mid-century modern redo

I always forget to take 'before' pictures, until I've already started.  I found this dresser at Goodwill for $30 about a year ago.  I'd seen a few mid-century modern dressers for sale/road-side-junk, but none were real wood, they were plastic that 'looked' like wood.  This one is all wood-veneered MDF, can't tell when it was made, but it was good enough for me!  So I got rid of Axel's plastic drawers I got at Walmart, and ignored Paul's comments about how we're moving in a year and did I really need to purchase such a BIG piece of furniture?

I couldn't decide how to redo it for a long time.  But in the end decided to paint the case black, and refinish the drawers wood.  The tricky part was finding black hardware that was the exact right size for the existing holes in the drawers.

After sanding it, I spray primed it.  Then I first did a coat of satin oil based paint with the roller.  WOW, roller marks!  I sanded for 3 hours - seriously.  Then brushed on satin oil based paint with foam brush.  WOW, brush strokes!  I sanded for 2 hours.  The paint was free, my neighbor had extra.  I did use a lot of my sandpaper, which was ok because I don't want to move it, but if we weren't moving I'd feel like I wasted a lot of money on sandpaper.  I decided that I had to bite the bullet and purchase spray paint.  Because I couldn't stand the paint strokes and when I sanded them out, and I inevitably sanded down to the grey primer.

(aren't my hardwood floors gorgeous!  I'll miss them in the bedrooms)

When I've spray painted in the past I can't seem to get the paint to go on flawlessly.  I can get it to go on without any drips, but it doesn't look even.  I don't know how to describe it, you can see my spray strokes.  So, I tried to be brave and not pessimistic, went to the store, and found spray paint, that was so dark brown it was almost black.  Which was perfect, since after getting it on, I decided that black was a smidge too harsh.  I did pretty good on the sides and was super pleased, but the top still showed the pattern of my spraying, and I couldn't undo it, even with three coats.  But never fear, I put on two coats of polyurethane, and that took away the evidence of spray pattern.  I am very pleased about how it turned out, which I am surprised about considering that in the middle of painting and sanding for 3 days, I was resigned to it probably looking dumb.

Then the beautiful drawers.  I sanded off the old finish (I think it was a tinted polyurethane because the wood seemed dull and hazy), to reveal the naked stained wood.  It was pretty easy for the flat drawers, but the top three with that little decorative perimeter gave me a lot of work.  But then I just did 3 coats of poly, waited 24 hours, put it all together with hardware, gave Axel a lecture on how he couldn't touch it for at least three days, and after that, not allowed to put papers all over the top and make it look messy, and I was done.

I love it.  Paul loves it too.  He always likes it when I'm done.  Maybe that's more because I'm not working on it anymore, than that he loves the finished product.

But isn't that wood delicious.  I know you're trying to touch it through the computer.  It feels luxurious.