One of my favorite hobbies as a crafter is redoing old furniture. I love to thrift store shop and make a $50 dresser (including delivery) like the one below on the top, turn into something magical like the one on the bottom. Believe it or not I redid that with less than $40 YES REALLY! Its completely doable and below I will walk you through how I did it.
You may not be able to see it int the picture above but the top of the finished dresser actually has a decorative top. That looks like this.
Except its cut out and pretty! But we will get to that more later. A list of things you will need is below.
- Wood Glue
- A variety of sizes of paint brushes & rollers
- Latex Primer
- Colored paint in your choice (we used Behr Ultra Pure White)
- Spray paint for hardware or new hardware
- Polycrylic Sealer
- Wrapping paper that matches
- Modge Podge
- X-acto knife
- lots and lots of time and patience!
If your thrift find is anything like mine it will be quite beat up and maybe even missing a few pieces, example above with the missing round handle on the bottom right drawer. If it is you will want to fix that before starting the revamp. This is where the wood glue comes in. We used Elmer's Wood Glue and a 1/2" paint brush for this step. Ill post a picture below so you can easily identify it in stores. Our drawer front were actually coming off the drawers. So we used wood glue to fill in the cracks and make the dresser more secure. The picture to the right is what you need, the middle is before wood glue and the right is after. You will want to do two or three coats of wood glue depending on the severity of your cracks. WAIT 12 HOURS in between each application. You want to be sure you are filling things that need filled and not over doing it.
As you can see it really helps to fix a ton of damage just due from old age. You will want to repeat that step on all cracks and drawers. If you plan on reusing the paint brush you used with glue WASH IT NOW. Or bye bye brush because it will be hard and crusty and useless. Well you may be able to stir the paint later with it but that is it. Next is the super fun task of priming!! YAY (can you hear the sarcasm?) This is without a doubt the most important(and boring)part. By priming correctly with a good quality primer you can avoid sanding, an equally boring but much more time consuming process. We use Kilz Latex Primer on everything. That stuff is magic! You will want to prime all the drawers, inside and out, the body of the dresser and the interior of any filigree. We did three coats. When this is done correctly you should only need one or two coats of your final color. Primer makes the paint stick and not be absorbed by the wood. Plus it holds up so much better in the long run.
There is the magic stuff and our drawers ready for paint! The paint you use is also important. You do not want to get the cheapest stuff you can find, but buying $45 for a gallon of paint is pointless. We went with Behr paint in Ultra Pure White from Home Depot. We only used about half of the one quart because its good quality. We did 2 coats. You will want to be sure to get into the rivets and curves of the dresser. Otherwise your finish will look, well unfinished. Who wants that after all this work? Not me.
See how the one on the left just sorta looks messy? That's what you don't want. The one on the right is much better.
So now you have a completely painted dresser in your chosen color. The filigree is nice and clean looking and all the interiors of the drawers are also painted. Now for the fun part. The topper! I literally went to target and chose a wrapping paper for $4.99. If you are OCD or have issues with bumps or air bubbles you will want to get a highly patterned paper or wall paper. If you are ok with some shab in your chic then regular paper is fine. The possibilities are endless! You can use wood photography paper backdrop, or damask wallpaper, or even polka dot wrapping paper! Drawer liners would work on some size tops too! So choose what you like and get it. If you use drawer liners you will prob have an adhesive back and wont need modge podge so you can skip the next step.
One the right is your supplies. In the middle you are measuring the paper and cutting it down so its easier to handle. I did not do that and I wish I would have. I left it on the roll. BAD IDEA. On the right I a working in sections doing about 6 inches of modge podge then smoothing down the paper. Continue until you reach the dressers ledge. Slowly rub as many air bubbles as you can out. Start at the center and work towards the ends. You will have some left but after you place things on the dresser, desk, ect you wont see it. Now for the tricky part, cutting the paper to fit the edges on a french provincial.
You are going to want a VERY sharp x-acto knife like on the left. I use a crafters x-acto as it is easier to handle. The picture on the right shows the angle you should hold your knife at for the shaping. By the way it is SUPER hard to take pictures on your cell phone while using both hands on a project. Really hard, Try it! Anyways excuse the bad quality and fuzziness. Back to business, you hold the knife at around a 45 degree angle fro the dresser. You will want to move very slow and hold the paper out pulled tight. Be sure your modge podge is dry or you can have soggy spots that do not cut well. Go around the entire dresser moving slow using one hand to cut and one to hold. If its not perfect that's ok, our next step will help to smooth it out.
The last step is using the polycrylic sealer and sealing the dresser. I only sealed the top. If you didn't prime(shame on you not listening) or used bad quality paint you will want to seal the whole dresser. It is important to move the brush in the same direction each pass. You don't want to go left to right once and up and down the next or you will have ugly lines in crazy directions all over your gorgeous new top! Be sure to put sealer over the edge of the paper where the paper and paint meet. This will smooth out those rough spots that didn't cut like it should have. We did three coats sealer. It only took about 2 hours to do the whole top. Spray paint your hardware or add new and guess what guys?!? Your new dresser is done!
No comments:
Post a Comment