Glossy Black Dresser

Joe and I have entered adult-land and we have a dresser.  We had reached a breaking point and something had to be done.  Piles of clothes are excusable in college and high school (anyone who knew me in high school knows that piles of clothes were my special talent), but we are a little old for that.  And since storage is at a huge premium in our apartment, it required furniture.  A Dresser, to be exact.

I went to my favorite little thrift store and found a white dresser for $10.  It's not of the highest quality, (drawers are sticky and hard to move in and out) but for $10, it means that if I don't want to move it somewhere in the end, I can just re-donate it.  My theme throughout this whole project was, "Hey, $10 Dresser."  It was the perfect reasoning to do a few crazy things.

Here is the dresser as I brought it home:  It had been repainted by someone, probably in the 60's-70's, since they went for a white and gold theme.

I loved these hardware pulls on the top drawers, and the textured lines on the drawers.

Using this stripper, brush, and gloves, I stripped the paint off the front of the top drawers.  The other surfaces I sanded down, with the use of a sander and deck of a friend (Thanks!), but since these drawers have grooves I needed to strip it.  Keep it clean, kids.

Here the Joe Meister working on it to give it some better strength and reinforcement:

 Joe put in some center reinforcement, because the shelves were bowing.  This helped smooth out how the drawers slide.  Much better.

And now the fun starts!  I had found a roll of textured paintable wallpaper at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, along with a bucket of wallpaper paste, both for just $4.  And the front of the bottom four drawers got a smack of some texture!

Hooray! And next, the water-based gloss black paint.  I had gone back and forth on what to paint the dresser, but my dream bedroom would be a dramatic black, white and grey room with chandeliers (yes, chandeliers in the bedroom).  So I decided that even though my current bedroom walls are sage green, I didn't care.  Gloss black, here we come.

Look at that wallpaper texture pop with that gloss!  Yessssss.

And here is the really crazy idea that I had for the top.  The top was a veneer, so it had a really nice grain.  And part of me hates to paint nice wood, even if it is just veneer.  So I decided to leave the best part of the grain...and paint the rest black.  Yes, crazy.  I don't even know if I love it or not, but I'm glad I did it.  There's something freeing about doing something a little hair-brained and not caring.  And again, "Hey, $10 Dresser." 

This is what I did:

This is with the black paint, but before the polyurethane.  After this, I used a water-based poly to make the grain and wood color "pop."  *Make sure to use either both oil-based or both water-based products...oil and water don't mix*

Here is a shot of the top after the poly:

Here is a shot of the front after I had slapped it with black, spray-painted the hardware silver, bought new hardware for the bottom drawers and installed it:

Drool, baby, drool.

And here it is, all done!

We're big kids now!! I like it, and I had so much fun playing around with ideas for it.

"Hey, $10 Dresser."

Got any crazy schemes of your own?