Thursday, April 19, 2012

William Morris Thursday - repainting furniture




I don't have much to report this week as I've taken a little bit of a break from the purging and organizing. I have a whole car load of stuff that needs to go to either goodwill, the consignment store or the recycling center, but we're conserving gas right now so I'm not making many trips into town.

This past weekend, I repainted a chest of drawers for my son's room and another one for the girls' room.


The chest from my son's room was a garage sale find from when we moved into our house. It was painted some other color and I covered it in a thick coat of glossy black paint to go in his camouflage-themed room. It probably wasn't the best choice, but I was just trying to get everyone moved in and it was the easiest thing to do at the moment. My son wanted me to paint it red so I took the leftover red from his walls and whipped up a batch of chalk paint. After painting two coats, I didn't like the way it was looking. You could still see the black underneath the red and it kind of reminded me of the glazing phase of the 60's that you see on lots of thrift store furniture. So I just added another coat and that did it.



When it came time to put the drawers in, I realized that it was kind of plain and since this was a piece for my son's room and not many people would see it, I decided to experiment. I'll blame Pinterest for that.

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So I took the two grays that I had painted on the walls and mixed in a little black until I got 4 shades of gray for the drawers. They aren't a perfect progression from light to dark, but I wasn't going to mess with perfection on this one. I think it turned out nice and my boy likes it, too.



My next project was to paint the girls' dresser a color that would finally match their room. It went from this...



to this


I made some chalk paint out of the leftover paint from the nightstands in there and sealed it with a dark furniture paste. I just need to find some old mismatched pulls for the drawers and it'll be done.

And that's what I did this week.

Linking to Jules' William Morris project. You can join in here.

9 comments:

Brandi Wilson said...

WOW! These look great!

Melissa said...

Two painting projects in a weekend! Awesome! It took me a full week to paint one door...

Alana in Canada said...

These look great! ill you post your recipe for chalk paint? I'm curious--why do that rather than use regular paint?

Anonymous said...

I'll need to sneak a peak at these when I am over next time! Cute idea.:)
-Leilani

Julie @ Creating This Life said...

I love those dressers! I'd love to know how you made the chalk paint too.

Tiffany @ No Ordinary Homestead said...

Looking good! I have had a piece of furniture in our barn for 6 years that I always wanted in my kitchen. To complicate things, it also need a foot but thankfully hubby is handy :) Once I thought stripping it would be a good idea -- but it was a total pain and I never went back to it. Now I know I should have just sanded it and painted it instead of trying to bring back the wood. I make things so much harder than they need to be sometimes!

Thanks the ideas. The graduated color look is really great. I'll have to remember that -- or probably pin it since I'll never remember it. :) Don't you just love Pinterest?

Alice Almighty said...

Those dressers look amazing! I am always afraid to paint furniture, but love it when other people do! Nice colors, and those drawers are really fun!

Kelly said...

I love the various grays on your son's dresser. And judging from the background, it looks like it matches really well with the rest of his room. Good job!

May said...

I would say your Pinterest experiment went very well.