So am coming clean, I am a wanna be DIY-er. I really like creating things and changing things to suit my needs... maybe a reason I studied art in college. I love making things pretty. However, sometimes I run into the problem of not actually finishing what I start. I have numerous art projects from college that I have yet to finish from glaze on pottery to making a chain for a pendant, I just never got around to finishing them. This also stems into projects around the house. I really love interior design and sometimes come up with ideas, that I start and never finish.
Case in point, the dresser I bought at a thrift store the summer before my senior year at ECU. I bought it for like $20 bucks and lugged the massive thing all the way from VB to Greenville. The finish on it was horrible (white chipped paint with crayon markings everywhere!) and it was obvious that there were many coats of paint on it. So I painstakingly started scraping off each layer at a time with a razor blade. I could have used some chemicals to help, but I was living in an apartment at the time and didn't want to kill myself or Lexi with fumes. So I scrapped and scrapped and scrapped. I remember finals week right before graduation, scrapping at the dresser thinking ... I should be studying instead of working on this stupid dresser! Still not finished, I lugged the thing back to VB where it stayed in the garage while I putzed around. Eventually I gave up and slapped a coat of white paint on it. I didn't even sand it, so to say it looked like crap is an understatement. But I called it shabby chic, so I could get away with it.
Case in point, the dresser I bought at a thrift store the summer before my senior year at ECU. I bought it for like $20 bucks and lugged the massive thing all the way from VB to Greenville. The finish on it was horrible (white chipped paint with crayon markings everywhere!) and it was obvious that there were many coats of paint on it. So I painstakingly started scraping off each layer at a time with a razor blade. I could have used some chemicals to help, but I was living in an apartment at the time and didn't want to kill myself or Lexi with fumes. So I scrapped and scrapped and scrapped. I remember finals week right before graduation, scrapping at the dresser thinking ... I should be studying instead of working on this stupid dresser! Still not finished, I lugged the thing back to VB where it stayed in the garage while I putzed around. Eventually I gave up and slapped a coat of white paint on it. I didn't even sand it, so to say it looked like crap is an understatement. But I called it shabby chic, so I could get away with it.
So fast forward to about around December when I had a break from school... I decided to redo it again! But this would be the last time and I was going to do it right! So I started scraping away... using little wood carving tools. There are some pretty intricate spots, so the little knives worked well... they just took a really long time. There were also a lot of layer of paint! Not only the white paint I put on it, but there must have been about 4 other layers including gold, black, teal with speckles and more white.
It took quite a lot of effort to scrape it down to a relatively smooth surface, but it was worth it. After I finished the initial scraping, it sat for a few months bare while I made it through the semester. Finally about a month ago, I decided to get moving on it and I started the sanding!
After a lot of sanding it was onto the priming. During my first attempt of painting white was that I had a lot of bleeding through from the other layers and such. There were a lot of orange streaks in my original fix years ago. So this time around, I decided to use some Kilz on it to make sure it was protected! Well one thing I forgot to mention was that I did all of this work in my room. The dresser is very heavy, so moving it into the garage would have been a pain! So I did all of the scraping, sanding, and painting in my room. So using the Kilz inside was probably not to best idea, but I had to make it work. Luckily, it was pleasant weather outside, so I had all of the windows open. Although, I don't know how much that helped... I know I killed a lot of brain cells during this process.
Forgot to mention too, that in my first redo job, I had the bright idea to paint the inside of the drawers orange. I saw it on one of the blogs I read and thought it would be great for a pop of color. The only problem is that I didn't use orange anywhere else in my room. I ended up going with a different color scheme in my room... so the orange was totally out of place! So I had to get that covered up too... which was a bit annoying, but totally necessary!
So after all of that scraping and sanding and priming it was time to pick colors!! I knew I wanted to get away from the white, but was having a tough time picking what I wanted. I thought about a nice glossy black, but I already have a lot of black furniture, so I needed to mix things up. I ultimately decided on gray, but when I got to Home Depot... I realized the crazy number of grays there are in the world.
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