Ugly dresser made over

This primary color atrocity was posted on craigslist for 40$. Vintage, all wood, inexpensive, and potential. Our baby boy due in July now has a handsome place to keep his clothes that won't sear the corneas. 

The previous owner was very serious about their paint choice. It was extremely bright, thickly painted on, and glossy. As I started sanding it I realized that it was going to be a bigger job than I anticipated because of how incredibly thick the paint layers were. Just getting past the glossy surface to get ready for primer took a while (probably also due to my having to split my attention between that and my kids trying to kill themselves in the street while I worked) The pleasant surprise though was finding the previous paint jobs under this one. There was a nice cream and robin's egg blue under everything else.

 

The plan was originally to just paint the whole thing gray, but I liked the look of the old paint layers enough that I chose to keep the gritty sanded look on the frame at least for now. There's always the option of painting it eventually if I want to. The beaten up frame contrasted against the nice, clean gray paint is kind of neat. It only took, oh, a hundred or so sandpaper changes on my palm sander to break through all the paint layers to get it looking like this.

My man took me to World Market to hunt for drawer pulls, and these beauties are what we came out with. Truly, they are just the kind of look I envisioned for this dresser. How adorable is the owl? Seriously....those original pulls had to go. They were plastic and dirty and ugly. It's amazing how just switching to a nicer pull makes a piece of furniture look drastically better.

On a whim, I grabbed some leftover teal paint from another dresser I did a while ago and painted the top with it since it went nicely with the underlying paint colors. I think something cheerful yellow or red-orange sitting on top of this dresser or hanging behind it would look really nice. The railing behind it really needs a new coat of paint.....yellow railings are pretty normal right?.......

 

Violet's newest favorite play area. Oh hey, she's both yellow AND orange. Ha.