It’s one of the things I love most in life. Breathing new life into something old, beat up or broken. Or just plain ugly! When I bought my house I didn’t have a ton of extra cash lying around so I spray painted a heck of a lot of furniature. Tony and I have a joke that if it stands still, we paint it. Those same pieces have now been reincarnated several times over as I do my part to fully destroy the ozone layer. Is that even a thing people say anymore? Oh well, I just totally dated myself.
This piece here was a fun little project. It was my great aunt’s dresser that my mom insisted I take. My mother has a really hard time letting things go. Where I would try to sell an item on Craiglist or simply donate it, my mom will hold onto it because surely there is someone who could use it. Seriously, she would still have my furniature from my childhood bedroom if my younger cousin hadn’t have needed it. So when my aunt no longer needed this beast of a dresser, my mom insisted I take it because a.) it has a lot of storage, and b.) it would be great in a nursery someday. I’m not pregnant. Nor was I when she said this right after we got married. So after I picked my jaw up off the floor from this statement, I decided to take it.
It sat in the garage for months, with Tony using it as a work bench. *side note- let’s talk about that wood stacked in front of it. How awesome is that? We’re going to make something really cool out of that. I’m just not sure what yet.

For a while I couldn’t decide what color to paint it. Would it look nice white or black? You can see my experimentation here. I thought that if I painted it white it might have that Hollywood Regency look about it. But come to find out, all that detail on there was plastic. Wood grained plastic. Yuck! So I decided to take on off to see what was underneath. Bummer, just particle board with big holes in it.
As I expressed my disappointment, Tony said, “Babe, think about who you’re married to!”
And this project just got a little more interesting.

We had some old pine that we had picked up somewhere, but it looked way too new. We aged it using steel wool and vinegar. Look what a difference that made!

So after we painted the rest of it a light grey, here’s what we ended up with.

I even repurposed the knobs. They were white ones I had saved from the kitchen cabinets when I replaced them years ago. See… this is why I keep everything! You never know when you might use it! And I usually do!