A $10 Gentleman's Dresser: A Before & After Story

Debonair, stunning and regal are words that might describe our 1930s highboy dresser. That is thanks to Annie Sloan’s Old White chalk paint.

After

You may remember what it looked like before:

Before

At the time I was trying to decide if I should paint it or not and hadn’t tried chalk paint yet. Well, I’m so glad I did! Not only do I love painting with that paint. To be honest, I’ve become somewhat addicted to painting everything in the house! The chest of drawers just goes so much better with our room now with the rustic head board and dreamy gray walls. I can’t wait to show you a ‘before & after’ of the bedroom, but I’m still working out some last minute decorating ideas.

Getting back to husband’s chest of drawers. Before, I started painting I sealed the top with clear varnish as recommended by my friend, Nancy, at the Sea Rose Cottage. There was lots of wear and tear: pealing veneer and rings from drinks. The clear varnish worked great. Then I did three coats of ASCP in Old White. Some parts I did uneven and other parts I jabbed the brush to get into all the details.

I did one coat of clear wax and let the wax cure for 24 hours. I wanted all the details to show up on the piece so took some advice from Annie Sloan’s book Paint Transformations and mixed the dark stain and white spirit (known as mineral spirit in the US) together and brushed it onto the piece.

Wiping it off quite quickly so it only went into the detail and the indents.

wiping down the drawers

Some parts of the wood were quite dry so the dark wax really highlighted those areas.

Here is the ‘before and after’ view of the top:

Before

And after:

After

Gone are the unsightly rings and pealing veneer. What do you think? It no longer looks like a $10 dresser that no one wanted. I think it looks like a million bucks! My husband would agree (I think). You know how guys are with wood being wood colored…