WARNING: Natural wood enthusiasts may experience difficulty breathing or heart palpitations while reading this post.
Recently I refinished our master bedroom nightstands to be used in the guest bedroom, and after successfully stripping the bold red mahogany stain, I decided to do the same to the top of the triple dresser. We're going to use the dresser as our tv stand in the living room. I had planned to buy a new piece of furniture, but mom and dad were using this dresser in their rental, and had no plans to use it in the new house. We were actually going to sell it before we moved from Wilmington!
For starters, this is the dresser (before):
I wasn't considering the dresser in my project list because I didn't think this particular style with its leaf carvings and cutouts would work with the new style I'm into if I refinished it, but then I found a picture of a nearly identical dresser painted crisp white with a black stained top and black hardware. It was so pretty I was tempted to copy it exactly! (I have searched everywhere and can't find that photo, sorry!) I wanted something a bit less crisp with less contrast for our living room, but it planted the seed that this style dresser could be refinished into something amazing.
Then I found this piece on Joss and Main, and I fell in love and this became the inspiration for my project.
As interesting as this whitewashed top is, I wanted to stain the top like I did with the nightstands - same color blend and all because I so love it, and it's a nice fit with our new home style. I also wanted to bring in a little color as the tv stand is going to be on a long solid wall of greige opposite 2 gray sofas and 2 beige bergere chairs. I decided to go with a similar color as the living room drapes, which is nearly identical to the inspiration photo.
So I got the dresser all set up in our foyer on a big blue tarp as usual, and then got an email from our landlord informing us he'd be putting up the "for lease" sign and adding a lockbox so they can start showing the property to prospective renters at any minute. Oh well! I warned them about my little furniture problem. :)
Then I took a deep breath, confirmed with Brent that he was all in on this direction before I butchered our dresser, and off I went with my bottle of citristrip and my trusty $0.99 chip brush. The in-process photos crack me up - in any given photo you can see another project either ongoing or completed in the background. Here you see the clock mom asked me to refinish for her.
I didn't bother taking photos of the staining process because I covered that in the nightstand post. However, I should mention I really struggled with how I wanted to seal and protect the top. The nightstands came out nice with the satin poly, but it definitely made it look more factory finished, as opposed to the dull raw finish before sealing and I wanted to maintain that if possible. So I thought about waxing it but decided that's not practical for us, and ultimately decided to try a new product I hadn't tried before. It's a water based poly like the minwax polycrylic I normally use, but it's made by Varathane and it's supposedly a "Matte" finish. I was skeptical but for $6, I figured it was worth a shot. And shockingly it dried sooo matte!! I'm in love with this product! It doesn't feel sealed, so we'll see how it holds up I guess.
Moving on to the body! Once exposing the grain of the top, even I felt a little guilty for what I was about to do to the body knowing this lovely grain lurks underneath. But we were originally going to sell it, so I figured what's the harm?
In order to prevent the red mahogany stain and wood from bleeding through the paint as it notoriously does, I first sealed the whole body with Zinsser shellac. Now that I've tried both the clear and the white/tintable (I used the white on the nightstands, and I used the clear on this piece), hands down I prefer the clear. The white goes on very goopy, yet still drips which is kind of the worst of both worlds. The clear is a much thinner liquid. See how shiny it looks? And not a single spot of bleed-through, so it was a success!
Now for the paint. This look obviously called for chalk-like paint. But I really wanted to get the layered look right. I've experimented a lot since I've gotten into this rustic/cottage/shabby phase and sort of put all that knowledge to work on this piece. I did a base coat of tan, then a patchy coat of offwhite before coating with my main color.
The tan is Sherwin Williams Artisan Tan:
The offwhite is Olympic Cake Batter which is actually a very rich deep cream, but reads much lighter when painted on furniture, especially over a darker color!
The main color is Sherwin Williams "Underseas" which is roughly two shades deeper than the linen we used to make the living room drapes. The red arrow approximates the color of the linen fabric. Paint always seems to look brighter on furniture! As always, I used a slurry of plaster of paris and water added to the paint to give it that chalky texture.
So you can see the tan on the drawers, and you can see how I was deliberately very sloppy in painting on the off-white patches. I didn't stop to take a photo of the dresser base done in tan, sorry! I hate the tan color, but it was intended to look like bare wood showing through, and I think it's spot on.
Here's where countless hours of tinkering with DIY projects comes into play. At this point I sealed the whole thing (all painted surfaces) with satin polycrylic. Why? Because when you layer chalk paint or DIY chalk paint and then sand, the layers are so good at adhering to each other than you can't sand through just one layer. Or I should say, I haven't been able to sand through just one layer with my paint recipe and heavy hand. :) It always goes straight down to the wood, and in my case that would mean exposing the red mahogany that I was so diligent about hiding. So by sealing the tan and white coat with poly, I'm able to distress the top coat and expose the tan/white underneath for that chippy/aged look.
Here's the base after 2 coats of the underseas color - neither photo is really an accurate color representation but so it goes taking photos at night with heinous incandescent can lights.
Then I just used a 150 or 200 grit sandpaper in my power sander. In past projects I've always just lightly distressed by hand, along the edges and on corners etc. This time I went big, heavily sanding the entire piece, and after just one drawer I knew I'd love it. Little bits of white and tan were exposed, and the greenish top paint even took on a different color as the sandpaper roughed it up. So I sanded, then sealed with my new favorite matte poly, and added the freshly painted hardware and put her all back together.
And here she is!
I think this is going to be the perfect addition to our new living room, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I think the juxtaposition of a super rustic and vintage looking piece of furniture with a giant modern tv sitting on it is kind of cool. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself because I love the look of this furniture, but I also love our big tv. :)
This will be my final project update before our move. That's not to say I won't be tinkering on projects in the next week while packing, but this is the last project you'll see. :) Please wish us luck in the coming week or two. We certainly will need it! I'm not sure if I'll have another update about the house before we move or not, but I promise to post an exhaustive collection of house photos when it's complete, both unfurnished and furnished! My house will be furnished soon!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!
Recently I refinished our master bedroom nightstands to be used in the guest bedroom, and after successfully stripping the bold red mahogany stain, I decided to do the same to the top of the triple dresser. We're going to use the dresser as our tv stand in the living room. I had planned to buy a new piece of furniture, but mom and dad were using this dresser in their rental, and had no plans to use it in the new house. We were actually going to sell it before we moved from Wilmington!
For starters, this is the dresser (before):
I wasn't considering the dresser in my project list because I didn't think this particular style with its leaf carvings and cutouts would work with the new style I'm into if I refinished it, but then I found a picture of a nearly identical dresser painted crisp white with a black stained top and black hardware. It was so pretty I was tempted to copy it exactly! (I have searched everywhere and can't find that photo, sorry!) I wanted something a bit less crisp with less contrast for our living room, but it planted the seed that this style dresser could be refinished into something amazing.
Then I found this piece on Joss and Main, and I fell in love and this became the inspiration for my project.
As interesting as this whitewashed top is, I wanted to stain the top like I did with the nightstands - same color blend and all because I so love it, and it's a nice fit with our new home style. I also wanted to bring in a little color as the tv stand is going to be on a long solid wall of greige opposite 2 gray sofas and 2 beige bergere chairs. I decided to go with a similar color as the living room drapes, which is nearly identical to the inspiration photo.
So I got the dresser all set up in our foyer on a big blue tarp as usual, and then got an email from our landlord informing us he'd be putting up the "for lease" sign and adding a lockbox so they can start showing the property to prospective renters at any minute. Oh well! I warned them about my little furniture problem. :)
Then I took a deep breath, confirmed with Brent that he was all in on this direction before I butchered our dresser, and off I went with my bottle of citristrip and my trusty $0.99 chip brush. The in-process photos crack me up - in any given photo you can see another project either ongoing or completed in the background. Here you see the clock mom asked me to refinish for her.
 |
| Just brush on the citristrip gel and walk away for anywhere from 30 minutes up to 24 hours. |
 |
| This is after scraping the gel off and then scrubbing with steel wool to get the remaining bits and then cleaning with mineral spirits. Basically, everything is done except the final sanding. |
 |
| And here is after a light sanding. Again, I was amazed at how pretty the grain is! |
I didn't bother taking photos of the staining process because I covered that in the nightstand post. However, I should mention I really struggled with how I wanted to seal and protect the top. The nightstands came out nice with the satin poly, but it definitely made it look more factory finished, as opposed to the dull raw finish before sealing and I wanted to maintain that if possible. So I thought about waxing it but decided that's not practical for us, and ultimately decided to try a new product I hadn't tried before. It's a water based poly like the minwax polycrylic I normally use, but it's made by Varathane and it's supposedly a "Matte" finish. I was skeptical but for $6, I figured it was worth a shot. And shockingly it dried sooo matte!! I'm in love with this product! It doesn't feel sealed, so we'll see how it holds up I guess.
Moving on to the body! Once exposing the grain of the top, even I felt a little guilty for what I was about to do to the body knowing this lovely grain lurks underneath. But we were originally going to sell it, so I figured what's the harm?
In order to prevent the red mahogany stain and wood from bleeding through the paint as it notoriously does, I first sealed the whole body with Zinsser shellac. Now that I've tried both the clear and the white/tintable (I used the white on the nightstands, and I used the clear on this piece), hands down I prefer the clear. The white goes on very goopy, yet still drips which is kind of the worst of both worlds. The clear is a much thinner liquid. See how shiny it looks? And not a single spot of bleed-through, so it was a success!
Now for the paint. This look obviously called for chalk-like paint. But I really wanted to get the layered look right. I've experimented a lot since I've gotten into this rustic/cottage/shabby phase and sort of put all that knowledge to work on this piece. I did a base coat of tan, then a patchy coat of offwhite before coating with my main color.
The tan is Sherwin Williams Artisan Tan:
The offwhite is Olympic Cake Batter which is actually a very rich deep cream, but reads much lighter when painted on furniture, especially over a darker color!
The main color is Sherwin Williams "Underseas" which is roughly two shades deeper than the linen we used to make the living room drapes. The red arrow approximates the color of the linen fabric. Paint always seems to look brighter on furniture! As always, I used a slurry of plaster of paris and water added to the paint to give it that chalky texture.
So you can see the tan on the drawers, and you can see how I was deliberately very sloppy in painting on the off-white patches. I didn't stop to take a photo of the dresser base done in tan, sorry! I hate the tan color, but it was intended to look like bare wood showing through, and I think it's spot on.
Here's where countless hours of tinkering with DIY projects comes into play. At this point I sealed the whole thing (all painted surfaces) with satin polycrylic. Why? Because when you layer chalk paint or DIY chalk paint and then sand, the layers are so good at adhering to each other than you can't sand through just one layer. Or I should say, I haven't been able to sand through just one layer with my paint recipe and heavy hand. :) It always goes straight down to the wood, and in my case that would mean exposing the red mahogany that I was so diligent about hiding. So by sealing the tan and white coat with poly, I'm able to distress the top coat and expose the tan/white underneath for that chippy/aged look.
Here's the base after 2 coats of the underseas color - neither photo is really an accurate color representation but so it goes taking photos at night with heinous incandescent can lights.
Then I just used a 150 or 200 grit sandpaper in my power sander. In past projects I've always just lightly distressed by hand, along the edges and on corners etc. This time I went big, heavily sanding the entire piece, and after just one drawer I knew I'd love it. Little bits of white and tan were exposed, and the greenish top paint even took on a different color as the sandpaper roughed it up. So I sanded, then sealed with my new favorite matte poly, and added the freshly painted hardware and put her all back together.
And here she is!
I think this is going to be the perfect addition to our new living room, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I think the juxtaposition of a super rustic and vintage looking piece of furniture with a giant modern tv sitting on it is kind of cool. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself because I love the look of this furniture, but I also love our big tv. :)
This will be my final project update before our move. That's not to say I won't be tinkering on projects in the next week while packing, but this is the last project you'll see. :) Please wish us luck in the coming week or two. We certainly will need it! I'm not sure if I'll have another update about the house before we move or not, but I promise to post an exhaustive collection of house photos when it's complete, both unfurnished and furnished! My house will be furnished soon!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!
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