Feeling Stripey...A Dresser For Dylan

Normally when I do a piece of furniture I'm in girlie mode, this time was a bit different.  My friend had been looking for a very long time for a dresser for her Son, Dylan.  She wasn't convinced that an older piece of furniture with character was the way she wanted to go (don't ask).  She finally came around a couple of weeks ago when I sent her an ad on Craigslist for a great dresser at an awesome price.  I offered to redo the dresser for Dylan because, hey that's what friends do and she's helped me out a lot in the past so I wanted to pay it forward.  We talked a bit about what she wanted, but she really wasn't absolutely positive. I told her to trust me because I had something in mind.  The one thing we did agree on was the color.  I decided I'd work on the dresser in between working on another project and it worked out great!  While the other project was drying I worked on the dresser and before I knew it...I was done!

Here is how the dresser looked when they dropped it off at my house....

Has great bones, but the finish is not the best.

The top was in good shape, but they didn't want the top stained.  That worked perfect with what I had in mind!!

This is the ugly hardware that was on the dresser.  My friend wanted to change the hardware, but then I told her it would cost her more than the dresser to replace them.  I knew if I spray painted them in antique bronze they'd look great!

Here's the dresser with 2 coat of Annie Sloan Coco.  I mixed the Coco with an Olympic One color called Eiffel Tower.  The colors were almost identical, but I didn't have enough of the Coco to do the whole thing.  It already looks waaaay better!

You don't really think I'd keep it this plain, flat and boring color without doing something fun, do you???

I had decided from the minute I saw the dresser on Craigslist that it needed some sort of stripes or stripe.  The original plan was to do them off set to the one side.  Well I started taping and there was no way that was going to work.  As hard as I tried I couldn't get the tape to go on straight.  I taped and re-taped 4 times before I realized how dumb I was....There was a 'stripe' right in the middle where the top drawer looked like it's 2 drawers!  DOH!  I decided to go with the dressers hint and put one single, wide stripe down the middle.  

I've learned to keep the paint from seeping under the tape to paint along the tape line with the base color   first.  It seals up the tape!  It really does work and kept the Annie Sloan Off White paint from seeping underneath onto the Coco.  

Here are the drawers all lined up and waiting to dry.

Everything is dry and ready for the final touches.  Hunter just had to sneak in this picture :-)

The one thing my friend did say she wanted was the dresser to be distressed.  So I put a coat of clear wax on then really distressed the stripe and then lightly distressed the rest of the dresser.  Then I finished it all off with a coat of dark wax.  

Here it is...Dylan's new dresser!!!

I like how the sprayed hardware looks and pops off the Coco paint. 

There's that 'stripe' in the dresser I was talking about!  I'm really happy with how the stripe looks and how aged it looks with the distressing and the wax.

This was a really fun and welcome distraction after a long week.  I enjoyed doing something fun and boyish for a change.  I hope Dylan likes it as much as I do and enjoys his new and unique stripey dresser.  I have to mention while I was painting this Hunter kept mentioning how much he liked it.  I'm just waiting for him to ask me to do something similar to his dresser!