turquoise dresser

This is just the beginning to my daughters bedroom makeover. When I tell you it is a pain in the bucket to re-do a bedroom for Christmas- BELIEVE me! Never again! One room renovation trickled on to a 3 room re-do. Might as well do her bathroom, I think to myself. Oh, and the other child will feel bad if she doesn't have a nifty new room, so I better do something special for her. And there goes my every second of the next 3 weeks! As if December ain't crazy enough! We decided to switch dressers between the girls rooms and paint M's new dresser her new favorite color turquoise. Her favorite color will probably switch tomorrow, so I'm thinking this dresser will have about 6 layers of paint on it before she goes to college.

Steps for finishing a dresser:

1. There is NO EASY WAY to do this. No product out there is magic. Nothing to come save you hours and hours of time. So, DO NOT try to buy paint and slap it on. You will regret it.

2. After my husband bought regular paint at the store, he sanded the entire dresser really well and began painting.

3. Wow! That was easy! ...... Wrong! Latex paint would not stick to a 40 year old dresser. Back to the specialty store to buy OIL based paint and primer and paint stripper.

4. My husband spent an extra 15 hour stripping and sanding all because he didn't use expensive oil based paint to begin with.

5. With the dresser now down to the bare bones, he primed it with oil based primer, tinted gray.

6. Paint with oil based paint and a brush. Let dry and do several coats.

7. Add texture with some gel glaze by minwax. We put it on too thick and used a clean rag and paint thinner (we use alot of that stuff around hear) to remove the excess glaze.

8. Add knobs and Walah! My daughter squealed when she saw it. A true designer at heart.

So the moral of the story is THERE IS NO EASY WAY. Do it right the first time. When I see these 24 hour makeovers on TV they make it look so easy. But have you every seen a close up in High Definition? It ain't pretty folks and even though I'm not a perfectionist, (thankfully my husband is) even I have standards!

Stay tuned for my daughter's bedroom reveal.... It's only a few craft projects away!

I've linked to this fabulous site:

And to the Nester here