An Art Deco Dresser Makeover
This little number is yet another one of the projects we tackled at my parents' house this year, as we readied it for the market. I love the result, and I know my parents do, too. It's an especially refreshing sight when you consider that we started with this:
Art Deco Furniture Makeover - Before
This dresser was so well-loved that we had given up on it. Such that yes, it was serving as a linen closet in the bathroom. You know you've given up on wooden furniture when you set it out to pasture in a bathroom. But every time I saw it, I would think we could do better. The bones of this piece were still amazing. And though there was no hope of restoring it to its unpainted glory, there was lots of hope of sprucing it up. So we did.
To start, we gave the whole thing a fresh coat of white paint. I don't remember the brand, but I was striving for a nice, pure white. Then came the fun part. The stencil.
I'm so sorry, but I don't have pics of the process. But Emily at Jones Design Company does. She had this great hand-painted wall treatment in which she used this awesome, homemade quatrefoil stencil. In addition to providing a step-by-step for the stenciling process, she also provided the stencil itself, which I downloaded and printed out. I cut out the stencil and retraced it onto a flattened cardboard cereal box. Then I also made a half stencil, because I knew there'd be lots of times when I'd need a half stencil at the edges.
From there, I followed Emily's advice, using a pencil to trace the whole design and then painting over it with a small paintbrush dipped in Valspar's Foggy Mist. I had picked up a couple small sample jars of Foggy Mist when we painted Lou's kitchen counter, and that's what I used for this. Valspar seems to rotate out its sample color selection, but they've got an April Morning right now that looks similar.
Then for the drawer pulls. They definitely needed a little refresh themselves - and, more critically, the top pull was lost. I considered buying new ones, but because this older dresser had non-standard size pulls, finding some in my price range was no easy task. Eventually, I gave up the search. I already had a quart of Rustoleum gold latex paint on hand (with which I am obsessed, by the way - stuff is awesome) so I just brushed some on my existing knobs. And for the final top drawer pull that we'd lost long ago, I stuck in two navy and gold rose-shaped pulls from an Anthropologie clearance bin of yore. Not perfect, but highly preferable to buying new knobs and/or drilling and filling new holes. Remember, we were just rescuing this dresser from the bathroom essentially for staging purposes.
But in the end, my parents like it so much they're taking it with them to wherever they locate. It suits their yen for a little glam in the home. And for the cost of a quart of white paint (about $10), I think that can't be beat.
Please feel super free to share this image or link on Pinterest or Facebook with anyone who loves a good before and after.
Also, I'm so sorry we missed a post yesterday. We had internet issues all day, so we just moved yesterday's post to today. Thanks for reading an have a great weekend.