Trial and Error: Pink Dresser

For me, painting furniture for a friend is more nerve wracking than painting furniture for a stranger.  I want my friends to love it, but also not feel obligated to love it just because I painted it.  I also want it to be perfect. Oh dilemmas, ya know? Well, this dresser was a great find and a project I learned a lot on - hence the long post!  First, here is the final product:

I don't have a really good before picture, so here she is in the background ...

OK, down to the nitty gritty!  I started out wanting to make the top a dark wood stain, just so I knew I could. SO, I began to remove the veneer on top.  Bad decision, oh well!  After removing about a tenth of the veneer, I googled "how to remove veneer" and read a couple of articles.  I needed to add steam, heat, and a bit more force to the mix.  So, I got out the hammer, a painter's tool, an iron, a big cup of water, and a towel (to protect my iron from the wood glue holding the veneer down).  I went to work.

I think I spent 6 hours removing veneer.  And through the process, I managed to gouge the wood in a few places.  I was determined to stain this top though. So I filled the gouges in with wood putty, and I filled in a few of the wormholes (I should have left those).  I sanded, and applied Minwax pre-stain conditioner.

I stained in Minwax Jacobean, and of course, the stainable putty did not take the stain.  I tried to color it with a black marker, but the gouges were too big and it just didn't look right.  You can see the picture on the right is what it WOULD have looked like, and the one on the left is what it DID look like. (Sorry for the glares.)

Unacceptable.  So, I had to paint the top.  Not a total loss though, cause I learned A LOT, and my friend really wanted the whole thing painted anyhow.

The next fiasco was the texture of the flat sides and drawer fronts. Because there had been MANY coats of paint and other such ilk on this baby, she had a terrible "I've been painted too many times" look to her.  I tried applying a heavy glaze and distressing the terrible texture out of her, but the color just wasn't right and she really just needed to be pink. This was going in a little girls room, and I felt the overly distressed look just looked dirty.

Unacceptable. I had to fix the texture to actually be flat.  Sanding wasn't going so swell, it was just making the texture worse.  So I set out to apply paint stripper.  (I hate paint stripper.) I think I spent 6 hours stripping the paint off of this one ... (are you adding up my time? don't forget I'm new at this *wink*).  Since the CitraStrip I was using (because I'm a mess and everything ALWAYS gets on my skin), wasn't strong enough to take off all of the layers, I moved up to Klean Strip. And yes I wore gloves and kept the hose nearby because it got on my skin many, many, many, many times.  BUT, in the end she was stripped, and sanded smooth ...

Oh my ... dearie, please cover up!

Then, I painted the hardware with Rustoleum's 2X Kona Brown.  Originally I was going to do clay knobs with farm animal impressions, but after consulting the client, she picked out some hardware I had picked up at the Habitat store.  They looked like tulips, perfectly symbolizing their Dutch Heritage.

So after two coats of paint (Glidden eggshell in Ballet Slipper Pink) and a coat of wax, here she is again:

I also painted a shelf to match. Here are the two pieces in their final place.

Her daughter loved it so much, that she slept next to it during her nap the first day! :)  YAY!

Here are some more of the dresser:

Patty couldn't resist a photo shoot. Silly pup!

I'm linking up to these parties:

Primitive and Proper

Miss Mustard Seed

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