Step by Step, Day by Day

In my last blog I introduced my beautiful French Provincial style 9 drawer dresser.
After countless Internet searches & early morning trips to yard sales, I finally found exactly what I wanted. 

Good things really do come to those who wait.
--And I'm not a girl that settles for the next best thing..

So about 40+ Lysol wipes later, I've cleaned this baby up and I'm ready to start my painting process.

 

Here's how it looked the first day I brought it home.

 

 

I'm a huge fan of this blog by a fellow DIY'er Virginia. We have very similar taste and I took some painting furniture tips from her blog Here

 

After the cleaning comes the sanding.

I like to sand all my furniture pieces to remove the shine from previous paints and stains.

Not to mention it helped to remove the gum crustified on top that no amount of Lysol wipes could conquer.

As well as buff out any of the abuse my furniture finds have taken over the years.

 

 

 

Christmas came early this year at my house!!

My dad gave me my very own palm sander and I am SO excited!

This one is rounded and spins on a 360* rotation. It makes sanding rounded corners much easier.

 

 

THANKS DAD! :)

 

After I coaxed my fiance into taking off the original hardware, I got a jump start on sanding.

The point of sanding furniture isn't to sand until all the paint/stain comes off, its just to give it a rough surface for the new paint to have some grit to grab onto.

 

I made sure I took off the shiny lacquer but didn't sand it down the the wood.

I didn't want to reshape the peice, just give myself a good base to work with.

 

After a little debate with myself, I was ready to prime in gray instead of white.

Because I have painted all of our other mixmatched pieces in our bedroom View them Here, I have lots of left over paint from previous projects.

Because I wanted a crisp clean white for this piece. I decided to go with some leftover gray primer in the hopes that it won't take too many coats of all white to cover the previous stain.

 

And I'm really glad I did. The last all white piece of furniture we tried to prime with white, took another 4 coats!!!! --Nobody's got time for 4 coats!

 



 

 

 

All 9 drawers took less time than it did to paint the whole dresser!

 

The more I primed, the more I wished that I would of gone ahead and sanded the entire drawer.

If and when it warms up I will sand the entire drawer and prime to paint both the outside and inside.

It's been about 20 ish degrees the past few days, and I haven't gotten back outside to finish painting!! Check back to see the finishing touches!!