Okay, so this most definitely isn’t a recipe for food, but it is a recipe for up-cycling that I couldn’t resist posting. After all, my blog tag line does say “creating beautiful pasta and more“.
This dresser was part of my bedroom redecorating project. I didn’t want to buy a new dresser as nothing was wrong with it other than I didn’t like the way it looked and it wouldn’t fit into the scheme of my newly designed bedroom. If you read decorating blogs you will see that up-cycling is quite popular. There are so many great reasons to up-cycle, a few of which are:
- You save a lot of money doing it yourself
- You are being environmentally responsible
- A sense of pride and accomplishment
In my on-line searches through decorating sites I came across a dresser with overlays and found the overlay company on-line. While they had a great selection, I really didn’t want to spend $140+ for 8 overlays. Tim offered to cut the overlays for me. I designed a greek key pattern on Publisher, printed it out, and traced it on a thin sheet of plywood. Cost for the overlays? $8.00!!
Painting Furniture Without Sanding
Yes, furniture can be painted successfully without sanding! Make sure the piece of furniture is clean and dust free. In a well ventilated area (this stuff is strong!) use
Zinsser Cover Stain oil based primer. It is important that the primer is oil based. I use the foam brushes to apply the primer and just throw them away when I am finished. Apply 2 coats of primer.
I used Behr latex semi-gloss paint for this dresser along with Floetrol mixed into the paint. Floetrol is added to latex paint to reduce and eliminate brush marks. (You can purchase this at Home Depot). Allow the first coat of paint to dry thoroughly and apply a second coat.
Allow the paint to set up and dry then apply a coat of Polycrylic. Be sure to use Polycrylic if you are painting your furniture white so that it does not yellow the paint! Polyurethane will yellow white paint.
Allow to dry and to be on the safe side I didn’t put anything on the top of my dresser for 2 weeks. Although paint will be dry to the touch it does not “hard set” for quite a while.
Before I painted I removed all the hardware and spray painted the handles. For this dresser I simply used liquid nails to apply my overlays to the drawers. I don’t like taking the time to measure, so I put them on by eye (not what I would advise) and fortunately they all lined up once the drawers were in the dresser – I got lucky! Happy Up-cycling!!
Pasta Princess and More 