Dressing Up A Dresser

Some time ago, my friend Lisa gave me a little cabinet. I had plans at the time to turn it into a dresser for Selah, but then realized we had nowhere to put it in the girls' room, so it's been languishing in storage at Jeff's parents' house ever since. With juggling things around for Lauryn's arrival, Joe and Selah now share a room and a dresser, and Kaity will share a room with Lauryn. I decided to pull the cabinet out of storage and fix it up to place in our closet for Lauryn's little clothes. We may eventually put it upstairs in their room, it's just that for now it's more convenient to have it downstairs.

Hm, what's that sticking out of the back of the cabinet? If you guessed a tiny hand, you're right!

Selah loved playing in the cupboard! I snapped these pics before I'd done anything to it. This is straight out of storage, other than the fact that I required Jeff to despiderize it (Yes, that's a word. At least in this house.) before it could come near me.

After a good scrubbing, removing the old cabinet/drawer pulls, and nailing the backing into place, I sat back and made some decisions about what to do with it. Considering how much trouble it is to sand and repaint, the current decent condition of the paint, not to mention my looming due date ... I elected not to go that route. I ended up doing a little painting and a little decoupage to dress up the dresser.

I had Jeff tighten the handles fully, because I thought my linguini arms weren't up to the task. Turns out I had already tightened them as far as they would go, the screws were just a touch too long. Duh.

The new drawer pulls ...

The final product!

Here's another pic that shows my poor job of decoupage on the top ... I almost took the paper off, but it's really not as noticeable in person - the picture shows every flaw!

Total, the whole project cost me $5 for the scrapbooking paper pack, which I can use for lots of other projects, plus $11 for the little nails to secure the backing and the cabinet hardware. The paint, the clear spray sealant, and my homemade "Mod-Podge" were all leftover from other projects. Not bad for a "brand new" dresser!

On a funny side note, those of you who know my sweetie pie best will appreciate this:

Me: What do you think of the dresser? Does it look okay to you?
Jeff: Anything you did would have been an improvement.
Me: Well, yeah, but I mean, do you like it?
Jeff: I like the brown.

Clearly, words of affirmation are not his love language! Thankfully, after 15 years of marriage, I'm completely aware of this and our conversation just gave us both a good laugh!