Rags to Riches....

Hey All-

Happy Monday...I hope you all had an awesome weekend.. I know I sure did.. This weekend Hubby and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary, so we went out Saturday night to dinner and stopped down by the local river to watch Ducks, and of course hit out local "Friendly's" for some ice cream. On top of that fun that happened we spent most of the day Saturday working on a project that has been trying to get going for a little over a month now..

It was turning a dresser I picked up off of craigs list into a Media Center. We bought it, then its just been sitting.. well sitting doing nothing, no more..

First off I want to say thank you to my friend Michelle who gave me the awesome idea. I had seen a beautiful Idea on Jen's blog Iheart Organizing, where she used Ikea Billy Bookcases and attached them and added pretty molding etc etc and it created a beautiful built in look. However I wasn't getting the money or the time to go to ikea. So my friend suggested using a sideboard, or a dresser. I was pretty much ehh.. when she first suggested it, but the more I looked on pinterest the more I saw people doing it and the outcomes were really nice.. sooo Off I went..


First I found a decent condition inexpensive dresser. such as the one I bought..

Nothing fancy about it.. to be honest, to me it was downright ugly. But I noticed on pinterest, it was almost like the more ugly it was the better the reveal. So I snagged this baby locally for 50$.

Here is more of a close up of this bad boy.. Old dirty hardware, gold trim, and if you were here in person it would've looked like someone splatted black paint as decoration over the whole thing.. Kind of like a Robins egg how they have the little dots on them.. Anyways.. it was ugly.. I was happy..lol..

After posting this on FB.. a couple people had asked if it was hard.. I will simply state this.. If you can use a paintbrush you can do this project.. very easily..

NOW.. I was determined to find a way to do this project without having to sand down every little nook and cranny.. Turns out I didn't have to sand at all thanks to this can of wonderfulness..

This product I found on a pin on pinterest where someone had painted something similar.. IT TAKES OUT THE SANDING STEP COMPLETELY... you just have to have a little patience. It's called ZINSSER COVERSTAIN/PRIMER.  Don't ask me the science behind this can of awesome but it works. everything was covered, nothing is peeling, nothing is tacky.. Its covered primed and painted.. the trick is having some time to kill. I spent one weekend applying the first coats to all the drawers.. because it was on the darker side I did 2 coats. the problem is this. you have to wait an hour after each coat before you add another or begin to paint.. soo patience in def a virtue in this case..

Here you can see coat 1 on the main part of the dresser.

                        

You can see that its still a little dark. so we def did 2 coats across the board. Dont be scared if it looks splotchy, sord of darker in one area than others. Just keep at it.. 

Drawers with 2 coats.

After the second coat of coverstain had dried for an hour we did our first coat of paint. I chose a plain old can of Semi Gloss white by Glidden.. ps.. a quart which you will only use half of if you do 2 coats on a large dresser cost about 13$

 HARDWARE

One thing I really liked the look of on a lot of the Pins I saw on Pinterest were these fabulous cup pulls.. and everyone said they were inexpensive.. I dunno where they were finding them but they were around 2-3$ a piece at home depot and Lowes.. Which was out of budget for me. The goal was to do this as inexpensive as possible. So I did what I do best. which is to buy a good can of spray paint and go to town..lol.. I bought the black Lacquer by Rustoleum. about 5$ a can. I also this time after many spray projects I invested in a 2$ cheapy spray gun top.. shown below.

Hubby wanted to have some fun. we laid a plastic drop cloth over the kids picnic table and set everything up.. Remember when spray painting to do so in a well ventilated area. 

ALSO.. remember.. LIGHT thin coats. You don't want it so thick that it starts to drip and run. Ruins everything your trying to do. And be sure to follow the instructions. This can suggested a 20-30 minute wait time in between coats. and since we had a 4 hour wait time on the Glidden paint in between coats this worked out well timing wise.

Here is just one coat on these bad boys. Looking better already.

We didn't have time to knock out the second coat on the dresser and drawers before our anniversary date. So we threw that coat on when we got home from out date.. the 2 of us together knocked out each coat in about 20-30  minutes.. Not long at all.. and that was with taking our time. 

THIS is what I had as a set up for the past year and a half.. NOT exactly something i was happy about. But it was what we had and it worked for the time being. However it just was not my style anymore.. ALSO.. because the TV stand was raised up a bit.. sitting on the couch you could see allllll the cords as well as every crumb and snack the kids had dropped there. The TV is at perfect height for my son to lick his hands and just hand print away on my TV.. DROVE ME NUTS..

 ALSO.. with Hubby's prize possession TV and what I have dubbed as the stupid size TV I could never move the stand and get behind to clean.. this is after a year of sitting..lol.. I know kind of embarrassing but it is what it is..

Here is the after.. I was able to sweep, mop and clean the molding up... got rid of the cat tower.. well not get rid of, but moved to another room.. and this is what we have ended up with.

I have really happy with how the project turned out.. It ended up costing me less than I had originally thought. and its custom to how I WANT IT.. which is even more expensive.

The work and time put it was really not all that bad. It took us 2 weekends but probably would've had it done in one had we not had 2 kids and 900 other things going on around us..lol..

here is the break down..

COST

Dresser off craigslist-  $50.00

Coverstain- $9.00

Paint brushes- Free (we had some leftover from the bathroom update)

Glidden Semi Gloss - $13.00

Spray Paint- $5.00

Spray gun top- $3.00

TOTAL COST - $80.00

NOW.. i found a similar one on Restoration Hardware for $899 however I'm sure that's made out of like cedar or something and this I believe was pine.

I did locate a white one with different handles and it was just plain and flat no design on Target for $289.00/.. so either route I go I saved big time and am happy with what I have..

Remember.. as long as you have patience and can use a paint brush this is easy.. that's alllll i did.. if you have never tackled a painting project before.. just remember, slow even strokes.. not to much paint on the brush or it runs and drips.. its a lot easier than I thought..

Happy DIY'ing..

Much Love and Blessings- Shanun

One last reminder..lol..