Gold-Dipped Dresser

Holy moly!  I’m about to type up what was a whole month of work – an hour here, two seconds there, half hour here – in one post.  I’m not sure if it feels like I’m cheating or just not giving this project justice but either way…

Remember this dresser?
Well, that’s how it looked when we first got it.

Set inside the twins’ nursery, I gave it a two-toned look and some new, spray-painted hardware:
And now, I look back on that two-tone decision and I think “what the heck was I thinking?”  The french provencial style of the dresser married to a more modern, two-tone look probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.  I mean, it didn’t look awful but it definitely wasn’t as pretty as I thought it was at the time.  It’s funny how your perceptions change, isn’t it?

Well anyway, it doesn’t look like that anymore.  I spent the last month turning it into this:
I was inspired by a picture of this gold-dipped dresser I saw on Pinterest (pin’s link is broken) months ago and vowed to dip this one someday and that someday, or should I say somedayS, finally came around.

Here’s how I did it ---->

First, I took out all of the drawers and gave the entire thing (including the doors I left on) a light sanding with our hand-sander plus a piece of sandpaper for the curvy parts.

I didn’t sand too much, just enough to remove any sheen that might make paint not want to stick.  After sanding, I grabbed a damp washcloth and wiped all the dust off.  I did a few passes just to make sure there wasn’t a speck to be seen.

Then I gave the whole thing a coat of spray primer.

I used spray primer because it’s oil-based and I like using oil-based primer on wood furniture because it blocks stains better than water-based primer.  Knots in wood can bleed through primer and paint, don’t ask me how but I read that somewhere a long time ago and I’ve witnessed it first-hand, so now I just go straight to the hard stuff.  Also, with primer I’m always very loose.  It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to cover what you’re going to slap paint on.

See?  Splotchy, in this case, is a-ok.

To get the gold-dipped look, I ran a strip of tape along the bottom to mark off where I wanted the gold to be.  Oh, and I should mention that, to make this part a little easier, Anthony helped me lay the dresser on it’s back.  That way I knew I was covering every inch I needed to without lots of bending over.  I should also mention that I tried this tape for the first time and, while I was really skeptical and nervous about pain-bleed (thanks to a bad experience with another brand of blue tape), it was amazing!  They can consider me a new, loyal customer!   
As far as taping off the bottom went, the curved part of the bottom of this dresser is a separate piece from the body of the dresser that holds the drawers, so figuring out where to ‘dip’ to was easy.  The existing line where the two connected made a good stopping point.  I ran the tape right above the line where the curvy piece ended and the body began so that just the curved piece would be gold.

To make sure I didn’t get any gold paint on the body of the dresser (still just primed), I laid a sheet over the entire top of the dresser and taped some paper right over the first tape strip like so:

Then I gave the curved piece a couple of thin coats of liquid gold.

Once the gold was dry, I removed all of the tape and retaped some paper over the gold so that I could paint the rest of the dresser.  I also pulled the drawers out to give them a new coat of white.

I taped them off too so that paint didn’t spray onto the sides, giving them a cleaner look.

I used our paint sprayer to give everything a coat of Glidden’s Swan White and once that dried, I gave the top a couple of coats of polycrylic to protect it from anything that would sit atop it.  I also repainted the mint green hardware with the same gold I used at the bottom of the dresser.

And that’s it!  A month’s worth of work in a thousand words.  Phew!


But wait, there’s more!  I went a step further to up the glam factor by lining the drawers!  You can get a peek here.  *Ooh-la-la.*  Details on that to follow.

The sad part of this whole project is that, shortly after I repainted this dresser, we sold it.  It served us so well, storing all of the twins’ baby clothes and diapers.  But, as the girls’ have gotten bigger and their clothes right along with them, a bigger dresser seemed a good idea.  As luck would have it (truly it was luck because I’m NEVER the first to find a dresser at thrift stores here), I found one a couple of months ago at a local thrift store and so this one had to skidaddle.  :(  Just to see the gold-dipped idea to fruition and to get a better price, I decided to paint it before we said goodbye.  :)  I’m not going to lie, it was really hard watching it being carried out the door.  I know it’s silly to be attached to furniture of all things but it represented a precious time that’s passed and passed all too quickly. 

Anyway, I better stop before I get misty-eyed and go all weird on you.  Make sure you check in next week to see the inside of the drawers.  The gold-dipped part is so pretty but the lining might be my favorite part.  :)

And for goodness sakes, HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!   

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