I transformed this thrift store ugly duckling dresser into a hand painted work of art.
I bought it years ago at the thrift store, I think for about 10 bucks. It was sitting and sitting there because nobody wanted it. And nobody wanted it because the paint was peeling off it like skin off a surfer's back.
I get it. Not everybody has the setup or wants to do a bunch of furniture sanding. On a dark stained dresser like this, the guy probably just wanted to paint it up fun for his kid.
But now, because latex paint is never going to stick to stained wood without prepping the surface first, it's a disaster of peeling paint that nobody wants to deal with. So, of course, I said, "Well, I'll do it."
Of course, I use real stripper now, but back then, I tried the orange stripper stuff, which really doesn't work well, as you can see. It was messy. It was awful. It took forever, I did it like three times. But it got some of the paint off.
And then I turned to my daddy's old sander, which was the only sander I had back then before I got my random orbital. And I did what I could with it.
Okay, so there's a few points about this phase.
One is that I had to take off all the failing finish. That latex paint had to come off because even though my beautiful DIY Paints, a line of clay-based paint I use, will adhere to anything, even this latex paint, if my paint job goes on top of this latex paint and then the latex paint peels off, then the whole thing is going to come off the dresser anyway.
But I also wanted to get all of it off, including the red stain, because I wanted to see what I had. Sometimes when you take off the paint and the stain, you find out you have some amazing treasure under there.
In this case, even though the top drawer had a really nice pattern, I've got to say the rest of it was not that kind of treasure. What I did find out was it's a beautifully made dresser, very solid. It's vintage. It's very nice pine, and I could definitely work with it.
Its future was sealed, though, because, as you can see in these photos, the darkness (whether caused before or after the stain doesn't matter) made it a project that's just crying out for a beautiful paint job. And that's okay. Some projects are made for paint and I'm made for those projects.
So, the dresser was all prepped and I had my friend's studio space for the night. I put on some great music and I got inspired ... This particular night I was inspired by some cherished memories, of living on the Caribbean ocean.
And so, I painted my little heart out. I painted the drawer fronts and the dresser itself with my multiple colors and shades of this gorgeous clay-based paint, fueled by my memories of those beautiful ocean waves and the all the multicolors of what it was like to live on that ocean for a little bit in my life.
When you use DIY clay-based paints like I do, when the color goes down wet, it looks like the wet spots in this picture, where the colors are very deep and vibrant.
And then the paint dries and it looks like this, and you may think the color has washed out.
But wait until the end of the video and you'll see just how saturated and vibrant these colors are once I seal them.
I think we can just clean up one ugly thing at a time, you know, and try to make one space beautiful.
And the thing is, life feels really short. Life is really short, but it's also really long. And so over the course of a long life, if we keep making one thing beautiful, then before we know it, you know, we've made a lot of beautiful things.
The last step in the Caribbean dresser was to hand wax it and hand buff it and then repaint the top.
Now, do you remember what it looked like when I got it?
This was it originally.
And here it is now.
I've hand painted the entire Caribbean dresser with my own original one-of-a-kind design.
I waxed and buffed it by hand with love.
And that wax has cured now to give it a protective finish.
It's a vintage solid pine dresser. And I left the aged patina inside the drawers for the warmth of it.
I gave it sea glass drawer pulls, because nothing else would do.
I hope these paintings remind you of your favorite ocean visits wherever you most love to go.
This dresser is in my home studio in Vermont and available on this website LiveYummy.com ~ here specifically :: https://liveyummy.com/products/caribbean-dresser
If you're the lucky purchaser, you can come here to Vermont to pick it up, or we can have it shipped to any of the 48 contiguous United States.
Please ask any questions you have, at Lisa@LiveYummy.com
