DIY Disaster aka Lillian's Dresser

Once we found out we were having a girl, I immediately starting thinking about how I wanted to decorate her nursery.  I fell in love with the white wrought iron cribs and really liked the "old timey" or classic look of them.  After I got lucky and found one for an incredible price on Craigslist, I started thinking about what I wanted for her dresser/changing table.  I knew I wanted something different and also something she could use as she got older.  I decided I wanted to get an antique dresser and redo it.  This was my inspiration...

I started looking around town at different antique shops.  I was having a hard time finding one that I felt would work just right.  Most were too tall and skinny or too short and wide.  I had friended Saved By Grace antique shop on facebook and one day, to my surprise, they posted a dresser that I thought would work out just right.  I went to the store the next day to check it out and measure it (I had to make sure a changing pad would fit on top).  This is what I found and had to get....

-sorry the picture quality is pretty bad-

I called my mom to tell her about it, and she decided to buy it for Lillian, and my step-dad went and picked it up for us and brought it to our house!  I then went to doing some research to figure out how we would redo it.  I asked at the antique shop how they redid a lot of their furniture and they told me with chalk paint.  I then started researching chalk paint and came across milk paint.  Miss Mustard Seed milk paint seemed to be the best that I could find.  I read all about it, watched every video tutorial, and read numerous other bloggers experiences with this milk paint.  It really appealed to me because it was a natural paint (therefore I could be the one to paint with it), it did not require any prepping of the dresser (stripping, sanding, etc.), and the finished product was just what I was going for.

I ordered the paint (because of course, nowhere near here sells the stuff).  I decided on the color ironstone, which is basically a white or antique white.  The paint arrives in a powder form and you mix it with water and get started.

I started to paint, but my sweet husband took over because I was not doing a very good job.  (I have to give my husband so much credit for taking on these nursery projects and doing them without complaining and with a smile on his face!)  So as you can see in the picture above he just painted the dresser, just like the website and tutorials said to do.

After a couple of hours some of the paint started to chip off, giving it a distressed look, which is what we were going for.

-close up of the chipping-

We dusted off what had "chipped up,"  and Jon painted another coat.  We ended up having to paint a total of three coats to get the dresser as white as we wanted.

As you can see in the picture above, the paint ended up chipping off quite a bit.  I did not anticipate so much of the paint chipping off.  One of the tutorials said that you never know how much with chip and how much will stay on, it's just the nature of the paint and a gamble you have to take.

After dusting off the areas that chipped off the dresser looked like the above picture.  It was a lot more than I had wanted and I was not really happy with the result.  Jon and I talked about what we should do to make it look better.  We came up with a few options..1 totally strip it down and start over with a different type of paint and technique   2  sand it down and paint over it with a basic white paint and not necessarily have a distressed look or   3 lightly sand it and put a clear varnish and call it done.   At this point I was just ready to get it finished, and I also didn't want to add a lot more work for Jon to do, so I decided on option 3.

Jon bought a super fine sand paper and a can of polyurethane.  He barely sanded the whole thing, trying not to make anymore paint come off.  He then painted on 2 coats of polyurethane.  It ended up looking better than I had thought, or maybe the look of it just grew on me.  I went to Hobby Lobby and bought new hardware for the drawers.  This is our finished project...

It definitely does not look like the picture that was my inspiration, nor does it look like I wanted it to, but I am satisfied.  I think it will look even better with her changing pad on top.  I'm sure we will eventually have to change the look of it, but for now it works and looks good with the other furniture in her room.