Mid Century Makeover {Blonde Dresser Set 1950s}

So I'm calling this "blonde" wood and I'm not sure if that's technically correct or not, but you've seen these blondish-greenish-tannish dressers before. If you google in "blond dresser" your screen will fill up with images of these - so there's that. I swear everyone's grandma had this set in one of her spare bedrooms. But it definitely has a greenish hue to it... kinda like when us blondies went swimming too much as kids and the chlorine turned our tow-heads to seaweed-heads.  Iowa summers could be torturously hot and there was a summer or two when my mom must have just wanted our belly-aching to quit and would drop us off for the afternoon at the Parkersburg swimming pool - if we got our chores done.  "Here kids, paint this hay rack and IF you get it done by lunch time, you can go swimming." To us poor kids it was better than... well just about anything. Ha.

Unlike most of the furniture I get that is in a dastardly state of repair, these were in great shape! 

I got a little crazy redoing furniture this summer and just plumb forgot to take pics of the process. So all ya got is this hammered copper spray paint I used on the hardware.  It's my el favorito! Hammered spray paint. Don't go living another day with out it, kay?

So if you need more explanation than just the pretty photos, I painted the main bulk of the dresser with a slate blackish DIY chalk paint and distressed all the edges with sand paper.  I sanded the top and ledges in the middle and on the bottom just enough to take the green tint off and make it a true blond wood (towhead blond, not  the chlorine-induced seaweed blond).

Ahhhh, isn't it just gorgeous? Can I say that without sounding like I'm totally patting myself on the back?  Probably not.  But dang, it's good looking now.

Now the long dresser.  This one got almost the same treatment, except I took the sanding to a whole 'nother level and good grief that was dumb.  I should just stopped like I did the other one.  But no... once I got going, there was no turning back. About half way through it got totally stubborn and I think I blew through more sand paper than I have on ten other dressers total.

The result of all that sanding and taking it down to the bare wood?  When I put the same exact walnut stain on it, it pulled red tones out of the wood and ended up well... with a reddish tone. I still love it, but I didn't think I could sell them as a set any longer because the wood finishes didn't match in the slightest!

Would you be surprised if I told you I have the same tall chest of drawers in my son's bedroom?

And I've never touched it? It's old school blond-green been chillin' there for several years waiting to be painted....  Kinda like the plumber who always has a drippy faucet I guess....

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Dresser turned TV Console, Thorn Trees, and Glass Doors on the Wall

If bloggers could get get fired, I should be fired. I've got this great semi-expensive camera sitting fifteen inches from me a I type.... and I can't remember the last time I've used it!  Probably someone's senior pictures. No, instead I use my phone camera.  Which at one time WAS a good camera.  But that was before it sat submerged in a puddle for two hours in Charleston. And then got dunked in a river while I hung on a tree after my kayak flipped.  And then buried in a snow bank on a mountain in Utah. I'd say that's a good plug for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, that it's still functioning this well!  But really, these photos today are pretty rotten quality, and I'm sorry.  It's just me being lazy and using what's convenient!

NOTE: If you're viewing this on your phone, scroll to the bottom of the post and click on "VIEW WEB VERSION".  Even my crappy phone camera isn't THAT bad.  Web version should be much better!

Today let me show you a furniture makeover that turned out so muy bien that I had to keep it for myself and put it in my family room!

I hit the gold mine one day when I was tagged in a facebook post that a friend was giving away a whole load of furniture that she had inherited with the purchase of her house. They had been sitting out in a barn for several years, so the dirt that accumulated may have taken me longer to clean up than the actual painting and refinishing!

I have no idea what those voluminous clumps of dust and fuzz are from, but there was a lot hiding behind those drawers!

Check it out - someone else must have used this as a TV stand too.  Old school style on the back! Not that I know a thing about it.  This is the first time I've ever had a TV in my family room.  In fact, I never grew up with a television, and just recently have we gotten one which we still rarely turn on. HGTV?  I've see it in the dentist office a time or two.  Seinfeld?  Never seen it.

I used my belt sander to take the top down to it's original wood. Adios weird dated black speckled wood finish!

I'm not sure why I finished this in the house. Yes I do actually.  My mom was visiting and she was more impatient than a toddler wanting out of a car seat to see how it would look in the family room in place of that behemoth wardrobe that was there previously. So I humored her and we brought it in half done and I put the Restore-A-Finish on with a rag as it sat in it's new home.

I decided not to poly.  I've decided poly is overrated.  I hate poly.  Sometimes it's a necessary evil... but I didn't feel it was necessary with this baby.

Ain't she so pretty all white chalk painted up?  Hard to tell in my sub-par photos, but I did sand all the edges lightly for a distressed shabby chic  finish.  I left the door off the middle and I think it looks better.  I also did something I don't usually do and that is I painted the door handles all the same as the drawers to blend in.  They just seemed too bodacious to contrast and I love how they blend in.

Okay now y'all, I'm pretty excited about this "window" hanging on the wall.

It actually came off of another piece I got from the same haul out of that barn.  Check out this glass door cabinet:

Just wait and see what I ended up doing with the cabinet.  It's in my bedroom but it's not finished yet so no blog post for awhile. :) 

And now for the greenery.  I have these OBNOXIOUS thorn trees that grow worse than dandelions in the back of my property.  One day I'll walk behind the barn and there are little "weeds" sprouting up.  Next day, BAM.  Fifteen foot thorn trees.  I give up.  I totally cannot keep up with them.  So instead I cut branches off of them and bring them in my house.  Don't touch my house plants. You might end up in the ER.

I almost forgot to mention the wreath!  

When my friend Laura got married at my house last summer, she had all these gorgeous colorful metal wreaths to decorate my barn with for her wedding.  I was lucky enough to get to keep some!  Might have had something to do with being the hostess, but who knows.

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Dresser Redo Plan B

I was mowing a lawn one day in our little village when the neighbor lady across the street asked me if I'd be interested in some furniture she had sitting out in her shed (You could say I have a reputation for taking everyone's junk!).  What to my wondering eyes did appear BUT THIS BEAUTY!  (And another gorgeous dresser that is currently in my guest room and you can see that HERE.)  Rough shape on the outside, yeah, but good sturdy bones and A HANKY BOX!  Seriously, why don't they make little lidded cubbies for handkerchiefs anymore on furniture?  Maybe since the world is bonkers for "going green", we should start a hanky movement.  I mean, it's totally green in more ways than one!  😒🤣

The paint was really chippy and peeling on top so my plan was to take all the paint off the top and refinish the wood.  I scraped and sanded and got so crazy frustrated with how stubborn some of it was that I literally walked away from the project for a whole year.  Every now and then I would walk by and put a little elbow grease in to it but it just wasn't being a sweetie to me.

Then I finally decided it had taken up precious space in my work shop long enough and had to get beautiful before the mice decided to move in and destroy it like they did the last dresser I let sit that long! I never did accomplish getting every speck off, the wood ended up being UGH, and I had to replace a strip of veneer along the edge where you see that painters tape.  I took the easy way out and painted the top with a creamy white.  Instead of having the antique white bottom with gorgeous refinished wood top, it ended up with a charcoal navy/black bottom with a creamy white top!

Those hideous plastic silver knobs obviously could not go back on, and the crystal knobs I wanted were too expensive so I decided to piece out this dresser a friend gave to me and the knobs were PERFECT once I painted them!

(The rest of the dresser got repurposed into cool hand painted signs and more.  I never waste!)

Even though it was not at all what I had originally envisioned and planned, I sure do love the end result!  Pretty sure you can apply the spiritual lesson in this. :)

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Tori's Duncan Phyfe Dresser

There's this little po-dunky place that is one of my favorite places ever to treasure hunt.

I feel like I'm giving away a secret, but since I don't live in Iowa, I don't feel the need to hide this source for good junk.  What, you can't tell me you aren't the same!  Like if you share a good spot someone is going to get the good stuff before you so you just keep it to yourself and sneak over like a little sneaky snake....  I'm even guilty of not hitting "like" on a garage sale ad I see on Facebook for fear it will bring attention to the sale and all the good stuff will be gone before I get there.  I know!!!  I tell my kids "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU" and then I think like THAT!  Oy.  I have some work to do on my selfishness.  

So what is this place?  Black Sheep Antiques in Parkersburg, Iowa.

When I'm in Iowa, I call Robert up to make sure the store is open before driving out there because you never know if he's at an auction or something.  And as soon as I ask if the store is open, he knows it's "that girl from Michigan" just by my voice.  Apparently I have a distinct (weird?) voice.  So I saw this Duncan Phyfe dresser out there for a good deal - but it was a little rough.  Rough doesn't scare me as long as all the drawers work good - and they did.  I didn't have room to bring it home, so my parents brought it out with them on a visit and then it sat in Tori's room for almost a year all dark and scary in the corner.  Until this week, actually, when I said, enough is enough.  Let's paint that dark bad boy in the corner.  

(Sorry wood lovers, the wood really was in pooey shape. You just can't tell in the pic.  I promise, cross my heart.)  Oh oh, I forgot I took a pic!  Here's some proof:

My daughter has about 5,083 pieces of clothing and her little bitty dresser just wasn't cutting it anymore.  I moved this into her room even though it didn't match but dude, she was desperate for some more space. Mind you, she only wears six of those 5,083 articles of clothing, but she MIGHT some day so ya know... we must hang on to ALL OF THEM.  Hmmm.... wonder where she gets that.  Not to mention all the empty tissue boxes that were stashed under this dresser before I took the picture because ya know... they might make good trinket boxes!  (I've created... a hoarding monster!)

So I know the walls look gray in this picture, but they really are a shade of light aqua blue.

I used light aqua blue for the drawers too (not the same as the walls, who knows where that is by now!) and white on the rest of the dresser.

I love the hint of contrast.  It's not an in-your-face contrast, just slight.

Slight and light and bright.  Wanna fight?  I don't know why my kids think I'm so weird...

I used a sheet of sand paper to go over all the edges, nooks, and crannies for a distressed shabby chic look.  Cuz I like shabby chic and cuz if it happens to get scratched, well it won't be so noticeable. :)

Now, let's see if she can keep underneath the dresser cleared out, and the corner not piled with empty kleenex boxes.  Oh, and you know what else was under that dresser?  Sixteen containers of slime.  I added that to the 23 other containers I found.  She now has a special cabinet JUST for her slime.  There are almost 40 containers.  No wonder why I can't find anything to put hubby's sandwich in.

This slime craze has got.to.stop.

Aren't those prints just the best?  I got four of them at an estate sale down the road from my house a few years ago.  They were still in the folder and are over 100 years old.  Hot dog!

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p.s. if you see Tori... please don't let on that you know some of her secrets...

Mom will be in big trouble.

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