...Silliness is a good thing..: a painted french provincial dresser

Remember my first furniture makeover here, well my older daughter loved it so much, we ended up giving it to her to use. I must say that she loved it even before we made it over. She's got a vision much like here mommy. Haha!

I had already told everyone that I wasn't going to go through this back breaking labor again until next summer. Inspired and proud of my first makeover and knowing that the baby stuff storage dilemma hadn't been solved yet, I couldn't help but look. We all know what "just looking" can lead to. Tada!

This time it was a little more challenging. This dresser has more curves and it had a thick coat of black paint on it. The original color was a beautiful walnut stain. If it were the original, I probably would have kept it that way.

I love that it's all wood and it's the style of dresser I was interested in, traditional and a little French.

I used Citristrip to help loosen the black paint. That stuff worked well, but I think I didn't let it sit long enough and maybe the paint was just too thick. The first scrap down went well but because of the dark color, it left a lot of black in the grains. The pictures below are of the dresser with the second coat of Citristrip on.

It took me almost two weeks of back breaking sanding and scrapping to get all that black off. Evenings up north in the winter time are short too. So, thinking back, maybe it was only seven or eight hours but to a seven months pregnant lady, it felt like sixty hours and I felt like a one hundred year old.

Our whole garage smelled like citrus, I got so sick of the smell, I felt like vomiting each time I walked by the mudroom.

After all the sanding was done, I decided I was going to paint it heirloom white like the first dresser. I don't have any pictures of it all cleaned up after sanding. I was drained, I didn't even have the energy to ask hubby to take any pictures. I was just ready to get it painted and done with.

Unfortunately, when I went to Menards, they didn't have the heirloom white in stock. I guess it's a very popular color. Desperate to finish this project before the snow falls, I picked up Rustoleum's Painter's touch in semi-gloss white and also a silver for the handles.

We had to wait for a warmer day so that we could pull it out onto the driveway and my hubby could help with the spray painting. We did two coats of white on the dresser, sanding in between and then two coats of the Polycrylic. The handles were cleaned and sprayed with three coats of the silver and placed back on but flipped upside down instead. I like this look more.

The white turned out a little on the grey side. But I was too tired and the weather wasn't cooperating, so we kept it that way and moved it into the house.

It's the perfect size for my baby's stuff. It holds almost all of it.

Although the storage has worked for us, I'm still not too crazy about the color. I've got it on my agenda to repaint this summer once all the family activities are over and I have a little more time on my hands. Hopefully, it will only take me a day or a weekend to complete this time around.

Make it a silly day!