Dresser Makeover for The Little’s Room

This little dresser has been through the paint war.  It was my dresser when I was a little girl. It’s a Broyhill piece and is made beautifully with solid wood and dovetailed drawers.  It was at one time a honey colored stain with pink and blue flowers on a few of the drawers (purchased that way new, via Broyhill). 

Through the years… My style has changed… Maybe a couple times (7… This dresser has had 7 makeovers 😬). 

She sat lonely in the garage for a good year…stained, peeling…with mismatched knobs… I’m not even sure how they all made their way onto her drawer fronts.  

Here’s a look at her sad state:  

 
Just feel blessed that I’m atleast showing her to you once my design style went more neutral, Mmmkay?? 👍🏻 

There’s nothing wrong with her at this point.. Albeit, she certainly would need a cleaning and a new coat of paint if I had chosen to just keep her white.  And obviously hardware that all works together!   But… My Littles were begging for a happy color in their otherwise mostly white on white room.  

So, I started with stripping all the old paint off to bring her back to natural wood so I could start to see something different. 

  
This was a process y’all! 😕🔫 getting down to the final pale pink in this photo!

But, alas, the paint was removed.  (I used Citristrip for this, and it’s by far my favorite paint stripper I’ve used to this point). 

I decided the “happy color” would be yellow… Because what is happier than yellow?!  I chose to use a color from Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint line called Mustard Seed Yellow.  It’s a lovely mix of pigments that lands in the world of neutral yellows to me.  Once I had the drawers painted, I decided I would use a pale grey to dry brush everything else but the top. I wanted to keep the top natural wood.  Then I coated the grey with Annie Sloan in Old White.

And started sanding. And sanding. And sanding. 

Until I got to a place of the old worn French cottage look I was going for.  I knew I wanted to add some hand painted details on the top drawer to add a little extra femininity to the piece,  so I got my chalk out and sketched out a pattern to paint: 

  
(Sorry about the lighting here!)

Once I had my design drawn in chalk, I took a small paint brush and filled in the design with the same Old White chalk paint. 

  
After sitting back and looking at it a bit, I decided to highlight a few of the curves under the top drawer and along the sides with Annie Sloan’s chalk paint in French Linen.  And sand again…

I finished the piece off by waxing it for protection and adding hardware.  

Here it is finished in my Little’s room: 

  
It does bring a happiness to the space and the girls love that yellow is being incorporated.  It has inspired a couple other yellow pieces in the room.  I’ll be sharing their room makeover on a blog post soon!  

Much ❤️, 

Heather