A Painted Dresser

Although I didn't blog much at all last year, I did work on several projects.  One was this dresser that had been sitting in my dining room for over a year.  Sitting there, looking just like this.

Horrible, right?  I didn't even bother cleaning it. Ug.  I think I'd planned to work on it much sooner, but I got pregnant and was too tired, and then had a baby, and was too tired.  Once I got Zoe on some kind of schedule, I decided it was time to do something with this ugly thing.   I went to my Pinterest furniture board to get some ideas.  At first, I wanted to do something like this.

  (pinned from here, but I believe Pottery Barn is the orig source)

When I first started working on furniture, I just painted everything black.  Frankly, I was tired of black at this point, and I wanted to step out of my comfort zone by adding a little color, but still needed something that would work with the look we have going on in the main living area. I started looking at some of the gray pieces I'd pinned and decided I'd go with a dark gray.  I know, I know, gray isn't much of a change from black, but it was a big step for me.

I chose two Martha Stewart colors called Anvil and Shale.  According to those links, it looks like the MS line is normally mixed in Glidden.  I get all of my paint color matched and mixed in Behr's Paint and Primer in One, which Home Depot also carries.  The Anvil was a little too dark for me so I ended up going with Shale.    I ended up doing two coats of paint before distressing with my orbital sander.  After finishing up with that, I had to decide on some new hardware.  I had a pack of oil-rubbed bronze knobs on hand, but they were too plain and didn't really go with the gray.  I headed out to Hobby Lobby to look through their awesome drawer and knob selection.  I found some really nice mustard knobs, but they only had three, and I needed ten.  I drove to a neighboring town to see if their Hobby Lobby had any, and luckily, they had plenty.  I'd have driven to every Hobby Lobby within a 50 mile radius, collecting knobs if I had to.  These were the ONLY knobs I wanted for this piece.  Once I had the knobs, I needed to decorate the top.  I figured we could use some other light source in the room, aside from the ceiling light, so I headed to Target to see what kind of lamps they had.  Can you believe they had a lamp in almost the exact same color as those knobs???  I love it when things work out like that!


Finally, here's my finished dresser.

It actually does look bluish-purple most of these time because of the natural light coming in the front window so I guess that makes it a little more peppy that just plain black.  I will say that the next furniture project I did was a bright green so I think it's safe to say that it didn't take me too long to get out of my color comfort zone!

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I haven't linked to anything is so long, I'm excited about this next part!

Linking to:
Transformation Thursday @ The Shabby Creek Cottage
Hookin' Up With HOH @ House of Hepworths
Inspiration Gallery @ Craftberry Bush
Inspire Me Please @ Liz Marie
Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed