I decided I wanted to make another dresser and had hopes to sell the second restored dresser, but after I started getting into making it I realized this was staying with me too. Some business woman I am, keeping all my projects to myself! The second restoration was an old dresser I got online for $20 which was scratched up from cats- but a tough thick durable wood and needed the dresser drawers fixed. I chose a teal satin paint for this project by Vaspar and less money than I spent on the previous dresser. I got the hardware at Hobby Lobby half off and saved $2 a piece of hardware this time. I also invested in a hand sander to assist with the sanding process of the project. The downfall of this project was the design element in the middle of each drawer as it was difficult to sand around but it came all together beautifully.
During this time of my life I was dealing with a separation from my ex and wanted to completely redo my entire bedroom to fit me and a fresh start! This teal dresser with gold hardware was the beginning canvas to an entire room.
One of the fun things I redid lately was some pieces for my daughters bedroom, this year we also gave her room a full makeover and ditched her full size bed for a bunk bed that had full size and twin size beds. We traded in Hello Kitty theme from when she was a baby and toddler to pinks and golds as a young lady something that transitional as she gets older. We had an old laminate book shelf that was bulky and big we ditched for a smaller cube size shelf for her mini sitting area. She requested fuzzy chairs for her sitting area, so of course I found away to give her what she requested. We found someone on Facebook selling a small stool and matching end table for $20 for both! We drove and picked up the items and immediately recreated the stool- stripping the upholstery fabric that was previous placed on it and replacing it with her fuzzy pink faux fur she picked out compliments of Jo-Ann's fabrics. We painted it Ultra White Vaspar Satin Interior Paint from the dark charcoal color it had previously.
She loved it so much she wanted to redo her desk chair to match, we had extra fabric so I am all for reusing and never wasting. Her desk chair was actually an old chair my father had for about 25 years and passed it on to me which I then put in her room at her desk. I agreed with her it was probably time update the chair - we of course got permission from Papa on his old chair and used the same Ultra White paint and same fabric and reupholstered the chair seat and paint the chair. This chair was harder to re-do than the stool and I believe it was due to the age of the item and the fact that it has never been redone before. We changed out the foam fabric for a thicker foam - to be more cozy to sit on. See below of the two transformations of her small furniture items for her room.
Our next project after these was way larger project but we are more than happy to share the progress on that soon!
