This is another project that I completed a while ago, but at least this one is less than a year old, right?

What we have here is a standard issue dresser from the dorms of a certain university in mine and Kyla Brown’s home town. Let me make this clear…we did not steal this dresser. We couldn’t have. I went to an out-of-state school and Kyla only went to said university for like one semester, and never stayed in the dorms. I don’t think he ever even went into one of the dorms.

I’m not sure how it gained its freedom from a life of collegiate servitude, but it was abandoned by some nomadic roommate of Kyla’s, and we ended up with it.

We also acquired a bookcase, a vacuum, and a beautiful vintage radio cabinet this way. But that is another story for another time.

The dresser still has the little metal tag on the back with the serial number and college name. It was apparently from back when it was a college, before it became a fancy-pants university. I love stuff with a story.

It sat in our master bedroom closet at our apartment, and then the master closet at our condo, before seeing the light of day at our new home, which, unfortunately, lacks a master closet.

It was pretty ugly, in my opinion. Most of the dresser is wood, but the top is a fake wood grain laminate. The overall design is kind of mod, without much ornamentation, and it has the handles carved out of the drawer fronts. I thought about trying to sell it to some hip young professional for use in their trendy loft bedroom, but we needed a dresser for the girls’ room.

The drawers are not very tall, so that was another reason we decided it would work for their room. You couldn’t really get any more than 3 pairs of adult-sized jeans folded in one of the drawers (three, at most…if they’re thin, skinny jeans), so it was very impractical for anything but tiny clothing.

And I generally frown on covering unpainted wood, but I knew that I would never put the effort into refinishing it, and would never be happy with it as-is. So, it had to be painted.

I took all of the drawers out, and started painting them with the leftover pink (Sherwin Williams Quaint Peche – 6330) paint from doing the walls. I only painted the fronts and sides, partly out of laziness and partly due to time constraints. Then I went to painting the base with the leftover paint of the other color (Sherwin Williams Porcelain – 0053) we used in the room. It started to look quite cute, and I was very pleased.

Then came the top. I wanted something durable, fairly water-resistant (since the dresser would double as the changing table), and something…unexpected.

I went to Micheal’s and bought about 25 sheets of this gorgeous scrapbook paper with old fashioned flower illustrations on it. I laid out all of the sheets so that I could see where the pattern lined up, and got ready to Mod Podge (I’ve so got the hang of this…bye bye Modge Podge!) the hell out of it.

I gooped the Mod Podge on the dresser top, and then laid the paper down. The whole thing was a soggy, bubbley mess on my first try. But after it dried, most of the bubbles and wrinkles just disappeared. I decided that I must have put too much on and gotten the paper too wet, so with the next sheet, I just didn’t put it on as thick, and that worked better.

As I put the sheets down, I was careful to keep them aligned so the pattern lined up, and I used a brayer to remove some of the larger air bubbles.

Once I got the top covered, I needed to fold it over the sides of the top. I cut the overhanging paper at a 45 degree angle from the corners, then applied the Mod Podge to the sides. I used the brayer along the seem where the top and sides met to make the paper fold. Then I used the brayer again (going down from top to bottom) to pull the paper tight over the edges. On the front there was a bit of a lip, so I just used my finger to rub some Mod Podge under there, and then folded it under as tightly as I could.

After all of that dried, I started coating all of the scrapbook paper with more Mod Podge, to seal it and protect the paper from the diapers and their yucky contents which would soon be unavoidably abundant. I started with lighter coats, so the paper wouldn’t get too wet again, and made the coats a little heavier as I went. I did about 7 coats in all…two light coats with a foam brush, three slightly heavier coats with the same, and 2 coats that involved me just dumping the Mod Podge straight onto the top and spreading it with a large paint brush.

And once it all dried, it became this:

Tags: Before & After, Furniture Makeover, Girls' Room, How to Dress up an old Dresser, Little Girls Room Furniture Makeover

This entry is filed under Before and After - Remodeling, Redorating, Makeovers and Upcycling, Crafts, Decorating, How To.

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