Creamy Butter Yellow Dresser

The last few months I've been lucky enough to have people looking out for me on the furniture front. I've had friends let me know about furniture that's free on the side of the road, for sale on Facebook or even at tag sales. A couple of weekends ago I had a neighbor send me a message saying there was a great dresser at a tag sale a few streets over that I should check out. Funny part is we had driven by the tag sale earlier in the morning, but didn't stop. I have to admit I'm terrible at the whole tag sale thing. I don't love going to them due to the fact you have to get up early on a weekend to do it (yes, I like to sleep in on the weekends!). If I can't see what's at a tag sale when I do my 'drive by' I won't even bother going up. This particular sale was one of those sales. The house was at the bottom of a long driveway and I really didn't feel like going up to check it out so we kept driving. I was surprised when the neighbor said she saw a great dresser there and felt VERY silly not making the effort to go up and have a look the first time. Luckily for me, when I went back the dresser was still there. I made the owner an offer and then her Husband graciously offered to deliver the dresser since it wouldn't fit in my SUV. It was definitely a lucky furniture day for me! I think I've learned my lesson now....no more driving by tag sales without stopping and at least having a quick look!

Here's the dresser before:

I got carried away, like so many times before, and started working on the dresser before I took any pictures. You can see the drawers are out and the top is partially sanded in the picture above. It was that honey oak color and a tad bit orangey.

I bought a belt sander and decided to try it on this piece since it was all solid wood. I was a huge girlie, chicken and asked the Hubby for some help. He wasn't happy when I took his picture without any warning and then reminded me I didn't have his permission to put this on the blog...HA!!!! He sanded the top down for me and I took a few runs as well to get the hang of it. WOW it's a lot harder to use a belt sander than an orbital sander. You can see on the side a swipe of paint where I was testing a brand new-to-me Annie Sloan color....Cream.

This is a VERY solid piece. No veneer here! (nice rhyming!) What I was drawn to on this particular piece were the curves on the front of each side. Plus the drawers were very unique.

After finishing with some hand sanding the top was ready for some stain. I gave it a pre-stain conditioner first. When the pre-stain was dry I gave the top a light sanding and then a coat of Kona stain.

Here you can see my first coat of Annie Sloan Cream. I'm not a yellow person, but this is such a buttery yellow. It's very soft and more cream than yellow. I love this color!!

Here are a few of the drawers. The one on the bottom left is my favorite. I love the ripples!! If you read my blog you know I'm a sucker for keyholes. I love how the keyholes add such nice detail to the drawers.

Here you can see all the great details on the front of this piece. The sides curve and there are big trim pieces on the top and middle as well.

This is the middle, top drawer with it's cute flower carving. The whole dresser had wood drawer pulls, except this one, which doesn't open with a pull. I decided I wanted to change the drawer hardware because I'm not a fan of wood pulls. I wanted to add some more character with the drawer hardware. When I found the hardware for this dresser I knew it was exactly what it needed!

Here are the two side, top drawers. This isn't a great picture because I had to use my flash due to the lack of light on this particular day. The top drawer has a coat of clear wax and a coat of dark wax. The bottom drawer has just a coat of clear. This is an old piece of furniture and has lots of character in the wood. I felt like it would be wrong not to bring out the character in the wood so I went with the dark wax to finish it off.

This is with two coats of paint and a coat of clear wax. It looks pretty, but not a ton of pizazz. I wanted some pizazz!!

I finished the rest of the dresser with dark wax, including the top. Then I put on the new hardware and it was ready for some pictures.

Here's the finished product!

This dresser has so many neat details!!!

Here's a picture of that cute, carved middle drawer. I love how it looks with the dark wax and a teensy bit of distressing. This was the only part of the dresser I decided to distress.