apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I like this better than the last one

(Is today "Blue Dresser Day"?)

What a lovely end result!

Debbie
http://girlwhimsy.blogspot.com

that is so cute!!! great job :)

i'm generally a fan of the distressed look...but i'm not sure I'm a fan of the sanded edges on the end result.

Another distressed white dresser painted turquoise? This one is well done, though.

i like it! it really brightens up that wall color.

Great with the blue inset tiles in the floor! Marvelous!

This color is amazing! What paint did you use?

This is getting predictable.

Absolutely beautiful -great job!

I like that the top was left unpainted.

It's much better than it was. But in my opinion it would be more elegant if it were stripped back to the original wood and stained/varnished - it's an unusual piece with very nice lines.

Yes, yes---YES! I know it was a lot of work but WOW---it was worth the effort. Splendid how it compliments the tile flooring.

Another distressed white dresser painted turquoise?
How funny. I have a foundling painted dresser ($10!) that I painted a rich turquoise. To finish the top, I stripped two layers of paint and a bad 80's speckled stain down to nice clean wood and applied stain and a hand-rubbed wax finish. I am very fond of it now. Too bad I didn't shoot a "before" picture.

Nice work, Chris.

Beautiful color choice!

Ugh, ignore rude comments from users like Classic CC-40 (who apparently really likes leaving negative comments, according to her profile...what a sunshiney person)... This is a job well done and you should be proud. It's beautiful!! I second what SunnyBlue said.

I just saw a similar dresser in a store that specializes in repro Provencal furniture. It cost 2K!

I like the distressed of the blue, very nice. Look like it would be great in a spanish villa or house. I like the placement of it in the entry too.

Chris - thank you for saving the life of this beautiful dresser (and making it even more beautiful)! WHAT were the people who threw it away thinking?

I see stuff like this tossed to the curb more often than I care to count and much of it is salvagable but many times it's beyond saving for it was, a, cheap junk to begin with, or B, too beat up to salvage.

I see sofas that look like they've seen better days, upholstery ripped and torn, broken TV's that look like they'd not been taken care of all the time.

Love how this dresser was saved and love this shade of blue that you used. While not a fan of pre distressed furniture, in this context, it works w/ what you were after. Nice save.

Thanks for all the kind words! It was a hard decision to distress the edges for me, as I'm also usually not a fan of the pre-distressed look, but I figured I give it a shot and if I hated it, could always put on another coat of blue. In the end I justified it by sanding the edges by hand (helping it look more uneven) and loved how the layers of old paint and varnish came through. It added more depth and texture and enhanced the detail in my opinion...but it was a hard call to make!
The dresser was missing a back leg, which I refashioned out of scrap wood. The whole piece had been painted very unevenly with white latex house paint. I primed it with an oil based tinted primer and had a custom interior latex color mixed at Lowe's. When I got the color home, I hated it and mixed in some other shades of blue and red interior latex satin house paint to make a true custom mix based on a vintage rusty toy jeep I had lying around. (whose blue and reddish brown colors were the true inspiration for the final color scheme) I used a spray latex gloss enamel to seal the finish.
The top I scraped and sanded to bare wood mixed cherry and walnut stains to achieve a reddish brown glow. Then used a rub-on satin polyurethane to seal it. There are several places in the top that were damaged and stained with markers from the previous owners, but I think they add to the charm.
Thanks again for all the comments, we are really excited about how it looks in our entryway.

Could we please see some restorations that don't involve paint???

Having said that --- although I don't like painted furniture I think your execution was very well done. You went way beyond simply slapping a thick coat over all the details like we see way too uch of in my opinion.

Bravo :->